Graduate Student News

Graduate Student Perspective: Avizia Y. Long

I am very fortunate and grateful for the experiences I have had the privilege to share with other graduate students and faculty members in the Department of Spanish and Portuguese at Indiana University. During my tenure as a graduate student, I have received high quality, intensive training in linguistics, which has afforded me the opportunity to participate in and produce cutting-edge research in several subdisciplines of the field. My training has also allowed me to conduct field research abroad and give academic presentations in national and international venues, activities that were made possible by the generous professional and financial support of many individuals and organizations within and outside of the department. My time as a graduate student further facilitated my development as a postsecondary educator. I am particularly grateful for the level of departmental and institutional support given to teaching, which has allowed me to learn how to teach a variety of courses, reflect and improve upon my own teaching, and motivate my desire to continue to seek excellence in teaching.

My transition into the role of Assistant Professor of Linguistics this fall at the University of Guam would not be possible without the training and support I have received as a graduate student. I especially look forward to sharing my dissertation research—titled “The acquisition of sociolinguistic competence by Korean learners of Spanish: Development and use of the copula, subject expression, and intervocalic stops”—which I see as the culmination of my training and experiences at IU. One of the best qualities of this program is the encouraging, collaborative environment that is fostered by faculty and students. I look forward to building on the personal and professional relationships that made my time as a graduate student inspiring, productive, and fun!

Graduate Student Perspective: Matthew Johnson

For the upcoming 2016-17 academic year I am the fortunate recipient of a College of Arts and Sciences Dissertation Year Research Fellowship. I defended my proposal late in the fall 2015 semester and spent the spring semester researching and writing the beginning chapters of my dissertation. This award will provide me with time and financial assistance so that I may continue developing my dissertation project, and will also give me the opportunity to attend academic conferences in order to present preliminary versions of my chapters and receive feedback from my peers.

My dissertation studies the fictional texts of two Argentine authors, Roberto Arlt and Macedonio Fernández, as well as the literary critical discourse that has taken their texts as its object over the past ninety-plus years. Both authors were prominent figures in the Buenos Aires literary field of the 1920s, and both were canonized as foundational authors of the modern Latin American literary tradition in the later decades of the 20th century. I use the critical concept of the avant-garde to study their works, asking how they relate to the global emergence of avant-garde art and literature in the initial decades of the 20th century, and investigating how shifting theoretical understandings of the avant-garde have shaped, and continue to shape, the reception of both authors in the decades after their death. My work thus aims to provide a renewed vision of how avant-garde literature occurred in Latin America, and how ideas about the experimental literature of the early 20th century and its capacity to bring about change continue to inform aesthetic, social, and political debates concerning the arts and their importance in the present.

I would like to acknowledge the support of my professors and graduate student peers, as well as the department’s staff members. I am grateful for their help, without which I surely would not be in the position to receive this award.

Graduate Student Honors and Awards

Research Honors and Awards

Ali Alsmadi, PhD candidate in Hispanic Literatures, was selected to attend the Medieval Reading Summer School’s “On Reading Pleasure – Pleasure Reading” sponsored by the Swedish Research Institute. His project for this international competition is entitled “From Shahrazad to Zayas: The Pleasures of Combating Man's Cruelties.”

Beth Boyd, PhD candidate in Hispanic Literatures, earned the Merle E. Simmons Travel Fellowship for 2016.

Moses Fritz, PhD candidate in Hispanic Literatures, was awarded the 2016 Timothy Rogers Summer Dissertation Fellowship and also received a CAHI travel grant to present at the 2015 Pacific Ancient and Modern Languages Association Conference at Portland State University.

Matt Johnson, PhD candidate in Hispanic Literatures, was awarded a College of Arts & Sciences Dissertation Year Fellowship for 2016-17.

Sean McKinnon, PhD candidate in Hispanic Linguistics, won the Department’s Doctoral Student Academic Achievement Award for 2016-17 and received  a College Graduate Travel Fellowship last fall.

Laura Merino, PhD candidate in Hispanic Linguistics, received the Department’s JM Hill Outstanding Graduate Paper Award in 2016.

Angel Milla-Munóz, PhD candidate in Hispanic Linguistics, received a College of Arts & Sciences Spring Travel Award.

Jorge Santander, PhD candidate in Hispanic Literatures, received the Department’s 2016 Deyermond Travel Fellowship.

Beatriz Sedo del Campo, PhD candidate in Hispanic Linguistics, earned a 2016-17 Dissertation Completion Fellowship from the College of Arts & Sciences.

Teaching Honors & Awards

Beatriz Sedo del Campo, PhD candidate in Hispanic Linguistics, received the Department’s AI Teaching Award for 2016.

PhD Degree Conferred

Valeriya Fritz, Hispanic Literatures
Avizia Yim Long, Hispanic Linguistics
Bret Linford, Hispanic Linguistics
Antonio Parrilla-Recuero, Hispanic Literatures
Charlotte (Sophia) Rammell, Hispanic Linguistics

Tenure Track Positions

Valeriya Fritz, Brescia University, Kentucky
Avizia Yim Long, University of Guam