Department News

Letter from the Chair

Dear Alumni and Friends,

Greetings from the Global and International Studies Building! This year marked the 50th Anniversary of the amazing IU Madrid study-abroad program, for which there was a celebration organized by the current director, Professor Melissa Dinverno. The festivities included the return to Madrid of program alumni, former program directors, and a visit by university leaders, including the President of Indiana University, Michael A. McRobbie. You can learn more about the Madrid program and celebrations here.

The department hosted two major conferences in 2016-17: The International Conference of the American Pragmatics Association (AMPRA) in November 2016 organized by Professor César Félix-Brasdefer and the Colloquium of the North American Catalan Society (NACS) in May 2017 organized by Professor Edgar Illas. 

Among splendid developments this year, Patrick Dove was promoted to the rank of Full Professor for his accomplishments and contributions to the Department and beyond, including having recently published a book about which you can learn more in the faculty publication section. I am also happy to announce that K. Allen Davis, Julie Madewell, and Alina Sokol were promoted to the rank of Senior Lecturer based on excellence in teaching. Award-winning staff member Jane Drake was recognized for her 25th year milestone of service to Indiana University. Israel Herrera was awarded two major teaching awards: the President’s Award for Distinguished Teaching as well as the College’s James P. Holland Award for Exemplary Teaching and Service to Students. And Professor Ryan Giles was awarded the MLA’s John K. Walsh Award for most outstanding article published in the Hispanomedievalism journal La corónica.

Some news is bittersweet: After over 30 years, Professor Clancy Clements retired on June 30, 2017. We wish him all the best in retirement, but his presence will be sorely missed. On behalf of the department, I would like to thank him for the innumerable contributions he has made to the Department, the University and the field. You can learn more here about his fascinating trajectory as a scholar.

Our students continue to excel: Spanish major Kaitlynn Milvert was selected to be an IU Presidential intern; five of our majors were awarded the Indiana Outstanding College Student of Spanish/Portuguese Award by the American Association of Teachers of Spanish and Portuguese (AATSP); and 21 majors were inducted into Phi Beta Kappa. Three graduate students were awarded year-long fellowships from the College of Arts and Sciences, and four defended their dissertations successfully.

Many of the culturally and intellectually-enriching activities highlighted in the newsletter are funded in part with the generous support of our friends and alumni, without which we would not be able to do many of the things that we do. Thus, we are incredibly grateful to all of our alumni and friends who have made a commitment to the excellence of the department by contributing intellectually, personally, and financially.

If you will be coming to town, be sure to let us know so that we can welcome you personally. The "Events" section of the department's webpage will be the place to look if you are interested in attending any of the activities planned for 2017-18, such as the 10th Anniversary Conference on Current Approaches to Spanish and Portuguese Second Language Phonology (February 23-24, 2018) organized by Professor Kimberly Geeslin, or the 2017 MESDA lecture which will be delivered by alumnus Professor Niraldo de Farias (PhD ‘95)  in conjunction with our annual fall party on September 8, 2017.

Hasta luego, Até logo, Fins aviat,

Steven Wagschal
Chair, Department of Spanish and Portuguese

Spanish & Portuguese Welcomes Alum Juan Pino-Silva for MESDA Lecture

Since 1996, the Department of Spanish and Portuguese has paid tribute to a long-serving and distinguished emeritus professor through an alumni lecture in his honor. Professor Merle E. Simmons was a professor and scholar of Spanish American Colonial literature at IU from 1942 to 1983. Professor Simmons’s contributions to the department and to scholarship included authoring seven books, developing the program of study in Spanish American Colonial Literature at Indiana University, and serving as director of graduate studies for seven years and department chair for five. 
Each fall, the Department of Spanish and Portuguese honors Professor Simmons by inviting a distinguished alum of the department to visit Bloomington, speak to the department’s faculty and students, and reconnect with his or her roots as a part of the Merle E. Simmons Distinguished Alumni (MESDA) Lecture. This year’s lecture, entitled "On the Acquisition and Loss of Spanish Dialectal Features," was presented by Dr. Juan Pino-Silva.

Dr. Pino-Silva is an emeritus Professor in the Department of Languages at Universidad Simón Bolívar, Caracas, Venezuela. He was a Spanish Instructor in the Department of Spanish and Portuguese at Indiana University when he started his doctoral dissertation on Venezuelan children’s first and second language attrition. Dr. Pino-Silva graduated with a PhD in Linguistics in 1989, and has published on the acquisition of Spanish dialect features, second language testing, and second language teaching with the aid of technology, extensive reading, and communities of purpose. He is presently working with Dr. Yuly Asención-Delaney on a Spanish Extensive Reading Program based at Northern Arizona University. The first results of this study were presented at the 2015 and 2016 AATSP conferences. Dr. Pino-Silva lives in San Jose, California. He still teaches ESL and Spanish courses at Evergreen Community College. 

This coming fall, Dr. Niraldo de Farias (PhD ’95, Indiana University) will present the MESDA lecture in a talk entitled "Rethinking the Latin American Novel in the Light of Surrealism."​ We hope you will plan to join us on September 8, 2017 for this exciting lecture and the reception that follows!

IU’s Madrid Program Celebrates its 50th Anniversary

During the summer of 1963, when IU professor Merle E. Simmons met with Don Walther, a professor of Spanish at Purdue University, to discuss the possibility of collaborating on a study abroad program in Spain, he could not have anticipated that by 2017 almost 3,000 students would have studied in Madrid because of that conversation. What began as a joint program in Madrid between Purdue and IU in 1965 grew to include the University of Wisconsin in 1970, resulting in the WIP (Wisconsin-Indiana-Purdue) program, which has been led by 43 different rotating faculty members across the history of the program. Nine of those faculty members joined the anniversary celebration in Madrid, accompanied by 40 alumni of the program, more than 50 current student participants, and officials from the partner institutions, including Michael A. McRobbie, President of Indiana University, and David Zaret, IU’s Vice President for international affairs.

To honor this special milestone, multiple events were planned for May 17, 2017, which included a walking tour of the University Complutense, an anniversary luncheon at the Palacio de la Misión in the Casa de Campo and an evening celebration with the Rector and Complutense officials in the Paraninfo of the historic Facultad de Filosofía.  Professor Melissa Dinverno, current Resident Director, and WIP staff-- Mamen Castaño and Amy Olson--were key in organizing these events with officials in Spain and at IU, Purdue and Wisconsin.

At the luncheon event, Kathleen Sideli, managing director of the WIP program and IU’s Associate Vice President for Overseas Study, recognized the presence of individuals who contributed to the program’s success over the years—resident directors, administrators, staff, alumni, and current students. Sideli served as the program’s graduate assistant in 1974-75 and 1980-81 and has worked with the program in an official capacity at the Office of Overseas Study since 1981. This gave her a special perspective, which she used to compile a detailed history of the program that she supplemented with archival material going back to the program's first years. The program progressed over time through periods of trials and tribulations as the directors and staff arranged for student housing, designed language and culture courses to prepare students for demanding course work, organized excursions around the country and assisted them with integration into Spanish life. The years of the program also saw tremendous changes in Spanish history, including the death of Francisco Franco, the return of the Spanish monarchy, the transition into democracy and recurring moments of economic challenges. Sweeping changes in technology also impacted the program over time.

At the luncheon, former Resident Director Robert Arnove (1989-90) commented that during his directorship “a strong sense of community was forged because of the need to survive and thrive in Spain … Over the course of ten months, personal bonds were established, professional identities were being shaped, and lives were being transformed.”  Former Resident Director Reyes Vila-Belda (2010-11 and 2013-14) described why she sought the position for a second year.  “I was able to work one on one with the students and witness how learning a foreign language transforms individuals. Their progress was audible in their steady mastery of the language and visible in their growing confidence to navigate a new social and cultural milieu.” 

Those in attendance at the luncheon were moved by the comments of IU alumna Margo Persin, a program participant in 1968-69 who then served as its graduate assistant in 1971-72. From her vantage point as professor emerita of Rutgers, she looked back on her experience witnessing a lantern highlight the contours of a bison on the caves at Altamira as an analogy of what happened to her that year. “I gradually became aware of what it means to be human, to be part of a tribe or a clan, to have virtually the same experience as those cave dwellers of thousands of years ago, and to be swept up in the course of time and history and art and culture… That experience introduced me to a view of the world, the flow of time and history that enabled me to ‘see’ in an entirely different way.” 

The luncheon culminated in a bittersweet moment when the program’s longtime Assistant Director, Mamen Castaño, was honored for her three decades of service with IU’s Distinguished International Service Award. Sideli informed the group that Castaño had recently decided to take early retirement this summer, which came as a shock to most of the attendees since Mamen has been the heart and soul of the program going back to 1988. President McRobbie did the honors of presenting her with the award. Highlights of the anniversary luncheon were captured by a set of vivid photographs. During the luncheon, a slideshow of vintage and more recent photos rotated in the background.

The evening event at the Facultad celebrated the 50th anniversary of the Reunidas consortium (Universidades Norteamericanas Reunidas) which the WIP program helped to create in 1967 along with a small group of colleges and universities. The event was livestreamed and archived as well as summarized in an article in the Complutense newspaper. Given WIP’s important role in the history of Reunidas, President McRobbie was invited to represent the consortium by giving a speech. He underscored that the concept of ensuring that students become “globally literate” was not as widely appreciated 50 years ago as it is today. 

“The spirit of goodwill exhibited by the Complutense in the 1960s—a challenging period for all universities—was truly remarkable. The university worked with the program’s founding American partners in a spirit of generous cooperation and collaboration, welcoming American students and integrating them into the university at a time when some American activities on the world stage were controversial, and at a time when the Complutense, like all universities, was dealing with its own internal challenges. Over the years, students in the program have had a remarkable opportunity to witness firsthand Spain’s transition to democracy as well as the country’s maturation as a modern, democratic nation.”

To honor the Complutense’s role in integrating IU students, as well as other US students—over 15,000 in the past 50 years—President McRobbie bestowed IU’s Thomas Hart Benton Medallion on Rector Carlos Andradas. The medal, which includes the IU seal, “symbolizes the aspirations and ideals that are the foundation of the search for knowledge -- aspirations and ideals that Indiana University and the Complutense University of Madrid share."

WIP alumna Capricia Marshall (1984-85), a Purdue graduate, gave the keynote speech at the evening event after attending the WIP luncheon earlier that day.  Ambassador Marshall served as President Obama’s Chief of Protocol from 2009-2013 and is currently Ambassador-in-Residence at the Adrienne Arsht Latin America Center. She had the audience nodding and laughing at various points as she remembered what it was like to adjust to Spanish food, Spanish fashion, and the festive nightlife of Madrid. She made it very clear that due to her background, which is a combination of Mexican and Croatian heritage, and what she learned during her year in Madrid, she was able to advise President Obama on issues regarding cultural communication which impacted his trips around the world. She described in particular how she once convinced him of the diplomatic advantage of engaging in noodle preparation during his visit to China. 

The culmination of the 50th anniversary events was a graduation ceremony, a tradition introduced by the Complutense in recent years, to grant current Reunidas participants a diploma for completing their course work at the university. It was a fitting conclusion to an exciting day of nostalgic celebration since it reminded everyone that these young students, shaped by their time in Spain, will carry with them their intellectual gains, exciting memories, new friends and deep language skills that together will serve them well in their life’s journey.

For a full set of documents, including a detailed day-by-day blog by Ryan Piurek of the IU presidential delegation’s experiences in Madrid, see: https://overseas.iu.edu/about/madrid-50th-anniversary.html

2017 American Pragmatics Association (AMPRA)

The 3rd International Conference of the American Pragmatics Association (AMPRA), organized by Professors Cesár Félix-Brasdefer and Kathleen Bardovi-Harlig, was hosted at Indiana University, November 3-6, 2016. The four-day conference welcomed presenters from within the United States, as well as from Canada, Mexico, South America, Europe, the Middle East, Africa, and Asia. The conference featured over 160 presentations, including a pre-conference workshop titled Pragmatics and Language Learning, as well as three outstanding plenary talks, six panel sessions, dozens of individual presentations, and a poster session. The conference program featured topics in pragmatic theory, pragmatics and semantics, pragmatics and syntax, pragmatics and prosody, pragmatics and cognition, pragmatics and discourse, pragmatic variation, second language pragmatics, intercultural pragmatics, and computer-mediated discourse.

Many graduate and undergraduate students, as well as the wonderful staff of the Department of Spanish and Portuguese, were instrumental to the success of the conference. Thanks to Tracy Sheets, Jennifer Howard, and Jane Drake. Also, thanks to the following students who helped in many aspects of the conference organization: Margaret Glide, William Allendorfer, Megan DiBartolomeo, Valentyna Filimonova, Vanessa Elias, Juan Escalona, Eliot Raynor, Angel Milla-Muñoz, Diana Arroyo, Santiago Arróniz, Nick Blaker, Fernanda Escalante, Jayme Gerring, Maria Angeles Hidalgo, Becky Halloran, Carly Henderson-Contreras, Matthew Pollock, Robert Baxter, Alejandro Cisneros, Dan Jung, Dylan Jarrett, Mackenzie Coulter-Kern, Lindsay Giacomino.

IU Hosts 16th Colloquium of the North American Catalan Society

The biannual Colloquium of the North American Catalan Society (NACS) took place at IU on May 18-20, 2017. The Colloquium attracted sixty-three scholars from North America and Europe. These included two IU alumni, professors Nick Phillips (Grinnell College) and Llorenç Comajoan (Universitat de Vic), and ten current IU scholars: graduate students Nathan Douglas, Jill Fortin, Nora Gardner, Caitlin McClelland Methvin, and Adam Singh, and professors Jordi Cat (History and Philosophy of Science), Ryan D. Giles, Edgar Illas, Antonio Parrilla-Recuero, and Timothy William Waters (Maurer School of Law). The papers presented examined multiple aspects of Catalan language, culture, politics, urbanism, media and history.

The event also included two keynote lectures. Professor Sebastiaan Faber (Oberlin College) presented on “Memory Battles of the Civil War: Catalan Lessons for Spain” and writer and poet Jaume Subirana (Universitat Oberta de Catalunya) presented a lecture titled “Building with Words: The Symbolic Space of Writers in Contemporary Catalan Culture”. Three roundtables complemented the program: one on "Secessionism and the State: Violence in a Non Violent Conflict", one on “Teaching Catalan as a Foreign Language in US Universities”, and one on “The Afterlife of Translation: Here’s the Book, Where Are the Readers?”.

The NACS Colloquium is the most important academic event in the field of Catalan Studies in North America. The success of the 2017 Colloquium attests to the growing importance of this field. This growth is due to two main reasons. First, new lines of inquiry within Hispanism have focused on the multilingual and multicultural nature of Spain and the Hispanic world in general. Thus, Catalan, the second most spoken language in Spain, has gained recognition and legitimacy as a productive place for inquiry. Second, and somewhat in contradiction to the first point, the emergence of the movement for the independence of Catalonia has given more visibility to this region in the media and in political milieus and, consequently, more scholars from different disciplines have incorporated Catalan Studies into their research plans.

The next NACS Colloquium will be held at The University of Chicago in 2019.

National & International Guest Lectures

In addition to hosting a number of conferences and ongoing internal lecture series, the department welcomed the following invited scholars this year, presenting exciting new research to students and colleagues in the university community:

Marcelo Mazotti, Univerity of Sao Paulo and visiting scholar, IU School of Education, “A New Brazil? What’s Ahead After the Presidential Impeachment.”

Kim Potowski, University of Illinois at Chicago, “The Teaching of Heritage Speakers.”

Mini-Symposium: From the Catalan Mountain to the Catalan State, Margarida Casacuberta, Universitat de Girona, “Del cim del Canigó al Puig del Bassegoda i al Cimalt de ‘Solitud’: la construcció literária de la Muntanya catalana,” and Josep Maria Muñoz, King Juan Carlos I of Spain Center in New York, “A Democratic Revolt: Catalan Fight for Independence and the Crisis in Spain.”

James Kendrick, Baylor University, “What We Talk About When We Talk About Film Violence” and a panel discussion “The US, Japan, and Argentina: Transnational Horror Film Violence," with Prof. Kendrick, Michael Crandol, and Jonathan Risner (Indiana University).

Jim Michnowicz, North Carolina State University, “Language contact and change in Yucatan Spanish in real and apparent time.”

Brett Levinson, Binghamton University (SUNY), panel discussion with Patrick Dove and Danny James (Indiana University), Literature and ‘Interregnum.'

Orlando Bentancor, Barnard College, “Birth of the Capitalocene: Iberian Scholasticism as Imperial World Economy,” and a workshop “The Political Economy of Empire.”

Lúcia Bettencourt, Brazilian writer, and Kim Hastings, freelance writer, editor and translator, “Through the Looking Glass: What the Author Saw After Being Translated.” Bettencourt also presented a reading and conversation hour with passages from her 2015 novel O regresso, a última viagem de Rimbaud.

Nelson Cerqueira, Federal University of Bahia and Hélio Rocha College, “The Reception of Jorge Amado’s Novels in US Press.”

The Lucky 7th Annual Spanish & Portuguese Song Festival

The Spanish and Portuguese Song Festival is an annual multicultural event organized by the IU Department of Spanish and Portuguese, whose main goal is to encourage the artistic use of both languages by students and the community. “This year's festival has been the most competitive one I have seen,” said the festival founder and organizer Israel Herrera. Seven IU students competed for a $100 prize, performing popular and original Spanish songs from a variety of dialects, genres, and time periods with what Herrera calls “an extraordinary level of language and musical skills”. The select jury panel consisted of lecturers and a PhD student from the Spanish and Portuguese Department and the Jacobs School of Music: Julie Madewell and Viviannette González (experts in language), Vania Castro (artistry), Beth Boyd (vocal quality), and Daniel Duarte (musicianship).

The first-place winner was Thea Bransby, a junior majoring in Folklore and Ethnomusicology with a minor in Gender Studies, who performed “Historia de un amor” by Carlos Eleta Almarán, accompanied on guitar by David Gulyas, an IU alum. David was especially grateful for the opportunity to play as he wrote that it “brought back a flood of nice memories for my wife Carol… [who] was a Spanish literature major many years ago at IU”. The winner of second place, and voted audience favorite, was Sarah Watkins, who performed “Volveré” by Jesse and Joy. “It was an incredible experience,” Watkins stated, “that I got to share with my boyfriend, Ethan [Olson], who accompanied me on the guitar.” The third-place winner, Amanda Tolen, commented, “I have always had an interest in singing and in Spanish, but rarely get to combine the two. This was a great opportunity to perform again and practice my Spanish in a unique way!” Amanda performed another Jesse and Joy’s hit, “Mi sol”. And it is precisely this unique connection between the personal and the academic that makes this festival so attractive to the IU community. “Even if you aren’t confident in your Spanish or singing abilities,” said Lindsay Stone, a graduate student participant, “the community is so welcoming and positive that you will be glad you have participated!” This sentiment was echoed by the S100 and S150 supervisor and lecturer Paul Coats, who served on the organizing committee and acted as one of the MCs: “After seeing how much my own students have improved in their language skills from participating, I can't help but encourage each and every student to get involved!”

In addition to the student competition, the festival is known for showcasing local community talent and hidden gems among our graduate students and faculty. “I really enjoyed the performances from our special guests,” said Herrera. “It was a huge honor to see our Chair singing and playing the violin.” Dr. Steven Wagschal surprised the audience with an impressive rendition of “Vuelvo al sur” by Astor Piazzolla and Fernando Solanas, accompanied by Dr. Alain Barker on the piano. Graduate student talent was proudly represented by Maggi Glide, PhD student in Spanish linguistics, and Ricardo Martins, PhD student in Portuguese. Two local community bands were also present to charm the audience. Amigo Fields’ Dr. Anna Lynch and Dr. James Damico opened the festival with a few originals that are available to public ear through their website: http://www.amigofields.com/. The festival closed with the Mollie Scholars band, represented by Mark Fitzimmons, Jackie Skara, and Dylan Fixmer. Mark, who is a PhD student in Spanish literature, reflected on his experience: “We were thrilled to have a special impulse to prepare a Galician folk song, which was a great creative challenge for us.” Their repertoire of Celtic and Bluegrass tunes can be found at https://soundcloud.com/the-mollie-scholars.  “Seeing these scholars, who are making history in their respective research fields, come together to make something beautiful on a personal and community level is a perfect teachable moment,” said Valentyna Filimonova, festival organizer and MC: “In the end, this festival tries to accomplish the same goal as university education more generally: to inspire students to grow and to become better community builders and global citizens, regardless of their career choice.”

This year’s event was possible thanks to the generous support of the Office of the Vice President for Diversity, Equity and Multicultural Affairs (DEMA), Center for Latin American and Caribbean Studies (CLACS), Institute for European Studies (EURO), the IU First Year Experience, the IU Latino Studies Program, and the Neal-Marshall Black Culture Center. Special thanks to all of our volunteers as well!

VIDA 2017

Grupo de Teatro VIDA, IUB’s Spanish and Portuguese language theater group, presented their annual show “Acontecimientos extraños” (Strange Happenings) last fall at the Bloomington Playwrights Project in Bloomington and Indianapolis’s Warren Performing Arts Center Studio Theater. The show included La distancia written by Antonio Martínez Ballesteros and directed by Mark Fitzsimmons and Theresa Spech; Alfonsina Storni’s Los degolladores de estatuas, directed by Alysa Schroff and Valentyna Filimonova; Se vende una mula, an anonymous comedy directed by Rebecca Clay and Paul Coats, and selections from Chico Buarque de Hollanda’s Os saltimbancos, directed by Valeria De Castro and Vania Castro. As always, the production brought together graduate students, undergraduate students, core lecturers and members of the community who all worked very hard to pull off a wonderful show. Rebecca Clay will take over the role of director next season, and plans are in the works for a spring 2018 show. As the fall semester advances, please keep checking the VIDA website @ www.indiana.edu/~vida/ for performance dates and times!

Upcoming Events

Please check our website (http://www.iub.edu/~spanport/) for details about these events and others as dates draw near.  

August 29-31, 2017	Guest lecture by Dr. Juan Manuel Hernandez Campoy
September 8, 2017	MESDA lecture by Dr. Niraldo de Farias followed by the Department’s Annual Fall Reception
September 20-21, 2017	Spanish Royal Theater Performance
October 6, 2017	IU Fall Break
February 23-24, 2018	Conference: Current Approaches to Spanish and Portuguese Second Language Phonology
March 12-16, 2018	IU Spring Break