Graduate Student News

Diálogos conference discusses teaching and activism in today's political climate

The annual Diálogos conference brings together all of the members of our Spanish and Portuguese department community for a weekend of sharing research and networking with student scholars from other institutions. It has proven to be a productive forum for professional development and this year was no exception – the Graduate Student Advisory Committee, conference volunteers, faculty members, panel moderators, and student presenters all worked hard to make it a great weekend. Additionally, the keynote addresses by Dr. Ivonne del Valle and Dr. Jill Jegerski stimulated interesting dialogue and discussion.

A new element this year was the inclusion of a roundtable discussion that served as the conference’s opening event: “The Public Role of the University: Academia and Activism, Teaching Controversial Topics.” Professors Clancy Clements, Manuel Díaz-Campos, Andrés Guzmán, and Olimpia Rosenthal each shared some thoughts to start the discussion, and then we had an hour of thoughtful discussion with more than 50 attendees. A main impetus for our decision to include this roundtable was, as you might expect, the November presidential election. In the weeks and months following the election, graduate students in our department engaged in a number of informal discussions about how we might best respond as emerging academics, and GSAC felt that it was important to include these kinds of conversations in a formal setting as well. As the title of the roundtable suggests, we were interested in addressing two specific things: the relationship between university departments and activist communities, and the challenges of teaching course content that could be considered controversial.

Two examples served as starting points for our discussion. First, in December GSAC submitted a letter of support to the UndocuHoosier Alliance on behalf of 41 members of our department. This letter expressed solidarity with their efforts to change Indiana University policy in the face of the increased threat of deportations under the Trump presidency. This led to a number of interesting discussions about the extent to which university departments should engage with activist groups, if at all. Second, many of us wrestle with the tension between opening our classrooms to potentially explosive discussions and respecting the strong sense of responsibility we feel to push back against provocative rhetoric like the hate-filled and false attacks on Mexicans that opened President Trump’s campaign. This is just one example (an example that is especially pertinent given what we teach), but our course content cuts across a number of “controversial” topics. This discussion prompted us to consider how, if at all, we can justify bringing politics into our classroom.

This year’s Diálogos conference, as a whole, was an event that our graduate student community can be proud of, but the opening roundtable stood out as a timely and important session. Indeed, having a discussion like this helped our conference to really live up to its name: a reasoned, thoughtful, and vibrant diálogo between colleagues about important matters.

Graduate Student Perspective: Moses Fritz

I am currently a doctoral candidate in the final stages of completing my dissertation, "Pedro Mexía and the Dialogics of Curiosity." Mexía was a 16th-century cosmographer, chronicler, and author of non-fiction works on history, literature, and natural philosophy that were some of the best-sellers of the 16th and 17th centuries. Despite the popularity of these works among his contemporaries, Mexía has fallen largely into obscurity. Through my research I hope to bring renewed critical attention to Mexía's accomplishments as an early popularizer of protoscientific thought and to establish productive dialogues between the history of science and the study of early modern literature. In my dissertation, I argue that Mexía transformed the notion of curiosity into a discursive tool for redefining Spanish readers' relationships with nature, knowledge, and literature. By popularizing curiosity as a readerly habit of mind, Mexía cultivated a readership receptive to the works of future authors like Mateo Alemán and Miguel de Cervantes who would dialogically engage reader curiosity through naturalized representations of human beings' interactions with one another, their environment, and technological artifacts.

I have accepted a tenure-track position at Murray State University in Murray, Kentucky, and will begin my work there in the Fall of 2017. As my years as a graduate student draw to a close, I look back on my time at Indiana University with fondness and immense gratitude to all my colleagues – faculty, graduate students, and support staff – who have helped me to achieve my professional goals. I have had the privilege of working with talented scholars and mentors whose guidance and encouragement have enabled me to develop the critical skills necessary to succeed in our field. I hope to honor their efforts on my behalf by becoming a top-notch scholar and mentor at Murray State. Finally, I am grateful for the many friends I have found at IU who have been a perpetual source of joy and support.

Graduate Student Perspective: Sara Zahler

I am very fortunate to have been awarded the College of Arts and Sciences Dissertation Completion Fellowship for the upcoming 2017-2018 academic year. Since I defended my proposal in early Fall 2016, I have been collecting data and writing chapters of my dissertation. This award will give me the opportunity to dedicate more time to analyze data, write more chapters, present my research at conferences in my field, and to enter the job market. Specifically, I am grateful for the time that I will have to prepare job-related materials, and for the flexibility I will have to attend conferences during the next year.

My dissertation project is on the relationship between working memory and second language acquisition. Participants were asked to complete a variety of cognitive tasks measuring working memory, phonological short-term memory, and spatial and matrix reasoning. Additionally, they completed a number of written linguistics tasks and a 15-minute oral task. The extra time afforded by the fellowship will help me to transcribe the 90 oral interviews I have to analyze, to code the different types of data from the various tasks, and to write my results, discussion and conclusions.

I am also very grateful to all my professors who have mentored and taught me during my years at IU, to my graduate student colleagues for their constant support, and to the department staff. I know that it is due to everyone’s support, guidance, and words of encouragement that I have been able to make the progress I have made so far on my dissertation, helping me get to a position where I could receive this very much appreciated fellowship.

Graduate Student Honors and Awards

Research Honors and Awards

Robert Baxter, PhD candidate in Hispanic Linguistics, received a College of Arts and Sciences Travel Award.

Silvina Bongiovanni, PhD candidate in Hispanic Linguistics, received a College of Arts and Sciences Dissertation Completion Fellowship for 2017-18.

Valentyna Filimonova, PhD candidate in Hispanic Linguistics, received a Department of Linguistics Scholarship to attend the LSA Institute at the University of Kentucky, and two conference travel grants from the Department of Linguistics and from the Linguistics Symposium on Romance Languages, to present her research at the LSRL.

Jessica Jacques, PhD candidate in Hispanic Literatures, was awarded the Department’s 2017 Deyermond Travel Fellowship.

Guillermo López-Prieto, PhD candidate in Hispanic Literatures, was selected to receive the President’s Diversity – Doctoral Scholars Program Travel Award for 2017-18, by the University Graduate School.

Ángel Milla Muñoz, PhD candidate in Hispanic Linguistics, received a Mellon Foundation European Endowment Research Award from IU's Institute of European Studies to support collecting pre-dissertation data in Spain.

Tamara Mitchell, PhD candidate in Hispanic Literatures, was awarded the 2017 Timothy J. Rogers Summer Dissertation Fellowship and received a CAHI travel grant to present at the 2017 Latin American Studies Association International Conference in Lima, Peru. Her article, “Carving Place out of Non-Place: Luis Rafael Sánchez’s ‘La guagua aérea’ and Post-National Space,” was accepted for publication in Chasqui: revista de literatura latinoamericana, and is forthcoming in May of 2019.

Andrea Mojedano Batel, PhD candidate in Hispanic Linguistics, received a spring 2017 College Graduate Travel Fellowship.

Joe Pecorelli, PhD candidate in Portuguese, received a travel grant from the College Arts and Humanities Institute to present at the 2016 conference of the American Portuguese Studies Association at Stanford University in California.

Ellen Robinson, PhD candidate in Hispanic Literatures, received a spring 2017 College Graduate Travel Fellowship.

Daniel Runnels, PhD candidate in Hispanic Literatures, earned a 2017 Merle E. Simmons Research Travel Fellowship and a Tinker Field Research Grant from the Center for Latin American and Caribbean Studies. He also received the 2017-18 Doctoral Student Academic Achievement Award from the Department.

Alyssa Schroff, PhD candidate in Hispanic Literatures, received a Merle E. Simmons Research Travel Fellowship and a University Graduate School Grant-in-Aid of Doctoral Research Award.

Adam Singh, PhD candidate in Hispanic Literatures, was selected to participate in the Mellon Summer Institute in Spanish Paleography at the Newberry Library this summer.

Damián Solano Escolano, MA student in Hispanic Literatures, received the Department’s 2017 JM Hill Outstanding Graduate Paper Award.

José Luis Suárez, PhD candidate in Hispanic Literatures, was awarded a Merle E. Simmons Research Travel Fellowship.

Sara Zahler, PhD candidate in Hispanic Linguistics, was awarded a College of Arts and Sciences Dissertation Completion Fellowship.

Teaching Honors and Awards

Nilzimar (Mazinha) Vieira, PhD candidate in Portuguese, received the 2017 AI Award for Outstanding Teaching.

PhD Degree Conferred

Hannah Carbajal, Hispanic Literatures
Christopher Davidson, Hispanic Linguistics
Elizabeth Juárez-Cummings, Hispanic Linguistics
Víctor Rodríguez-Pereíra, Hispanic Literatures

MA Degree Conferred

Alexandria Dienstbier, Hispanic Literatures
Nathan Douglas, Hispanic Literatures
Jill Fortin, Hispanic Literatures
Dylan Jarrett, Hispanic Linguistics
Gabriela Kolman, Hispanic Literatures
María Karen López Torres, Hispanic Literatures
Ricardo Martins, Portuguese

Tenure Track Positions

Robert Moses Fritz, Murray State University, KY