Graduate Student News

Diálogos conference 2019

The XVI interdisciplinary Diálogos conference, organized by the Graduate Student Advisory Committee (GSAC) of the Department of Spanish and Portuguese at Indiana University-Bloomington, was held on February 22-23, 2019 in the Global and International Studies Building. 

The conference was honored with the participation of three guest keynote speakers: Dr. N. Michelle Murray, assistant professor at Vanderbilt University, Dr. Daniel Suslak, associate professor at Indiana University, and Dr. Lúcia H. Costigan, professor at The Ohio State University. Perhaps the most significant development of Diálogos XVI was the decision to increase the number of keynote lectures in order to include a speaker who specializes in Luso-Hispanic literatures. Dr. Murray gave a lecture entitled "On Dying Colonialisms and Postcolonial Phantasies in Recent Spanish Cinema." Dr. Suslak presented "El Arca de Noé: Biography of an Indigenous Language Activist," and Dr. Costigan spoke on "Domingos Caldas Barbosa's Autobiographical Poem 'A Doença'/'The Malady,' and the Question of its Absence from the Luso-Brazilian Canon." 

Twenty-one graduate students presented original research on a variety of topics in Spanish, Lusophone, and Catalan literatures and linguistics. Graduates represented several departments from Indiana University, as well as other institutions including Ohio State University, Michigan Tech University, Marquette University, Loyola University-Chicago, the University of Washington, Western Michigan University, and SUNY Buffalo.

Expanding on a tradition begun in 2018, Diálogos XVI included three panels for undergraduate Spanish majors. Students presented outstanding papers previously written for upper-division classes in both Hispanic literatures and linguistics.

The conference program also included other sessions of interest for the participants. The opening event was a roundtable, "Publish or Perish: What, When, and Where Should Grad Students Publish?" facilitated by IU professors Luciana Namorato (Spanish and Portuguese), Patricia Amaral (Spanish and Portuguese), Jonathan Risner (Spanish and Portuguese), and Kathleen Bardovi-Harlig (Second Language Studies). They gave an overview of both their experiences with publishing in academia, as well as time spent as editors for prominent journals in their fields. Moreover, Dr. Suslack, Dr. Murray, and Dr. Costigan offered separate workshops in linguistics and literature.​

Graduate Perspective: Mark Fitzsimmons

It was a genuine honor to have been named as the recipient of the Latino Studies Dissertation Year Fellowship for the 2019-2020 academic year, not only because it will afford me considerably more time to devote to my research, but also because it brings with it a variety of opportunities for more active collaboration with the IU Latino Studies Program. Having completed my MA at IU in Hispanic Literatures in 2014 and advanced through the PhD program since then, I look forward to continuing progress on my project with support from the Latino Studies Dissertation Year Fellowship.

My dissertation, "Literature between Language(s): The Poetics and Politics of Language Encounters in Contemporary US Latinx Literature," considers radical encounters between Spanish and English and the implications of such encounters both on the page and in a broader cultural and political context. I analyze works from canonical and commercially successful authors such as Junot Díaz, Sandra Cisneros, Rosario Ferré, and Gloria Anzaldúa alongside a number of less widely read authors in arguing for the creative possibilities and the implicit challenges of literary texts whose full access demands fluency in (at least) two distinct language codes. Drawing from a diverse body of scholarly work and critical theory, my project is intended as a contribution to ongoing conversations not only in Latinx literary studies, but also in theoretical work on language.

I remain deeply grateful to faculty and graduate student colleagues in the Department of Spanish & Portuguese, CLACS, and the Latino Studies Program for their ongoing support of my work and for having extended to me the extraordinary opportunities that I have enjoyed in scholarly and intellectual development, creative expression, and pedagogical growth. From directing three plays with the Department's Grupo de Teatro VIDA, to teaching outstanding high school students in an immersion program for three summers in León, Spain, to co-founding and serving as editor of the literary and cultural arts publication Hiedra Magazine, I cannot overstate how much I have benefitted from my time at IU Bloomington, and I am excited to continue to do so as my dissertation work advances.

Graduate Perspective: Carly Henderson

I am currently a doctoral candidate in Hispanic Linguistics. My six years in the department have been some of the most significant in my life, academically, professionally, and personally. Nothing has been more challenging, yet more gratifying, than working towards the PhD, and words cannot express how grateful I am to the faculty, my colleagues, and the departmental staff for their support along the way.

I am in the final stages of completing my dissertation entitled "Perfect Timing: Exploring the Effects of Immediate versus Delayed Feedback, Communication Mode, and Working Memory on the Acquisition of Spanish as a Foreign Language." One of the many things I love about the department is that it encourages graduate students to take classes in other disciplines to complement our core coursework and research areas. Because of this, I was able to complete coursework and engage in research in Hispanic linguistics, second language acquisition, foreign language pedagogy, technology-mediated language learning, as well as gain insights from cognitive psychology. It was this interdisciplinary training and research experience that ultimately inspired the idea for my dissertation.

 I also knew I wanted to write a dissertation that could speak to concrete, feasible practices that teachers could undertake in the foreign language classroom to facilitate and optimize language learning. Thus, I chose a topic that occurs naturally in foreign language classrooms: immediate and delayed corrections of learners' errors. Additionally, foreign language education has seen an increase in language classes offered online, as well as increased attention to individual differences that characterize language learners, including memory capacity. I have found that both immediate and delayed corrections, provided face-to-face or during online chat, were equally effective for learning the Spanish past subjunctive, regardless of learners' memory capacity.  

I am very fortunate to have received several external, as well as IU-internal grants to support my dissertation work, including the Grant-in-Aid for Doctoral Research and the College of Arts and Sciences Dissertation Completion Fellowship. These grants were integral to enhancing the quality of my dissertation. Specifically, they allowed me to dramatically increase the number of learners from whom I was able to collect data, thereby creating a broader base for my analysis, which is key to publishing in top-tier journals in the field. These grants also provided the infrastructural resources necessary to expand this research once I leave IU. Finally, these awards increased my competitiveness on the job market, speaking to the merit of my dissertation research and serving as evidence of my ability to articulate the broader implications of my research.

I have accepted a tenure-track position in Spanish at Augusta University in Augusta, Georgia where I will begin working in fall of 2019. I would not have been in a position to receive this job offer without the rigorous coursework, teaching, and research training, abundant opportunities and resources the department and IU provided, and the unwavering support, zeal, guidance, and faith that my professors and colleagues have had in me. I sincerely want to thank them all for being there for me along the way. Although I am certainly sad to leave IU, I will look back on my time here very fondly and with immense gratitude. My time here has truly equipped me for continued success, now as a faculty member, where I am excited to pay it forward.

Graduate Perspective: Taís Xavier Carvalho

I am currently a first-year PhD student in the Portuguese program. Last year I defended my MA thesis titled "'Com elas a gente faz uma trança. E sonha com uma mudança' – Política, identidade e cultura na literatura infantil de Ana Maria Machado e Ondjaki," and I look forward to continuing my studies and developing the research I have initiated. I am very happy to say that, in the past two years, while pursuing a M.A. in Lusophone Literature, I developed skills and acquired knowledge that made me grow both professionally and personally.

As a student, I am mainly interested in studying children's literature and doing research on how children's books and topics such as politics and identity intertwine. In 2018, I presented the main idea of my thesis at the 3-Minute Thesis Competition at IU and was thrilled to have won third place. Knowing that your work may pique other people's interest is truly inspiring and stimulating. Furthermore, attending the competition and being able to listen to different people speak about their own research was an enriching experience, as I discovered how many interesting projects graduate students from my – and other – fields are currently developing.

In 2018-2019, I also had the opportunity to work both with the Graduate Student Advisory Committee (GSAC) of the Spanish and Portuguese Department and with the Graduate & Professional Student Government (GPSG). Being part of both groups gave me the opportunity to learn more about different students' realities and diverse perspectives. Sometimes, when we are too focused on our own projects we may fail to perceive events happening around us, and it is valuable to have chances to meet people from other areas of study and to work and share thoughts and ideas.

Since I started my graduate student life, much has happened, and I am grateful for the experiences I have had so far. Hence, I would like to thank my professors, and in particular my advisor, Professor Luciana Namorato, as well as my colleagues, and the department's administrative staff. Their support has been invaluable and I cannot express how happy I am to be working with them.

Honors and Awards

Research Honors and Awards

Derek Allen, MA candidate in Portuguese, earned a FLAS Fellowship to study Portuguese this summer in Lisbon, Portugal.

Ali Alsmadi, PhD candidate in Hispanic Literatures, was awarded the department's Deyermond Fund this year.  

Andrew Bartels, PhD candidate in Hispanic Literatures, received a Title VIII Grant to study Hungarian at Debrecen University.

Beth Boyd, PhD candidate in Hispanic Literatures, received the department's Timothy J. Rogers Summer Dissertation Fellowship.

Andrea Carrillo, PhD candidate in Hispanic Literatures, won the department's Doctoral Student Award for Academic Achievement (DSAAA).

Molly Cole, PhD candidate in Hispanic Linguistics, earned an academic-year FLAS Fellowship to study intermediate Quechua.

Genoveva Di Maggio, PhD candidate in Hispanic Linguistics, received a Tinker Grant to support a research project in Uruguay.

Nathan Douglas, PhD candidate in Hispanic Literatures, published an English translation of the Catalan book, Summits of My Life Daring Adventures on the World's Greatest Peaks, by Catalan athlete Kilian Jornet, "the world's fastest mountain climber, ultrarunner, and ski mountaineer."

Travis Evans-Sago, PhD candidate in Hispanic Linguistics, was awarded a President's Diversity Dissertation Fellowship, and a Grant-in-Aid Award to conduct dissertation-related research abroad.

Valentyna Filimonova, PhD candidate in Hispanic Linguistics, earned the College of Arts and Sciences Dissertation Research Fellowship through the Linguistics Department.

Mark Fitzsimmons, PhD candidate in Hispanic Literatures, won the Latino Studies 2019-20 Dissertation Year Fellowship.

Claudia González Caparrós, PhD candidate in Hispanic Literatures, published a book of poetry entitled te miro como quién asiste a un dishielo, Madrid: Editorial La Bella Varsovia, 2018.

Jingyi Guo, PhD candidate in Hispanic Linguistics, received the Student Award from the Linguistics Symposium on Romance Languages, an international conference which took place at the University of Georgia in May.

Carly Henderson, PhD Hispanic Linguistics, received a College of Arts and Sciences Dissertation Completion Fellowship for the 2019-20 academic year, in addition to a National Federation of Modern Language Teacher Associations Dissertation Grant and a Language Learning Dissertation Grant.

Olivia Holloway, PhD candidate in Portuguese, received both a College Arts and Humanities Institute Travel Award and a Center for Research on Race, Ethnicity, and Society Travel Grant.

Gaelle Le Calvez, PhD candidate in Hispanic Literatures, received a College of Arts and Sciences Dissertation Completion Fellowship for the 2019-20 academic year.

Guillermo López Prieto, PhD candidate in Hispanic Literatures, published a Spanish translation of Carmen Benavente's Las bordadoras de Ninhue: El arte de bordar lo cotidiano, Ediciones Universidad Católica de Chile, 2018.

Anna Lurito, PhD candidate in Hispanic Linguistics, won a Tinker Grant to conduct research in the Dominican Republic this summer.

Sean McKinnon, PhD candidate in Hispanic Linguistics, earned a FLAS Fellowship to study Kaqchikel Maya, in Antigua, Guatemala.

Laura Merino, PhD candidate in Hispanic Linguistics, was awarded the College of Arts and Sciences Dissertation Completion Fellowship for 2019-20 academic year. She also
received an OVPIA Dissertation Enhancement Grant to study in Berlin this summer.

Giovanni Molina Rosario, PhD candidate in Hispanic Literatures, won the department's J.M. Hill Prize for outstanding graduate student paper in the literature category this year.

Eliot Raynor, PhD candidate in Hispanic Linguistics, earned a Center for Research on Race, Ethnicity, and Society Travel Grant.

Ellen Robinson, PhD candidate in Hispanic Literatures, received the department's Merle E. Simmons Travel Fellowship for Research on Latin American Literature this year.

Daniel Runnels, PhD candidate in Hispanic Literatures, earned a departmental Merle E. Simmons Travel Fellowship for Research on Latin American Literature this year.

Lara Vanin, PhD candidate in Portuguese, was awarded the Best Graduate Student Essay in Latino Literature, Arts & Culture for the 2018-2019 year for her essay "Visão camaleoa: o segredo latino para viver na outra América".

 

Teaching Honors and Awards

Daryl Spurlock, PhD candidate in Hispanic Literatures, received the department's 2019 AI Award for Outstanding Teaching and will be the department's nominee for the university-wide Lieber Memorial Associate Instructor Teaching Award in the fall.

 

PhD Degree Conferred

Cristóbal Garza-González, Hispanic Literatures
Matt Johnson, Hispanic Literatures
Cynthia Martínez, Hispanic Literatures
Elizabeth McDyer, Hispanic Literatures
Tamara Mitchell, Hispanic Literatures
Andrea Mojedano Batel, Hispanic Linguistics
Joseph Pecorelli, Portuguese
Víctor Rodríguez-Pereira, Hispanic Literatures

M.A. Degree Conferred

Andrew Bartels, Hispanic Literatures
Megan DeCleene, Hispanic Linguistics
Claudia González Caparrós, Hispanic Literatures
Jingyi Guo, Hispanic Linguistics
Juan Manuel Martínez Rodríguez, Hispanic Linguistics
Odalys Miranda-Reyes, Hispanic Linguistics
Mónica Vega-González, Hispanic Literatures
Taís Xavier Carvalho, Portuguese

Tenure Track Positions

Cristóbal Garza González, Assistant Professor at Goshen College
Carly Henderson, Assistant Professor at Augusta University
Olivia Holloway, Assistant Professor at West Point Military Academy
Cynthia Martínez, Assistant Professor at Rider University
Tamara Mitchell, Assistant Professor at University of British Columbia