We have faced these moments with conviction and persistence. Let’s remember Maya Angelou’s poem “Still I Rise.”

The complete poem can be accessed here.

We are happy to welcome Kyle Buchanan, our new administrative generalist coordinator. We are delighted to have him aboard! We also would like to welcome our new teaching faculty, Dr. María Montenegro, Melissa Groenewold and Gus O’Neill and our adjunct faculty, Luis Enrique Becerra. Finally, it is exciting to introduce our new research faculty, Assistant Professor Leslie del Carpio. We wish all of them a productive and happy academic year!

We would also like to take a moment to welcome the following eight new graduate students joining our department this fall: Caroline Amadeo, Roberto Amado, Nadia Barreiro, Anthony Brandy, Briana Cohen, Jessica Jurado Eraso, Joseph Larson, and Leandro Martan Bezerra Santos. We also want to welcome our external associate instructors: Isaiah O’Bryon, Naomi Gottschalk, and Zayra López. We wish them an amazing academic year of learning and growth.

We have several publications to celebrate. Professor Rhi Johnson published Because I Want to See the Sea, an anthology of Rosalía de Castro’s Spanish and Galician poetry in translation.  Professor Ryan Giles has published A New Companion to the Libro de buen amor and The Routledge Hispanic Studies Companion to Medieval Iberia: Unity in  Diversity. Professor Kimberly Geeslin and two of our graduates (Dr. Avizia Long and Dr. Megan Solon) have published a new book, The Acquisition of Spanish as a Second Language: Foundations and New Developments. Professor Geeslin also published The Routledge Handbook of Second Language Acquisition and Sociolinguistics. Professor César Félix-Brasdefer has published a new book, New Directions in Second Language Pragmatics. Professor Emerita Consuelo López-Morillas has published a translation of two books: Muslims in Spain, 1492-1814 and The Nasrid Kingdom of Granada between East and West. Professor Anke Birkenmaier has published two edited volumes: Moctezuma. Un drama (1987) and Caribbean Migrations: The Legacies of Colonialism. Professor Patrícia Amaral published Noun-Based Constructions in the History of Portuguese and Spanish. Professor Emerita Darlene Sadlier published A Century of Brazilian Documentary Film. Finally, I also had the opportunity to contribute to the list of published books by the department with two edited volumes: the Routledge Handbook of Variationist Approaches to Spanish and Aspects of Latin American Dialectology: In Honor of Terrell Morgan.

Several of our faculty have also won awards in the past year. Professor Olimpia Rosenthal received a $223,000 Grant from the Mellon Foundation for a Sawyer Seminar on Global Slaveries, Fugitivity, and the Afterlives of Unfreedom: Interconnections in Comparative Dialogue. Professors Luciana Namorato, and Estela Vieira have been awarded a Symposia and Workshop Grant by the College Arts & Humanities Institute. This supports the event “Brazilian Modern Art and Culture: 1922-2022.” Professor Vieira also won the Humboldt Research Fellowship for Experienced Researchers. Professor Melissa Dinverno has been awarded the Emergency Grant-in-Aid by the Office of the Vice Provost for Research for her archival research project From Exile to the Center: The Archive of Federico García Lorca. The TT-Trustees Teaching Award for this year went to Professor Jonathan Risner. The NTT Teaching Awards Committee selected Senior Lecturer Julie Madewell as  this year’s recipient of their award. Professor Emerita Darlene Sadlier received a Grant-In-Aid for Retired Faculty  to focus on her book about Brazilian documentary films from the 1920s to today. Professor Vila-Belda was interviewed for the digital newspaper El Español to talk about her new book Ellas cuentan la guerra: Las poetas españolas y la Guerra Civil. Professor Patrick Dove was the recipient of the GSAC Outstanding Mentor Award. Professors Anke Birkenmaier and Oana Panaïté led a group devoted to reading Édouard Glissant’s work at the Center of Theoretical Inquiry.

Finally, we have two promotions in the department. Dr. Laura Gurzynski-Weiss was promoted to full professor, and Dr. Allen Davis was promoted to teaching professor. A warm congratulations to both.

I am proud to write that the departmental graduate student association, GSAC, organized the annual Diálogos conference in the spring. The conference, now in its 19^th year, included a diversity of topics such as Transatlantic Readings of Hegemony and Transnationalism, Sociolinguistics, Religious and Moralizing Approaches to the Spanish Golden Age and Colonial Period, Morphosyntax, Contemporary Readings of 20^th Century Latin American Literature, and Language Acquisition. There were also outstanding keynote lectures from Dr. José Ignacio Hualde, Dr. Rodrigo Lopes de Barros and Dr. Samuel Steinberg representing our programs in Linguistics, Portuguese, and Literature and Culture.

Graduate students in the Department were recognized with numerous fellowships and grants this year. Adam Singh received a COAS Travel Award and a Spanish & Portuguese Travel Grant. Ali Alsmadi was awarded the President’s Diversity Dissertation Fellowship by the University Graduate School. Aline Araujo was awarded a College Arts & Humanities Institute Graduate Research Travel Award for her project, “From Site-Specific to Immersive Performance: Space and Audience in Experimental Lusophone and Hispanic Theater.” She also received a Spanish & Portuguese Timothy J. Rogers Summer Dissertation Fellowship. Andrea Carrillo has been selected to co-chair the AATSP Indiana Sigma Delta Pi Committee. Bruna Kalil Othero Fernandes received the People's Choice Award for her presentation, Brazilian Palimpsest: National Identity in Three Acts, at the 2022 Three Minute Thesis, sponsored by the Indiana University Graduate School. Kalil Othero has also been selected to co-chair the AATSP Indiana Portuguese Events Committee. In addition, she received the Global Citizen Scholarship for her video on global citizenship and won a summer grant to conduct research at the National Library in Lisbon, Portugal, from the Luso-American Foundation FLAD. Maria Guimarães won a grant to research at the National Library in Lisbon from FLAD as well. Estefany Sosa won a Tinker Grant for summer research. Damián Solano Escolano received a COAS Travel Award. Daniel Runnels received a Graduate Conference Travel Award to present at the Midwest Modern Language Association and to further his research efforts. Enrique Rodriguez and Katherine Lindley have received Spanish & Portuguese Travel Grants. José Luís Suarez Morales has received a Spanish & Portuguese Travel Grant and a LATS Dissertation Fellowship. Marcela de Oliveira e Silva Lemos has been awarded the Spanish & Portuguese J.M. Hill Prize for an Outstanding Graduate Student Paper, an OVPIA Pre-Dissertation Travel Grant for Summer 2022 and a CLACS Tinker Field Research Grant for her project “Traces of Missing Women in the Post and Collective Memory of the Brazilian Military Dictatorship.” Mackenzie Coulter-Kern was awarded a Tinker Field Research Grant to carry out research in the Dominican Republic this summer for her project, “Examining Willingness to Communicate and Acquisition of Spanish During the Peace Corps and Short-term Study Abroad in the Dominican Republic.” She has also been awarded a UGS Future Faculty Teaching Fellowship (FFTF) and a UGS Grant-in-Aid of Doctoral Research. Matthew Pollock has been awarded a College of Arts and Sciences Dissertation Fellowship for 2022-23. He will be completing his thesis, “Crossing the Party Line: A sociophonetic comparison of the production and perception of Andalusian dialectal features in peninsular Spanish political discourse.” He has also been awarded a UGS Grant-in-Aid of Doctoral Research. Ollín García Pliego has received a COAS Travel Award. Rachel Garza has been awarded a Spanish & Portuguese Doctoral Student Award for Academic Achievement (DSAAA) and a Spanish & Portuguese Travel Grant. Ricardo Martins has been awarded the AATSP Indiana Rising Star award for his service, academic, and leadership record. Ricardo has also received a COAS Travel Award and was selected as the recipient of the AI Teaching Award. Lara Laís Vanin directed VIDA and was awarded a Don Belton Fellow scholarship for Creative Nonfiction to participate in the IU Writers’ Conference this June 2022. Congratulations to all of them for all of their outstanding achievements!

Finally, Gaëlle LeCalvez House, Dylan Jarrett, Molly Cole, Megan DiBartolomeo, Kane Ferguson, Daniel Runnels, and Juan Morilla Romero have successfully defended their dissertations. Gaelle LeCAlvez House received an honorary mention for the Latin American Studies Association’s best dissertation prize for 2021. Dylan Jarrett has accepted a teaching assistant position at East Carolina University. Molly Cole has accepted a position at Routledge as a commissioning editor. Megan DiBartolomeo accepted a tenure-track position as assistant professor of Spanish and pedagogy at Longwood University. Daniel Runnels has accepted a position as assistant professor of Spanish at the University of Central Missouri. Juan Morilla Romero has a faculty position at Marian University. We wish all of our graduates who defended their dissertations happiness and success in their future endeavors.

Besides Café Hispano, which gives students a chance to practice Spanish in an informal, conversational setting, our graduate students have also started an informal Tertulia to build community upon returning to campus.

Our undergraduate students have continued to grow and stand out among their peers. Six of our majors were inducted into Phi Beta Kappa, the oldest and most prestigious of all national honors societies in the United States. These students include: Elizabeth Baker, Jenna Jarosinski, Jessica Morris, Kate Pasmore, Grace Richardson, and Mary Slaughter. Jessica Morris received the 2022 Spanish & Portuguese Outstanding Graduating Senior Award. Mount-Maine Moustapha was selected as the 2022 Spanish & Portuguese Outstanding Undergraduate          Researcher. Mary Slaughter received the 2022 Spanish & Portuguese Outstanding Undergraduate Community Engagement Award. Elizabeth Algeri, Angela Buck and Grace Eva Richardson won the 2022 Theodore Dorf Scholarship, Mikhael Hayes won the Ashley Crouse Memorial Scholarship, Sydney Weber won the 2022 Rachel DiPietro-James Scholarship, Cassidy Garner won the Pedro Díaz Seijas Memorial Scholarship, and Dora Ahearn-Wood, Grace Cusson, Emily Stabinsky, and Jamie Vann won the Dr. Andrew Thieneman Scholarship.

We greatly appreciate the support of all our friends and alumni. Thanks to you for contributing to the academic and intellectual life of the department.

Sincerely,

Manuel Díaz-Campos