Summer 2009

    Professor Fitz gave the opening keynote address at a special symposium at Brown University.  The focus of the symposium was "Brazilian Literature in an Inter-American Context," and the title of Professor Fitz's keynote was "From the Margin to the Mainstream: Moving Brazilian Literature into the Heart of the Inter-American Project." Also at the Ohio State University, Professor Fitz gave an invited talk entitled "Building a Comparative Luso-Hispanic Track for a Department of Spanish and Portuguese: Problems and Solutions."

     

    Professor Fitz's co-authored book, Translation and the Rise of Inter-American Literature, has been recognized by Choice: Current Reviews for Academic Libraries, as an Outstanding Academic Title for 2008.  It has also been reissued by the University of Florida Press in paperback.

     

    Professor Fitz's pioneering work in the emergent area of inter-American literature was recently cited in a PMLA essay on "The Changing Profession: Hemispheric Studies."

    Professor Susan Berk-Seligson gave an invited talk on “Best and Worst Practices in Court Interpreting,” at  the Training Workshop for Federally Certified Interpreters (May 7-8, 2009), in Washington, D.C.


    Professor Susan Berk-Seligson     presented a paper on “Interethnic Discourse over Indigenous Rights to Autonomous Administration of Justice in Highland Ecuador: Constructing and Interrupting Quichua Narratives,” at the biennial meeting of the International Association of Forensic Linguists (July 2009), Amsterdam, The Netherlands.  She also chaired a panel on "Courtroom Discourse: Interpreting" at the conference, and served on the conference Scientific Committee, evaluating abstracts submitted for consideration.


 
On March 3-11, 2009 Professor Philip D. Rasico led a ten-member delegation to Mendoza, Argentina, that consisted of members of Sister Cities of Nashville in addition to Mayor Karl Dean and Councilwoman-at-large Megan Barry.  During the visit Mayor Dean and the delegation met with Mendoza's Mayor Víctor Fayad and signed a formal sister-city agreement for the purpose of promoting mutual understanding and good will as well as the establishment of cultural and educational exchanges, business and professional contacts, etc.  Professor Rasico is a member of the Board of Directors of Sister Cities of Nashville a nd is Chair of the latter's Mendoza Committee.











Dr. Fitz, and his co-author, Ezra Fitz, have an essay on the Borges translation of William Faulkner 's T he Wild Palms forthcoming in The Faulkner Journal.

Dr. Fitz and his family were honored as volunteers of the year by Gilda's Club Nashville, a free community resource for anyone with cancer and their families and friends. 

Spring 2009

  • Professor Earl Fitz participated in several events held to mark the centennial of the Brazilian writer Machado de Assis.  He gave talks about Machado at Princeton University, the University of Chicago, and Yale University; and he contributed essays to special issues of the Luso-Brazilian Review, Portuguese Literary and Cultural Studies, and Santa Barbara Portuguese Studies. He also traveled to the University of Wisconsin--Madison as a visiting scholar.  He taught classes on Clarice Lispector and Brazilian Women Writers and lectured on inter-American literature and comparative Iberian studies.

Fall 2008


  • At the December 2008 meeting of the Modern Language Association, held in San Francisco, a reporter from Inside Higher Ed published an article on how colleges and universities are redefining "the foreign language major." Thanks to an interview with our chair Professor Cathy Jrade, Vanderbilt University and the Department of Spanish and Portuguese figure prominently in the article, reprinted here.

  • Professor Carlos A. Jauregui, together with Edward Fisher, director of the Center of Latin American Studies and Joseph Mella, Director of the Vanderbilt University Fine Arts Gallery received the 2008 Award for Outstanding Exhibition and Catalogue of Contemporary Materials from the Southeastern College Art Conference, for "Of Rage and Redemption: The Art of Oswaldo Guayasamín."  The SECAC Award for Outstanding Exhibition and Catalogue of Contemporary Materials is awarded in recognition of an exhibition (within the last three years) of contemporary materials, which by its design, installation, and/or catalogue is considered exemplary.
  • Professor Earl Fitz is currently working on two essays, one dealing with the Borges translation of Faulkner’s novel, The Wild Palms, and the other dealing with the reception of Machado de Assis in the United States during the 1950s and 1960s. Professor Fitz will also be giving talks, on Clarice Lispector and on the importance of departments of Spanish and Portuguese to the fast developing new field of Inter-American literature, at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and at Yale, on Machado de Assis.
  • Professor Susan Berk-Seligson gave a talk on “Asuntos Lingüísticos y Culturales Relacionados a Interrogatorios y el Uso de Interpretes Antes y Durante el Juicio,” at a training conference for  Mexican Consular Officials regarding the death penalty in the USA  (November 13, 2008), in San Antonio, Texas.

Summer 2008

  • Professor Edward H. Friedman became the new director of the Robert Penn Warren Center for the Humanities on July 1.  This appointment reflects his long-standing commitment to the Center's well-being as well as the College's trust in his judgment and expertise.  Though he will be working hard to guarantee the Center's on-going success, happily most of his time will continue to be in the Department.
  • Professor Emanuelle Oliveira has been granted tenure (Summer 2008).

Spring 2008
  • Professor William Luis and some his students of his seminar “"Politics of Identity in Latino Caribbean Literature (Spring 2007), participated in the College Language Association, Charleston, South Carolina, April 10-12, 2008.
  • Graduating Spanish Majors will spend a year in Ecuador and Nicaragua  working with Manna Project Intenational, a non-profit community development organization which provides both local and international service opportunities to college students and recent grads, begun by Vanderbilt students in 2004 and which now has chapters at several other universities.
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  • Philip D. Rasico recently published the revised and expanded article “Dues enquestes lingüístiques inèdites de Joan Coromines:  els termes de Cervera de la Marenda i de Portvendres (1959)” in  Joan Solà and Antoni M. Badia i Margarit (eds.),  Joan Coromines:  Vida y Obra (Madrid:  Gredos, 2008), pp. 223-253.  The volume is intended as a complement to the Diccionario Crítico Etimológico Castellano e Hispánico (6 vols.,  1980-1991) by Joan Coromines with the collaboration of José A. Pascual.
  • Professor Benigno Trigo  published the article "El destiempo de la invitación; en torno al último libro de Manuel Ramos Otero." Revista Iberoamericana 222.74 (2008): 145-161.
Fall 2007

  • The Spanish and Portuguese Department feel really proud of Professor Edward Friedman, he was the recipient of the College of Arts and Science Award for Excellence in Graduate Mentoring for 2007.

  • Professor Edward Friedman gave two papers at the MLA convention in Chicago in December: “Character-Building in Don Quijote,” as the invited speaker for the Cervantes Society of America annual business meeting, and “Contextualizing Don Quixote: The Novel and Its Audiences,” in a session organized by the College English Association.

  • Professor Benigno Trigo coordinated the MLA Division panel “Writing as Ventriloquism.” Executive Committee of the MLA Division on Latin American Literature from independence to 1900. MLA Annual convention. Philadelphia, December, 2007

  • The sixth edition of Aproximaciones al estudio de la literatura hispánica, co-authored by Professor Edward Friedman with Teresa Valdivieso and Carmelo Virgillo, was published by McGraw-Hill in the fall of 2007.

  • The College of Arts and Sciences continues its support of the Vanderbilt-Siloam Basic Screening and Educational Health Fair, an outreach program held each semester by students of Lori Catanzaro's Soanish for the Medical Professions course.  A fair was held November 4th, 2007 and a spring fair will be April 21 at the Clairmont Apartments in Nashville.

  • Professsor Edward Friedman was an invited speaker at the conference, “Hacia la tragedia,” sponsored by the University of Chicago and the Instituto Cervantes, in November 2007. His paper was entitled “‘Llanto sobra, y valor falta’: La estructura de la tragedia en El castigo sin venganza de Lope de Vega.”

  • Professor Philip D. Rasico published the article "Dues enquestes lingüístiques inèdites de J. Coromines:  els termes de Cervera de la Marenda i de Portvendres (1959)" in _Estudis de Llengua i Litereratura

    Catalanes_ LV (Homenatge a Joseph Gulsoy 3), 2007, pp. 173-196.

  • Professor Benigno Trigo presented "Un delito de escaso consuelo; fetichismo, matriarcado y escritura en René Marqués" Universidad de Puerto Rico. Literatura comparada. Río Piedras, PR 2007.

  • Professor Philip D. Rasico presented the invited lecture "Joan Corominas, Mendoza, y el Instituto de Lingüística de la Universidad Nacional de Cuyo, 1939-1946" at the College of Letters of the Universidad Nacional de Cuyo in Mendoza, Argentina on October 23, 2007. The lecture will be published in the journal Anales del Instituto de Lingüística de la Universidad Nacional de Cuyo.
  • Monica Bhatt, who graduated from Vanderbilt in May 2006 with majors in Public Policy Studies and Spanish and is currently completing a master’s degree in Education Policy at Vanderbilt, has obtained a Fulbright English Teaching Assistantship to attend lectures on education at Universidad Complutense in Madrid while working with after-school programs there. While at Vanderbilt she was elected to Phi Beta Kappa and served as a staff writer for the "Southern Journal of Teaching and Education." Bhatt was also a site leader for Vanderbilt’s Alternative Spring Break project in Guatemala and has taught English to Somali and Mexican immigrants.

 
Summer 2007

  • In its August 17, 2007 edition La Vanguardia, the most widely-read newspaper in Barcelona, Spain, published an extensive interview with Professor Philip D. Rasico.  The interview, originally conducted in Barcelona last May by Lluís Amiguet, one of the three journalists responsible for the popular section "la Contra" which features interviews with persons of special interest from around the world. The interview, which appeared on p. 48, was titled "Philip Rasico, Investigador del Catalán en la Universidad Vanderbilt: 'El catalán Resistirá si lo Habla la Inmigración'" (translation, "Philip Rasico, Catalan Scholar at Vanderbilt University: 'Catalan will Survive if Spoken by Inmigrants').

  • Professor Philip Rasico published the article "Toponímia del terme de Banyuls de la Marenda (Rosselló):  Una enquesta inèdita de Joan Coromines (1959)." Emili Casanova i Herrero and Xavier Terrado i Pablo (eds.), Studia in Honorem Joan Coromines (Lleida:  Pagès Editors, 2007), 217-230.

     

  • Professor Emanuelle Oliveira presented the follow  Manuscript: “Writing Identity: the Politics of Contemporary Afro-Brazilian Literature.”(Summer 2007)

  • Professor Luis obtained a Research Scholar Fellowship, Vanderbilt University, for the 2007-2008.

  • The long awaited two-volume collection entitled Modernism, edited by Astradur Eysteinsson and Vivian Liska of the University of Iceland and the University of Antwerp, will appear in September of 2007, published by John Benjamins.  Professor Cathy L. Jrade contributed the chapter on Spanish America Modernismo, an important piece of the puzzle that makes up this complex phenomenon.  Modernism has constituted one of the most prominent fields of literary studies for decades. While it was perhaps temporarily overshadowed by postmodernism, recent years have seen a resurgence of interest in modernism on both sides of the Atlantic. This book responds to a need for a collective and multifarious view of literary modernism in various genres, locations, and languages. Asking and responding to a wealth of theoretical, aesthetic, and historical questions, 65 scholars from several countries test the usefulness of the concept of modernism as they probe a variety of contexts, from individual texts to national literatures, from specific critical issues to broad cross-cultural concerns. While the chief emphasis of the book is on literary modernism, literature is seen as entering into diverse cultural and social contexts. These range from inter-art conjunctions to philosophical, environmental, urban, and political domains, including issues of race and space, gender and fashion, popular culture and trauma, science and exile, --all of which have an urgent bearing on the poetics of modernity.

  • Una brecha en un muro de silencio

    ... del esclavo poeta y otros escritos que preparó, con sumo cuidado, el estudioso norteamericano de origen chino-cubano William Luis. En su acuciosa introducción, Luis nos descubre la amplitud de las transformaciones y las manipulaciones que la historia de vida de Manzano ha venido experimentando ... quienes todavía no conocen la obra del esclavo poeta les espera el descubrimiento de una obra hispanoamericana única e impactante. Para los aficionados del caso Manzano, el volumen editado por Luis representa algo que se esperaba desde hace tiempo: una base sólida y amplia para futuras indagaciones ...
Spring 2007

  • Professor Edward Friedman was awarded a fellowship from the Harry Ransom Center Research, University of Texas-Austin. His recent essays have appeared in Cervantes across the Centuries (ed. John Gabriele), Hispanic Issues, Central Institute of English and Foreign Languages Bulletin (India), and Hecho Teatral.

  • Professor Andrés Zamora presented “Violent nation: Histories and Stories of Spanishness,” International conference “Spanishness” in the Spanish Novel and Cinema of the 20th –  21st Century, University of North Texas, May 4-5, 2007.

     
  • Professor Philip Rasico  published “L’Onomasticon Cataloniae i les Llibretes de Camp de Joan Coromines referides especialment a la Catalunya Nord.”  Sadurní, Martí et al. (eds.), Actes del XIIIè Col.loqui Internacional de Llengua i Literatura Catalanes 2 (Barcelona: Publicacions de l’Abadia de Montserrat, 2007), 359-372.
  • Professor Philip Rasico gave the following invited Lectures: “Algunes reflexions entorn dels Estudis de toponímia catalana i de l’Onomasticon Cataloniae de Joan Coromines.”, Universitat de les Illes Balears, Palma de Mallorca, Spain, May, 2007 and  “L’estat actual de la cultura menorquina a la Florida:  Sant Agustí i Nova Esmirna,” Universitat de Barcelona, Barcelona, Spain, May, 2007.

  • Latin American Studies Association meeting, Professor  Emanuelle Oliveira participated as chair and panelist. Panel: “Representações Raciais no Cinema Brasileiro: Revisões Críticas.” Paper presented: “DE PASSAGEM na CIDADE DE DEUS: Repensando Posturas Sociais em Relação a Comunidades Faveladas.”

  • Professor Emanuelle Oliveira presented: “An Ethic of the Aesthetic? Racial Representations in Brazilian Cinema Today, in “Race and Representation in Brazil: A Mini-Symposium,” March 9, 2007, Tulane University.

 

 

  • Students in Lori Catanzaro's Spanish for Medicine classes organized a health fair on Saturday at the Clairmont Apartments in Nashville Saturday, April 14, 2007. The fair was conducted in partnership with Siloam Family Health Center, a nonprofit clinic, and funded by a Venture Fund grant through the Dean's Office of the College of Arts & Science. Focusing on preventive care and common health issues amongst Latinos including diabetes, obesity, pre-natal care, women's health, dental health, insurance, and tuberculosis, and also offering basic screenings for hypertension and blood glucose levels, the fair reached over one hundred immigrants from Mexico and Central America.                                                                                                                                                        

 

  

  • After more than 50 years since the last major exhibit in the U.S.Vanderbilt will be mounting next year a major art exhibition of the renowned Latin American Artist Oswaldo Guayasamin. It will be available for travel to a select few other sites in the United States (Spring 2008-Spring 2009). The Co-organizers of this event, Professor Carlos Jáuregui, Edward Fischer, the director of the Center for Latin American and Iberian Studies, and Joseph Mella, our Gallery Director, traveled to Quito to select the pieces for the exhibit. Professor Cathy L. Jrade will be teaching a undergraduate seminar on Mordernist literature and plastic arts that will include the works of Guayasamín

     

  • William Luis, professor of Spanish, has given a number of talks since summer 2006, including at conferences in New York City; Veracruz, Mexico; South Padre Island, Texas; and Pretoria, South Africa, as well as a keynote address in Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic. Luis also has published “Into the Millennium: Toward a Theory of Latino U.S. Literature,” appearing in Cartografías y estrategias de la ‘postmodernidad’ y la ‘postcolonialidad’ en Latinoamérica: ‘Hibridez’ y ‘Globalización’; “Literatura Latino-Americana (Hispano-Caribeña) escrita en los Estados Unidos,” appearing in Historia de la literatura hispanoamericana II, El siglo XX; “Crisis in America: Identity and Latino U.S. Literature,” appearing in Hispanic Journal, 26; and “Afro-Cuban/Latino Identity,” appearing in Black Renaissance/Renaissance Noire, 6.3/7.1.
  • The Ellen Gregg Ingalls Award for Excellence in Classroom Teaching was presented to Senior Lecturer in Spanish Elena Olazagasti-Segovia for her service-learning approach to teaching, which has included sending students to work as bilingual volunteers at organizations serving Nashville’s Hispanic community.                   See full coverage
  • Professor Carlos Jáuregui presented a lecture on coloniality and race at the Newberry Library, Chicago, March 30, 2007.
  • Professors Carlos Jáuregui and Edward H. Friedman edited a Monographic issue on Colonial Theatre in Spanish America for the Bulletin of the Comediantes 58.1
  • Professor Cathy L. Jrade presented "To Tumble or To Soar: Agustini Confronts Modernista Literary Paternity," Keynote speaker at Indiana University's Fourth Annual Graduate Student Conference on Luso-Brazilian and Hispanic Literature, Linguistics and Culture, Bloomington, February 24, 2007.