Graduate students recognized for research excellence

Through language, experiences, and design choices, Aguilar hopes to inspire more interactive and discussion-filled art galleries across St. Louis. (St. Louis Magazine)

Celebrated yearly in March, the International Francophonie Day (Journée Internationale de la Francophonie) is a worldwide celebration that reunites francophones to celebrate French language and francophone cultures. This year, we reflect on the role of time in shaping the francophonie ; the French language has changed and continues to change to reflect the enormous diversity of francophone communities in all continents around the globe using the language for everything from everyday communication to writing scientific reports and groundbreaking literature.

Award-winning films by contemporary Latin American directors

Rodrigo Viqueira, a Ph.D. candidate in our Hispanic Studies program publishes his article “La escritura fonoautográfica de Rodolfo Walsh: la grabadora y la disputa por la voz obrera en ¿Quién mató a Rosendo?” in the Latin America Literary Review

Yamile Ferreira, a Ph.D. candidate in our Hispanic Studies program publishes an article in the journal Páginas. Revista Digital de la Escuela de Historia

Congratulations to our RLL graduate students on their Graduate Summer Research Fellowship with the Divided City.

Our PhD Candidates Jonatán Martín Gómez and Patricio Sullivan edited a volume on science fiction and technological imaginaries in the 21st-century narrative in Spanish with Albatros Ediciones.

What happens when invisibilized bodies, faces and voices occupy public spaces? That’s one of the questions that propelled graduate students Gicela Medina and Rodrigo Viqueira (both in the Department of Romance Languages and Literatures) as they developed their podcast, “Street Politics Across the Americas.” Inspired by a striking increase in street actions in North, Central and South America, the Divided City Summer Graduate Student Research Fellows set out to explore the hemispheric history of street politics and analyze how public space has been politically used by marginalized groups across the Americas.

Congratulations to our RLL graduate students on their Graduate Summer Research Fellowship with the Divided City.

Soledad Mocchi-Radichi, a Ph.D. candidate in our Hispanic Studies program publishes an article in the journal, Latin American Theatre Review.

RLL Faculty and Students participate in the Center for Humanities Poetry Exercises, Life/Lines.

Congratulations to Olivia Lott (ABD, Hispanic Studies), who has received the Marilyn Yarbrough Dissertation/Teaching Fellowship at Kenyon College for 2021-22 academic year.

Join the the Department of Romance Languages and Literatures for Francophone Week, March 20th-26th, 2021.

The Department of Romance Languages and Literatures and the Latin American Studies Program congratulates Professor Mabel Moraña latest publication, Liquid Borders migration as resistance with Routledge.

The Department of Romance Languages and Literatures congratulates Professor Sherberg on the publication of his book, The Decameron fourth day in perspective with the University of Toronto Press.

PhD candidate Olivia Lott was named as a finalist for a prominent literary award, the PEN Award for Poetry in Translation. In this Q&A, Lott talks about the process of bringing ‘Katabasis’ to new audiences, about her reaction to the PEN shout-out, and for her recommendations of additional must-read translated poetry books.

The Department of Romance Languages and Literatures congratulates Associate Professor of French and Comparative Literature Tili Boon Cuillé on the publication of her new book, Divining Nature: Aesthetics of Enchantment in Enlightenment France with Stanford University Press.

The Department of Romance Languages and Literatures congratulates Professor of Spanish and Comparative Literature Ignacio Infante on his selection as one of Emerson’s 2020 Excellence in Teaching Award recipients. The Emerson Excellence in Teaching Awards Program, now in its 31st year, recognizes approximately 100 educators in the St. Louis metropolitan area annually for their leadership in and passion for teaching, their contributions to student learning, and their knowledge and creativity.

The Department of Romance Languages and Literatures and the Latin American Studies Program congratulates Professor Mabel Moraña on the publication of her new book, Philosophy and Criticism in Latin America: From Mariátegui to Sloterdijk, as part of the Cambria Latin American Literatures and Cultures Series with Cambria Press.

On June 4, 2020, the governor of Virginia ordered the removal of Richmond’s monument to Confederate General Robert E. Lee, amidst demonstrations across the country against police brutality and systemic racism. His announcement provided a renewed momentum, among racial justice activists, to demand the elimination of all public symbols of white supremacy. Other cities across the nation soon followed suit, ordering the dismantling of Confederate statues, even as protesters, in many places, took the lead in toppling these monuments.

The chairs and directors of Humanities departments and programs at Washington University in St. Louis have prepared a statement on the value of the humanities in times of crisis. In times of severe challenges, it is crucial that we avail ourselves of the invaluable resources that humanities scholarship and education offer. The full statement has now been posted on our departmental blog.

It is our distinct pleasure to announce that a jury composed by Agnes Lugo-Ortiz (University of Chicago), Shelley Garrigan (NC State University), and Michel Gobat (University of Pittsburgh) have selected two wonderful new monographs to receive the LASA 2020-BEST BOOK AWARD IN THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. 

Researchers and students engaging with the U.S.’s second-largest language are ignored in our universities — and in ‘The Chronicle’

The Department of Romance Languages and Literatures congratulates Professor Ignacio Sánchez Prado on his recent installation as the Jarvis Thurston and Mona Van Duyn Professor in the Humanities.

Swashbuckling tales of valiant gauchos roaming Argentina and Uruguay were nineteenth-century bestsellers. But when these stories jumped from the page to the circus stage and beyond, their cultural, economic, and political influence revolutionized popular culture and daily life.

Elzbieta Sklodowska has co-edited with Mabel Cuesta (University of Houston) Lecturas atentas. Una visita desde la ficción y la crítica a veinte narradoras cubanas contemporáneas, which showcases narrative works of contemporary Cuban women authors, both on the island and in the diaspora, accompanied by in-depth critical readings of these texts.

The Department of Romance Languages and Literatures congratulates Professor of Spanish Akiko Tsuchiya on the publication of her new book, Unsettling Colonialism: Gender and Race in the Nineteenth-Century Global Hispanic World, by SUNY Press.

Professor William (Billy) Acree received the Graduate Student Senate’s 2019 Outstanding Faculty Mentor award. The GSS Outstanding Faculty & Staff Awards are given out annually to recognize faculty and staff members who “make significant contributions to the graduate student experience.”

The department recognizes two of our graduate students, Francesca Dennstedt and Emma Merrigan who, along with Erika Rodriguez from Comparative Literature, formed The Association of Gender Minority and Women Graduate Students.

Two of our recent graduate students in Spanish have landed tenure-track jobs during this highly competitive season. Irene Domingo, who received her PhD in Spring 2015, has accepted a tenure-track position as an assistant professor of Peninsular Literature (20th-21st centuries) at the University of St. Thomas in St. Paul, MN. Stacy Davis, a PhD candidate in Spanish, has accepted a tenure-track position in Spanish and pedagogy at Truman State University.