Professor of Spanish Literature and Film

 Office: 420 AH

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Education

• Yale University, New Haven, CT.
  • Ph.D. Department of Spanish and Portuguese.
  • M. Phil. in Spanish Literature.
  • M.A. in Spanish Literature.
• Barnard College, Columbia University, New York City, N.Y.
  • A.B. magna cum laude. Major: Spanish (with Honors)
• Instituto de Estudios Hispánicos: Bryn Mawr College Summer Program in Madrid, 1985.

Academic Appointments

• THE UNIVERSITY OF HOUSTON, Department of Hispanic Studies, Associate Professor, (2002-present), Director of Undergraduate Studies (2007-2009), Assistant Professor (1995-2002).
• THE UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN, MADISON, Department of Spanish & Portuguese, Visiting Assistant Professor (1993-1995).
• THE COLLEGE OF WILLIAM AND MARY, Department of Modern Languages, Visiting Assistant Professor (1992–1993).

Teaching and Research Interests

• Spanish Literature from the XVIII – XXI Centuries
• Spanish Film
• The Intersections Between Literature and the Visual Arts
• Spanish Cultural Studies
• Women’s Studies
• Sephardic Studies

Courses Taught

Undergraduate

• Literature and the Visual Arts in Modern Spain
• Survey of Modern Spanish Literature
• Hispanic Female Film Directors
• Civilization and Culture of Spain (Core – Humanities)
• Screen Memories: Spanish Culture Through Film (Core – VPA)
• Introduction to Hispanic Literature (Core – WID)
• Fundamentals of English/Spanish Translation

Graduate

• Post-totalitarian Spanish Fictions
• The Nineteenth-Century Novel: Spain’s Literary Struggles with Modernity
• Civilization and Culture of Spain
• Revisions of Early Spanish Texts in Modern Literature and Film
• The Recuperation of Historical Memory in Post-Franco Spain
• Spanish Women Writers and the Feminist Traditions

Awards

• Winner of the University of Houston Provost’s Core Teaching Excellence Award, 2011.
• Winner of the Department of Modern and Classical Languages Teaching Excellence Award, 2000 

Dissertations Directed and Initial Posts

• Carmen Bárcenas. “Cuerpo femenino, género y sexualidad en las novelas de la transición de Rosa Montero: Crónica del desamor, La función delta, y Te trataré como a una reina." (completed 2007) Assistant Professor, North Harris County College.
• Craig Dennison. "Insincere and Unfaithful: An Examination of the Devout Women of Clarín." (completed Dec. 2008) Assistant Professor, Westminster College, Fulton, Missouri.
• Ana María Touza Medina. “Manuel Rivas: Una revolución en la literatura contemporánea gallega y más allá.” (completed May 2009) Assistant Professor, Denver Metropolitan State University.
• Carmen Blanco-Flynn. "Hispanic Antigone: Myth, Gender and Representation.” (completed December 2011) Dubai International University.
• Helena Talaya. “La Luna, reflejo de la nueva expresion cultural en la Espana posfranquista. Narrativas de la imagen en La Movida madrileña de los 80.” (completed December 2011) Assitant Professor, Oxford College of Emory University.
• Sylvia Verónica Morín. “Silent Sirens and Reticent Revenants: Reconceptualizations of the Femme Fatale in Twentieth-Century Spanish and Mexican Women’s Fictions.” (completed May 2012).
• Stella Cruz-Romero. “Esta es otra Historia: Ciudad y locura en Nadie me verá llorar de Cristina Rivera Garza.” (completed Summer 2012).
• Josefina Sánchez Moneny. (in progress). “El itinerario del monstruo: la mujer como sujeto periférico en la literatura peninsular del siglo XIX.” Winner of the John Kronik prize from the Asociación Internacional de Galdosistas and the Dissertation Completion Grant.
• Javier Merchán. (in progress). “La voz temida y el logos censurado en España: La trilogía histórica de Benjamín Prado.”

Publications

Books

• Women and Children First: Spanish Women Writers and the Fairy Tale Tradition. Potomac, MD: Scripta Humanistica, 2002.
• Mujer, Alegoría y Nación: Agustina de Aragón y Juana la Loca como construcciones del proyecto nacionalista español (1808-2016). Madrid: Editorial Iberoamericana, 2017.
  https://www.iberoamericana-vervuert.es/FichaLibro.aspx?P1=127609
• Book manuscript in progress: Rescripting the Everpresent Past: Portrayals of Femininity and the Construction of National Identity in Early Francoist Cinema. (50% complete) Recipient of the Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies Summer Research Grant, $4,000

Journal Articles and Book Chapters

• “Moving Beyond the Frame: Literature, Madness, and Vincent Van Gogh in Manuel Rivas’s Os comedores de patacas.” Re-routing Galician Studies.Multidisciplinary Perspectives. Eds. Benita Sampedro Vizcaya, Gabriel Rei-Doval, and José Antonio Losada Montero. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, forthcoming, 2017.
• “Ana Mariscal.” Dramaturgas y cineastas: mujeres entre teatro y cine en España. Ed. Barbara Zecchi. Madrid: Biblioteca Nueva, forthcoming, 2017.
• “Staging Childhood: Memories of Shattered Youth in Carlos Saura’s¡Ay, Carmela! and Emilio Aragón’s Pájaros de papel.” Memory in World Cinema. Ed.Nancy Membrez. Forthcoming, 2017.
• “Ángel Sanz Briz, El Ángel de Budapest: Un héroe internacional para una naciónespañola sin héroes. ” Transiciones: de la dictadura a la democracia. Eds. Zsuzsanna Csikós and András Lénárt. Szeged, Hungary: AmericanaeBooks (online and print), Szeged, Hungary: University of Szeged, 2016, 518-529. http://centro.interamerican.hu.es/publications. Refereed conference proceeding.
• “Once Upon a Time with Esther Tusquets: Impact and Innovation in Spanish Literature for Children.” Looking Towards and After Esther Tusquets. Eds. Nina Molinaro and Inmaculada Pertusa. Cambridge: Cambridge Scholars Press, 2014, 92-114.
• “Antonio Muñoz Molina’s Sefarad: History on the Margins of a Century of Expulsions.” Cuaderno Internacional de Estudios Humanísticos y Literatura (CIEHL) monographic issue “La novela española desde 1975”. Vol. 16: Fall 2011, 103-112.
• “Emigration, War, and a Case of Collective Madness in the Forging of a Galician National Consciousness: Manuel Rivas Rewrites Emilia Pardo Bazán’s ‘Las medias rojas’.” Monographic Review/Revista Monográfica: Hysteria, Hallucination and Madness in Hispanic Literature, vol. XXVI, 2010, pgs. 116-131.
• “Revealing Beauty / Revealing History in El sueño de Venecia.” Hispanic Review, v. 76, no. 4, Autumn 2008, pgs. 335-359.
• “Escaping Toledo’s History of Repression: Painting as Therapy in Iciar Bollaín’s Te doy mis ojos.” Letras Peninsulares. Special Issue, Urban Imaginaries: Representations of the City in Peninsular Literature and Film, v 21.2, Spring 2008, 33-51.
• “Madness as Nationalistic Spectacle: Doña Juana and the Myths of Nineteenth- Century Historical Painting.” in Juana of Castile: History and Myth of the Mad Queen. Co-edited by Santiago Juan-Navarro, Phyllis Zatlin, and María A. Gómez. Lewisburg, PA: Bucknell University Press, 2008, pgs. 175-197.
• “La iconografía de Juana la Loca: representaciones de la locura femenina en pintura, teatro y cine.” Lecturas:Imágenes Revista de Poética de la Imagen, #4, Sept. 2005, pgs. 248-266.

Episodes of the Public Radio Program The Engines of our Ingenuity

• Episodes of the Public Radio Program The Engines of our Ingenuity funded by a grant from the United Engineering Foundation. Co-investigator with Enrique Barbieri (Professor Engineering Technology Department) and Aymará Boggiano (Dept. of Hispanic Studies.) To translate into Spanish the public radio program The Engines of our Ingenuity and to create teaching materials in Spanish based on the scientific content of the program in order to encourage minority students to enter STEM fields. $90,500. 2011 and renewed for 2012.

Website for episodes translated into Spanish: http://www.uh.edu/engines/episodes-spanish.html

My original episodes:

• “Carlos Finlay: The Cuban Who Helped Defeat Yellow Fever.” http://www.uh.edu/engines/epi2795.htm
• Co-authored with Steven Mintz:  “The Birth Control Pill’s Tangled History.” http://www.uh.edu/engines/epi2793.htm
• Co-authored with Steven Mintz:  “The Ups and Downs of the Yo-Yo.” http://www.uh.edu/engines/epi2796.htm