UCLA
Department of Spanish and Portuguese
Fall Newsletter 2001
Contents:
Message from the Chair
Grant Awards Received
Recent & Upcoming Events
Faculty, Student, and Alumni News
Department's
Achievements Reviewed
Message from the Chair, Randal Johnson
This will be the
final newsletter published during my tenure as Chair of the
Department of Spanish and Portuguese. I have been appointed Director
of the University of California’s Education Abroad Program in
Brazil, starting January 1, 2002. I am very pleased to announce
that Professor Gerardo Luzuriaga has been named my successor.
It has been an honor to serve the Department during the
past five years, and I step down with very mixed feelings. We
have accomplished a lot, yet there is always much to do. Without
going into too much detail, I would like to review some of the
positive achievements of the past few years. First, we have added
two new faculty members, Jesus Torrecilla (1997) and Elizabeth
Marchant (1998), both of whom have since received tenure. We have
congratulated the Department’s first two faculty Distinguished
Teaching Award winners—Verónica Cortínez (1997) and Efraín Kristal
(1999)—and we have continued such awards for graduate teaching
assistants, with winners Sandra Pérez-Linggi (1999) and Carol
Lee-Benner (2000). Three of our undergraduates—Virginia Dicono,
Argelia Andrade, and Dante Camargo—have received prestigious
Charles E. and Sue K. Young Undergraduate Awards from the College
of Letters and Science.
Academically, we have revised our undergraduate major programs and
have implemented our new graduate program requirements. We have
established new summer Travel Study Programs in Brazil, Mexico, and
along the road to Santiago de Compostela in France and Spain. We
have hosted major academic conferences on Chicano literature and
culture (1997), the Spanish Generation of ‘98 (1998), and Mexican
culture (2000), and we have welcomed such distinguished novelists
as Juan Goytisolo, Mario Vargas Llosa, and Ivan Angelo to UCLA.
We have provided new levels of very efficient staff support, and
we all know that without that support our jobs would be much more
difficult. Through generous gifts from friends of the Department,
we have substantially increased the amount of research funding
available to graduate students and faculty, and we guaranteed the
future stability of the departmental library and reading room.
In this regard I would particularly like to thank Ben and Rue Pine
and Lorrine Lydeen for their support. I would also like to thank
the anonymous donors who provided funding for remodeling the library,
for the creation of the Distinguished Alumni Dinner and Lecture,
and for additional research support. Many thanks as well to all of
the alumni and friends of the Department who have generously
supported our endeavors.
With the selection of Professor Gerardo Luzuriaga as Chair,
the Department will be in very good hands. Professor Luzuriaga
has been at UCLA since 1969, and he has ample experience in
many different areas of the University. A specialist on Latin
American theater, he is the author of such books as Del realismo
al expresionismo: El teatro de Aguilera Malta, Popular Theater
for Social Change in Latin America, and Introducción a las teorías
latinoamericanas del teatro. I offer my congratulations and my
support to him as he assumes his new responsibilities. Até breve.
Have a great summer!
Grant Awards Received
Teaching, Learning, and Technology Collaborative Grant
Randal Johnson and Susan Schaffer were awarded $57,860 by the
University of California's Center for Teaching, Learning and
Technology (TLtC) to begin building and populating an Electronic
Language Materials Archive (ELMA). This project includes the
collaboration of M. Victoria González-Pagani from UCSC's Language
Program, Robert Blake from UCD's Department of Spanish and Classics,
Tim McGovern from UCSB’s Department of Spanish and Portuguese,
Kim Jansma from UCLA's Department of French and Francophone Studies
and Elizabeth Guthrie from UCI's Department of French and Italian.
The TLtC grants review committee stated that ELMA “will be a
tremendous resource for language teachers across the system with
broadly usable material and in a form that is expandable.” ELMA
will be featured as an exemplary project in the TLtC Webzine in
November 2001.
To read more about the project, go to
www.uctltc.org/news/2001/12/feature_3.htm
Instructional Improvement Programs Grant
for Intermediate Spanish
Randal Johnson and Susan Schaffer received $10,250 from
UCLA's Committee on Instructional Improvement Programs,
as well as matching funds from Dean Pauline Yu, to continue
to develop and implement web-based grammar instruction and
self-tests for Intermediate Spanish. Eric Thau is serving
as 2001-2002 Graduate Research Assistant to help design online
self-tests and video-based grammar modules. The digital modules
feature clips from Univisión programming.
Learning Grant
Professors Adriana Bergero, Héctor Calderón, Gerardo Luzuriaga,
Elizabeth Marchant, Claudia Parodi, Susan Plann, Carlos Quicoli,
and Sylvia Sherno have received a Faculty Affinity Group
Grant of $8,000 from the Ford Foundation to explore ways to
incorporate service learning and experiential learning in their
classes.
Recent & Upcoming Events
April 21-22, 2001:
Professor Randal Johnson was the Guest of Honor at the XXIV Symposium on
Portuguese Traditions (Europe, America, Africa, Asia). Among the other
guests were the Consul-General of Brazil, Dr. José Vicente Sá Pimentel, the
Consul-General of Portugal, Dr. Augusto Saraiva Peixoto, and the Cultural
Attaché of Portugal, Dr. José Martins Goulart.
June 2001: A group of undergraduate students staged Osvaldo Dragún’s La historia
del hombre que se convirtió en perro, with the assistance of Professor Gerardo
Luzuriaga. The play was performed during the farewell reception of the Undergraduate
Students Association of the Department of Spanish and Portuguese, and later during
the Department’s pre-commencement celebration. Members of “Los Nuevos Comediantes”
were Alex Montes, Diana Ramírez de Soto, Mauricio Elwyn, Hiliana López, Ana Páez,
Elmer Magaña, and Karol Deras.
October 23, 2001: The Salvadoran writer Horacio Castellanos Moya spoke on
“Cultura Centroamericana luego de las guerras.” He is the author of numerous
books, including, most recently, El arma en el hombre (2001).
October 24, 2001: Jaime Ginzburg of the Universidade Federal de Santa Maria,
in Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil, spoke on “Intellectuals, Culture and Authoritarianism
in Brazil.”
November 2, 2001: Brazilian novelist Márcio Souza spoke on “The Writer and the
Amazon World.” Mr. Souza currently serves as President of Brazil’s National Foundation
for the Arts (FUNARTE).
November 16, 2001: Professor Ivan Schulman (University of Illinois) returned to campus
to deliver the 2001 Distinugished Alumnus Lecture, made possible by a generous
donation from a Friend of the Department of Spanish and Portuguese. His lecture
was titled “Narrating Orientalism in Spanish American Modernism.” On the evening of
November 15, at a dinner for faculty and guests, Professor Schulman offered a more
personal view on “The Perils of Research.”
November 26, 2001: Dr. Heloísa Pontes of the Department of Antropologia,
UNICAMP, presented “A geração de críticos da cultura brasileira: os intelectuais
acadêmicos da revista Clima.”
December 5, 2001: Visiting Professor David Frier, of the University of Leeds,
lectured on “Others whose Immortal Deeds / Have Conquered Death’s Oblivion: Names,
Knowledge and Power in Portuguese Literature from the Renaissance to Saramago.”
April 20-21, 2002: will mark the twenty-fifth anniversary
of the Symposium on Portuguese Traditions (Europe, America,
Africa, Asia). The two-day event will take place at the
Sunset Recreation Center, and participants are expected
from Brazil and Portugal, as well as from many parts of the US
and Canada. A supplementary theme will feature the 80th
anniversary of the historic Semana de Arte Moderna (São Paulo,
1922-2002). Special Guests of Honor will be Ambassador Alberto
da Costa e Silva from the Brazilian Academy of Letters, and Dr.
José Blano, Administrator of the Gulbenkian Foundation in Lisbon.
May 24 and 25, 2002: The Department of Spanish and Portuguese
will sponsor a conference on Central American Literature.
This will be the first such event at the University of California
system. It is being organized by Professors Gerardo Luzuriaga
and Adriana Bergero. A special feature of this conference will
be the participation of several novelists and poets. Some of
the writers who have been invited are Sergio Ramírez, Arturo
Monterroso, Claribel Alegría, and Manlio Argueta.
Faculty, Student, and Alumni
News
FACULTY
In July 2001,
Shirley Arora attended the 13th Congress of the International
Society for Folk Narrative Research held at the University of
Melbourne, Australia. She presented the paper, “Proverbs, Narratives,
and Communication: Some Contemporary Observations from
Spanish-speaking Tradition,” and chaired a session on folk
narrative.
Adriana Bergero participated in the 2001 Latin American
Studies Association (LASA) Convention in Washington DC, where
she presented the paper “La cultura del reassurance: la fiesta
menemista y Buenos Aires viceversa.” At LASA she also participated
in the first meeting of the LASA Southern Cone Studies. She was
invited to be a member of the Editorial Board of Theorie und Kritik
der Kultur und Literatur/Teoría y Crítica de la Cultura y de la
Literatura, Ibero-Amerikanisches Forschungsseminar, Institut fur
Romanistik, Universitat Leipzig.
Verónica Cortínez is spending her fall quarter sabbatical at the
Georg-August-Universität Göttingen,with a grant from the Deutscher
Akademischer Austauschdienst. There she is doing research for her
new project on the last four decades of Chilean cinema with Professor
Manfred Engelbert. Thanks to a Ben and Rue Pine Travel Fellowship,
she has traveled to the film archives in Berlin, Hamburg, and Paris.
Her article on “Isabel Allende” will appear in the revised edition
of Latin American Writers, edited by Carlos Solé, to be published
this December by Scribners. Her article “Poemas inéditos de Jorge
Teillier” will be published by the Revista Hispánica Moderna.
Randal Johnson directed the department’s 2001 Travel Study
Program in Salvador, Bahia. While in Salvador, he spoke on
contemporary Brazilian cinema at the Faculdade de Tecnologia e Ciências.
In August, he taught a four-day course on literature and cinema at
Itaú Cultural in São Paulo. An essay resulting from the course will
appear in a volume on literature and cinema published by the same
institute. In November he participated in a conference on Latin
American cinema at the University of Notre Dame, presenting a paper
on “Versions and Visions of History: Cinematic Representations of
the Armed Struggle in Brazil.” He has been appointed new director
of the University of California’s Education Abroad Program in Brazil.
Professor Efraín Kristal presented the following lectures in
2001: “Borges als Übersetzer,” Dean's Lecture, University of Göttingen,
July 5, and at the Johan Wolfgang Goethe-University of Frankfurt,
June 28; “Triumphs of Humility: Borges and Translation," Chicago
Public Library (in connection with the exhibition “Borges, the Time
Machine,” for whose catalogue Professor Kristal wrote one of the
essays, November 6; “La filosofía angloamericana y la teoría de la
literatura,” Department of Philosophy, Universidad Católica de Lima,
November 21; “La culpa no está en las estrellas. La responsabilidad
moral en las novelas políticas de Mario Vargas Llosa,” conference on
“Las guerras de este mundo,” Lima, November 22; “Santa Rosa de Lima
en la obra de Ramón Mujica,” Miraflores City Hall, Lima, November 23.
While in Lima, Professor Kristal also participated in a public
dialogue with Mario Vargas Llosa about Conversation in the Cathedral
(November 19) and was interviewed by several television stations and
newspapers. During the fall quarter, he served as Acting Chair of
UCLA’s Department of Comparative Literature.
Gerardo Luzuriaga’s article “La ‘tenorización’ de la política en el
teatro festivo de la Revolución Mexicana” was published in Studies
in Latin American Popular Culture 20 (2001). In July, he attended a
four-day conference of the Association of Iberian and Latin American
Studies of Australasia held at the University of Western Sydney,
Australia. He read a paper on “El teatro festivo político mexicano.”
On October 25 he moderated a session on contemporary Central American
prose fiction at a conference held at California State University,
Northridge.
Elizabeth Marchant and her husband, Rafael Pérez-Torres,
are the proud parents of Caetano Julián, who was born on September 16.
C. Brian Morris published “Los Quintero ante los ‘cambios y
mudanzas’ de su época” In Anales de Literatura Española
Contemporánea 26.1 (Teatro y cine) (2001).
Claudia Parodi published “Contacto de dialectos y lenguas en el
Nuevo Mundo: La vernacularización del español en América,”
International Journal for the Sociology of Language 149; “Avances
recientes de la lingüística mexicana,” Encuentro Internacional de
Lingüística de Noroeste, Sonora; “Koineización e historia: la
sincronía, ventana de la diacronía,” Boletín de Filología, Chile;
“Dogma y espectáculo en las comedias de santos: El Iris de Salamanca
de Cayetano de Cabrera y Quintero,” La producción simbólica en la
América Colonial, México. In October, Professor Parodi attended
two conferences in Spain: “Encuentro de Directores de Departamentos
de Español,” San Millán de la Cogolla, and “20° Congreso
Internacional de la Lengua Española,” Spanish and the Media in
the Modern World, Valladolid. The King of Spain and his family
inaugurated the event in the presence of the presidents of Mexico,
Argentina and Equatorial Guinea. In November, Professor Parodi was
the keynote speaker at the Decimotercera Jornada Pedagógica para la
Educación Bilingüe, held in Los Angeles. She spoke on “El español
de Los Angeles y sus hablantes.”
Susan Plann presented a paper titled “Martín y Martín Ruiz,
a 19th-Century Deaf Blind Spaniard” at the meeting of Deaf History
International IV, which was held in Washington, D.C., in June.
Susan Schaffer published the article “Elena Poniatowska’s
Querido Diego, te abraza Quiela: A Revision of Her Story,”
in The Effects of the Nation: Mexican Art in an Age of
Globalization, eds. Carl Good and John V. Waldron (Philadelphia:
Temple UP, 2001).
Sylvia Sherno participated in the Advanced Placement reading
held in San Antonio in June. With the help of the Ben and Rue
Pine Travel Fellowship and an ISOP travel grant, she also visited
the Fundación Germán Sánchez Ruipérez in Salamanca, Spain, where
she conducted research on Spanish writer Elena Fortún. Fortún was
the author of Celia, the highly popular children's book series
published during the 1920s and 1930s. Dr. Sherno’s book, Weaving
the World: The Poetry of Gloria Fuertes, was published in
November by Romance Monographs, University of Mississippi.
GRADUATE STUDENTS
Soraya Alamdari
has accepted a tenure track position at Temple University in PA.
Kent Dickson has received a dissertation-year fellowship for
2001-2002. He also published the article “César Moro’s Impossible
Futures: ‘L’art de lire l’avenir,” Mester XXX (2001): 1-23.
Carlos Fernández is participating in the UCLA Paris Program in
Critical Theory. This program provides advanced graduate students
from a wide variety of disciplines a unique opportunity to
familiarize themselves with cutting-edge French and European
theoretical research by participating in a weekly seminar organized
during the fall quarter in Paris by the Program's founder and
director, Northwestern Professor Samuel Weber. Fernández also
received a summer mentorship grant this year.
Ana Beatriz Figueroa, Olivia Treviño, and Dr. Sylvia Sherno
received Friends of Spanish and Portuguese Research Travel
Fellowships.
Alejandro Lee-Chan, Eric Thau, and Michael Sinisgalli were
selected by the Lower Division Supervisory Committee to receive
the UCLA Department of Spanish and Portuguese Outstanding Teaching
Award.
Jóse Rosbel López has accepted a tenure track position at
California State University, Dominguez Hills.
Nataly Tcherepashenets published “Recordando a Borges: entrevista
con María Esther Vázquez,” Mester XXX (2001): 63-72.
Under the auspices of Ben and Rue Pine Travel Fellowships,
Lizzy Moromisato, Damian Bacich, and Fernando Oleas accompanied
Professor Claudia Parodi to the National Library in Mexico City
to initiate the “Mexican Colonial Documents in Mexican Archives”
project. The primary objective of the project is to reconstruct
Latin American colonial literature considering the cultural
environment that surrounded literary production at the time.
This includes the study of “arcos triunfales,” “piras funebres,”
“concursos literarios,” “sermones,” and so forth. In Mexico,
students of UCLA Professor Emeritus José Pascual Buxó gave talks
about their research projects.
The 2000-2001 Richard Reeve Essay Prize was awarded to Diana
Ramírez de Soto for her paper, written in Spanish, on the
Central American writer Omar Cabezas. The annual Richard Reeve
prize is awarded to a student with a major or minor in one of the
Department’s undergraduate degree programs for the best academic
paper written for a course in Spanish American literature. In the
Spring, the Department created the José Rubia Barcia Essay Prize,
for the best academic paper written for an undergraduate course in
Spanish literature. It will be awarded for the first time in Spring
2002.
ALUMNI
John M.
Bennett (PhD 1970) has published a collaborative work of bilingual
poetry, CHAC PROSTIBULARIO, Columbus, OH: Pavement Saw Press,
2001. The co-author is Ivan Arguelles.
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