Morningside College

Faculty Member, Modern Languages

Other Affiliations: University of Washington, Comparative Literature

Assistant Professor of Spanish

About

I received my B.A. in English and Spanish from the University of Iowa in 1999, doing extensive work on U.S. literature. During that time, I also studied for one year at the University of the Basque Country in San Sebastián, Spain. After graduation, I moved to Chile, where I spent 3 years teaching EFL at the Instituto Chileno Norteamericano de Cultura and working as a translator. While there, I cultivated deep, long-lasting relationships, and participated in a number of successful environmental initiatives with international reach in biodiversity protection, forest cerification (FSC) and large-scale paper processing regulation. The bulk of this work was done with CODEFF (Corporación para la Defensa de Flora y Fauna de Chile) and Greenpeace Chile.

In 2003, I returned to the U.S. to pursue a doctorate in Comparative Literature at the University of Washington. While there, I developed an intense interest in Language Learning Technology, and taught Spanish Language classes at a number of institutions in the Puget Sound area. I received my M.A. in 2005, writing a thesis on Argentine art historian Angel Guido’s influence on the formation of the Neobaroque aesthetic in the Americas (particularly in Cuba), supervised by Professors Monika Kaup and Cynthia Steele.

In 2010 I completed my doctoral dissertation, Recovering Democracy in Postdictatorial Chilean Film and Fiction (2010) under the supervision of Monika Kaup, Cynthia Steele, and Tony Geist. I am currently editing the manscript for publication as a book. It examines the problem of individual and societal recovery in postdictatorial Chilean society, and the role that fiction and film play in the return to democracy and the ensuing healing process, over the period 1986-2006. It harnesses critical approaches drawn from Latin American history, memory studies, and film studies, to better understand the struggles to recuperate cultural agency in a country being transformed by neoliberalism in the wake of fascism. In it, I analyze a diverse body of primary texts, including novels by Diamela Eltit, Antonio Skármeta, Roberto Bolaño, and Pedro Lemebel, along with films directed by Ricardo Larraín, Patricio Guzmán, and Silvio Caiozzi, among others.

Since fall 2010 I have worked as an Assistant Professor of Spanish in the Department of Modern Languages at Morningside College. There I have been involved in innumerable college and community activities. I have also maintained an active research agenda while there. In May 2012 I'll be taking approximately 20 students to Cuba.

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