Visiting Assistant Professor. Stony Brook University: Provost Office: College of Arts & Sciences: Hispanic Languages and Literature
Location: Stony Brook University
Open Date: May 14, 2024 (Position is now closed: July, 2024)
Deadline: Jun 03, 2024 at 11:59 PM Eastern Time
Description:
Visiting Assistant Professor, HLL Department
Latin American Literary and Cultural Studies
Stony Brook University’s Department of Hispanic Languages and Literature invites applications for a one-year, full time, Visiting Assistant Professor position in Latin American literary and cultural studies, beginning Fall 2024. Period and field of specialization are open.
Qualifications
Required Qualifications:
Candidates should have a PhD (or foreign equivalent) in hand or anticipate PhD completion by the time of appointment. They should have a strong research record, excellent teaching credentials and native or near native proficiency in English and Spanish.
Preferred Qualifications: Proficiency in Portuguese is welcome.
The person hired will be expected to teach two courses per semester, including a graduate (PhD) seminar, combined MA and upper level undergraduate courses, gateway courses toward the major in Spanish and general education courses in English about Latin American cultures.
Quan Zhou’s visit to Stony Brook took place in the context of the Stony Brook Humanities Institute’s “Pressing Matters” lecture series. This initiative funds speakers on topics of strong social interest whose work is being studied in an undergraduate or graduate course or courses taught by the proposing faculty member. We discussed Ms. Zhou’s first graphic novel, Gazpacho agridulce, in both my classes during the 2024 spring semester, SPN 389 on 20th and 21st century Spanish culture and SPN 415/510 on Children’s and Adolescent Literature and Media. Zhou has played a highly visible role in focusing attention on the lives and experiences of children of immigrants in Spain. Her autobiographical graphic novel provides a playful but deeply insightful account of the culture clashes and generational conflicts that arise between the old world values of striving immigrant parents and their willfully modern daughters in a Spanish society struggling to come to terms with its own newly multicultural reality. Her public talk was designed as a conversation, with students taking an active role in preparing and asking questions, and resulted in a lively and revealing exchange between the artist-author and the 80 or so attendees. Prof. Kathleen Vernon
Una conversación en Stony Brook
Reportaje de Víctor Chacón y Andrea Barona
Autora de notables trabajos recientes en el género de la novela gráfica española, como Gazpacho agridulce (2015), AndaluChinas por el Mundo (2017) y Gente de Aquí (2020), Quan Zhou se presentó en la universidad de Stony Brook el quince de abril del 2024. Es hija de dos inmigrantes chinos y nació en Algeciras, Andalucía, al sur de España. Creció entre dos culturas y dos identidades con sus dos hermanas y su hermano. En sus novelas gráficas, la autora explora su vida culturalmente híbrida.
Quan Zhou es una artista y novelista que ha comunicado problemas sociales a través de sus trabajos. Durante nuestra conversación sobre su lectura de la novela gráfica Gazpacho agridulce, la autora pone de relieve las tensiones personales y sociales inherentes a los encuentros transculturales, en particular los relacionados con los chinos y los españoles. Mientras nos relataba historias personales de sí misma, criada por padres inmigrantes en el sur de España, nosotros observamos cómo Gazpacho agridulce arroja luz sobre los estereotipos, las crisis de la identidad y la integración cultural a los que se enfrentan los españoles de ascendencia asiática. La obra de Zhou reformula el género autobiográfico combinando el melodrama familiar, la tragicomedia, una historia de madurez y el día a día de la artista. Mientras con la autora profundizamos más en su novela gráfica Gazpacho agridulce, ella nos contó cómo sus relatos son “historias de barrio” de gente normal común y corriente, las historias que podrían fácilmente ser las de cualquier otra chica andaluza. Sin embargo, al añadir el hecho de su ascendencia china, de que sus padres sean migrantes, nos indicó el gran choque cultural en el que vivió al encontrarse con dos mundos opuestos, como son la sociedad china centrada en la familia, de una manera muy cerrada, en contraste con la cultura andaluza.
En esta conversación en Stony Brook con Quan Zhou tuvimos la oportunidad de hacer preguntas sobre sus trabajos y sobre su vida personal para conocerla mejor como artista. Ella nos contó un poco de la perspectiva negativa que tienen los españoles sobre las personas que hacen novelas gráficas en España y cómo ella ha luchado para salir adelante y contar sus historias a través de sus trabajos. Al escuchar un poco de su vida, muchas personas preguntaron sobre el impacto de sus trabajos. Aunque hubo muchas preguntas y comentarios, transcribimos aquí dos preguntas que hicieron nuestros compañeros de clase: “¿Cómo cree que ha contribuido esta obra a crear unidad dentro de España con respecto a los inmigrantes?” y “Su novela gráfica trata de la experiencia de ser china-andaluza en España, ¿haría usted una novela gráfica sobre otra comunidad de nacionalidad híbrida en España, quizás en colaboración con otra autora o autor de esa comunidad? ¿O haría usted una secuela de Gazpacho agridulce?” A través de preguntas como estas Zhou nos pudo aclarar sobre su perspectiva y su historia como una mujer con distintas identidades culturales.
En resumen, a lo largo de Gazpacho Agridulce y otros trabajos de la autora Quan Zhou pudimos tener una conversación donde ella nos hizo una exploración conmovedora y reflexiva de la experiencia migrante y la dualidad cultural. A través de una narrativa visual rica en matices, la autora ofrece una mirada íntima de los desafíos y las alegrías de adaptarse a una nueva sociedad siendo hija de padres migrantes, mientras se preserva la herencia cultural propia. Quan Zhou es una artista y autora muy apasionada que nos ha impactado con su visita a Stony Brook University. ¡Gracias, Quan Zhou!
Spanish text by HLL undergraduate students Víctor Chacón and Andrea Barona. Photos by Víctor Chacon.
Our former Spanish student, Ahmed Abdullah, recently sent us a wonderful email to thank our faculty and highlight the importance of the Spanish language in his daily clinic practice. We are happy to share his email here, with his consent:I’m emailing as a former student in the SPN minor, and a current 2nd year dental student at Stony Brook.Every single day that I have been in clinic, I have been asked to speak in Spanish with a patient. Whether calling for appointment changes, helping with taking a history, or determining a chief complaint, the skills of fluency and linguistic navigation I learned from your great professors have been massive.
A stray thought that I had yesterday was:”Wow, I use my Spanish classes on a day to day basis in clinic WAY more than I use my biology classes”.
Aside from simply making me a better Spanish speaker, my experiences in your classes have made me a more well-rounded and educated person. From the higher-level classes (particularly as a result of conversations with my classmates), I have become much more intimately aware of Hispanic culture, which strengthens me with understanding these patients massively. The point of this email ultimately is to let you all know what a positive difference you have made in my, and my current and future patients’ lives.
Thank you.
Ahmed Abdullah, D.D.S Candidate, Class of 2026, Stony Brook School of Dental Medicine
As part of the activities commemorating 50th anniversary of the U.S.-backed coup against the socialist government of Salvador Allende that marked the beginning of the Pinochet’s 17-year-long dictatorship in Chile, our doctoral student Samuel Espíndola and Prof. Javier Uriarte organized a visit to the exhibition Chile: Dignidad, 1973-2023, by the New York-based artist María Verónica San Martín (Santiago, 1981) at Fordham University’s Lipani Gallery. A group of PhD students from the Department of Hispanic Languages and Literature had the privilege of walking through the exhibition guided by the curator, Prof. Carl Fischer (Fordham University), and the artist herself.
Photo 1: Artist María Verónica San Martín in Lipani Gallery, Fordham University.
Fischer introduced the group to the logic behind organizing an art exhibition such as this one, where recent events seem to be filled with echoes of past violences, charging the words used to described them, sometimes in opposite directions. For example, during the 2019 social uprising (also known as Estallido or Revuelta) against the authoritarian government of Sebastián Piñera (2018-2022), “Dignidad” (dignity) was one of the emblematic words used in chants and famously in the unofficial renaming of the Baquedano Squarehere demonstrators used to gather. However, this word appears also in the name of Colonia Dignidad, “an insular, autarchic, fundamentalist, totalitarian compound in southern Chile”[1], an enclave populated by Germans since 1961 whose leader was the former Nazi Paul Schäfer and where systematic sexual abuse was committed. During the dictatorship, the Colonia was engaged in intimate collaboration with the military regime. In 1991, once the dictatorship ended, the name was changed to Villa Baviera; its residents were free to go but the place remained a controversial site due to numerous national and international judicial cases.
San Martín discussed in detail her creative process (including some learning and discoveries made during her formative years that led her to the U.S.), the assembling of pieces in the exhibition, spanning years of work and different materials, from book art, drawings, engravings, sculpture, to performance. Since direct interaction with the materials is an essential part of her work, the artist manipulated them, allowing us to see different ways to fold and unfold the books. Thus, the group could learn about the documentary and artistic research behind the exhibition and, ultimately, how it is shaped by San Martín’s own experience as a Chilean artist working in the aftermath of the dictatorship (not being a firsthand witness) and living in the USA during the flagrant Human Rights violations that occurred between 2019 and 2020, which inevitably brings reminiscence of the country’s turbulent past.
The visit ended with San Martín’s demonstration of how one the sculptures was used in an art and sound installation with a performance, also titled “Dignidad,” based on secret telephone documents about Colonia Dignidad found in 2012 by the ex-settler and activist Winfried Hempel and now kept in the National Archives of Chile. The piece is a modular metal structure that can be assembled as a box, a cross, a tunnel, a square, and has been presented in several venues by the artist and different performers in Chile, Netherlands, Canada, the US, and Germany.
Photo 2: Prof. Fischer (right, with hat) and HLL Stony Brook University graduate students and Prof. Uriarte (front).
Hispanic Languages and Literature is extremely glad to welcome Lina Quiroz, our new Staff Assistant. Lina will be helping our undergraduate students and faculty to navigate our Spanish courses and requirements. She will also be assisting in all matters related to the new program in Native American Indigenous Studies (NAIS), housed in our department.
You can come Mondays to Fridays to our main office in Humanities 1055 and talk to Lina in person, in English or Spanish. Here is a brief interview we did with her last week to know a bit more about her career and interests:
¡Bienvenida, Lina! You have a long experience working in the education industry, can you tell us more about your background before joining Stony Brook?
During my college years, I earned a Bachelor’s degree in Romance Languages. Seeking a more practical path, I transitioned into the field of immigration law, taking on the role of an immigration paralegal in New York City. As life evolved with the arrival of my first child, my professional focus shifted towards opportunities closer to home in Queens, leading me to secure a position at St. John’s University as a Senior Secretary of the Associate Dean of Global Initiatives. Within a year, I progressed to the role of Coordinator of Global Initiatives at The Peter J. College of Business, where I played a crucial role in managing the global programs within the college. This experience laid the foundation for my subsequent promotion to Assistant Director of Global Programs. In this role, I spearheaded the management of the Global Destination Course Program, involving embedded courses with travel components, and contributed to the success of GLOBE (Global Loan Opportunities for Budding Entrepreneurs), a student managed academic program that provides small loans to entrepreneurs in developing countries.
My journey has always been fueled by a passion for international studies and cross-cultural experiences. Now, finding myself in a role at Stony Brook within the Department of Hispanic Languages and Literature, I feel a profound sense of coming full circle in my professional endeavors.
Did you have any previous contact with Stony Brook?
After earning my degree from Hunter College (CUNY) in New York City, I became familiar with the SUNY schools, among which Stony Brook stood out as a prominent research university. Its reputation for significant advancements in the sciences and health industry piqued my interest. While recently delving into my research on Long Island universities, I discovered that Stony Brook not only excelled in the sciences but also boasted outstanding programs in the Arts, Sciences, Engineering, and Business. Discovering that Stony Brook University holds the prestigious position as the top-ranked SUNY institution in the state also made a lasting impression on me.
What were your first impressions of our campus and department?
When arriving to campus, I didn’t realize the physical size of the University is so enormous. I have heard of Stony Brook being its own little city, and now I understand why. The numerous buildings and housing structures along with the prestigious hospital are impressive. There is a real university spirit, and you sense that as you drive through the manicured pathways of the university. I find the Hispanic Languages and Literature department to be a warm and welcoming department. Everyone I meet is genuinely nice and there is an energy of eagerness to learn. There is also a notable passion in the faculty and staff that reminds me of my undergraduate days as a language major.
What do you love to do in summer or when you are not busy working?
I proudly wear the hats of a soccer, lacrosse, and dance mom, constantly shuttling between games, practices and recitals with my family. We love to travel and experience new cultures. When international journeys aren’t feasible, we like to explore areas in our own region. Having grown up in Queens and currently residing in Nassau County, the eastern part of Long Island remains uncharted territory for me. This summer, my plan is to explore what the East End has to offer while creating lasting memories with my family.
I also pride myself in creating a meal that brings friends and family together. Cooking is my heartfelt expression, a way to show love. I enjoy making Latin and Mediterranean dishes, but I like to explore various ethnic flavors. In the summers, you will always find us in the backyard spending time with friends and family alongside an open flamed grill as the music plays in the background. As a native Colombian, my culinary skills focus on Latin-American cuisine, including my favored arepas and sancocho. The comforting Latin dishes I make while listening to salsa music and sipping on strong coffee fills our home with the lively essence of our culture.
This past Wednesday December 6th (2023) in our doctoral seminar, third year PhD students Valentina Pucci, José Gabriel Alegría and Samuel Espíndola presented their dissertation projects they had worked in the Dissertation Prospectus seminar, directed by Prof. Kathleen Vernon. The topics of research ranged from early modern religious iconography in colonial Andes and Europe, homosexual liberation movements in Argentina in the 1960s and the representation of residues and wasted space in contemporary poetry and visual arts of the Southern Cone and Brazil. See the slides below for the title of each project.
The three presentations were followed by questions and comments by different faculty. Samuel, José Gabriel and Valentina were able to expand on their research and received valuable feedback. In many ways, the three presentation were great examples of departmental fields or lines of inquiry and research. Professor Javier Uriarte, director of graduate studies, commented on the importance of this open conversation in the process of defining and writing the dissertation:
“This event represents a breakthrough moment for our PhD students. This is the result of a semester-long profound engagement with their project. 3rd-year students take the dissertation prospectus workshop in their 5th semester. Throughout the semester they discuss their ideas with colleagues and professors, and thus engage in a thorough editing and rethinking of the proposal. At the end of the semester they are ready to present these ideas to the entire department in a conference-style event. They are expected to offer an articulated version of the project and discuss its central arguments, structure and methodology with students and professors. After the feedback they receive they are expected to continue working with their advisors and submit the final version to their committee at the end of the 6th semester.”
After the three presentations, Prof. Paul Firbas introduced invited guest Dr. Francisco Mamani Fuentes (Thoma Foundation), who presented a talk on colonial architecture. Dr. Mamani, a recent dual graduate in esthetics, history and art theory from the École Normale Supérieure (France) and history from the University of Granada (Spain), shared his archival research on colonial building in the Andes, focusing on the human agency behind the “carpinteria de lo blanco” (construction carpentry) in multiethnic cities like Quito, Lima or Cuzco. He also shared his experiences as a recent PhD graduate, and described the challenges of post-doc and fellowship applications.
Finally, after the presentations, we had the great joy of listening to our first year PhD student and renowned artist Alessio Arena, who performed with his guitar a few of his more popular songs, like his “El hombre que quiso ser canción”, a homage to poet García Lorca that he recorded in 2019 featuring Miguel Poveda (official video here). ¡Mil gracias, grazie mille, querido Alessio, y felicitaciones a todos!
Reportaje de Víctor Chacón Cabrera y Andrea Barona, estudiantes de SPN 390: Communication, Media and Journalism in Spanish (Prof. Firbas)
Aurora Arias presentó públicamente su novela Vida verdadera en el Caribe por primera vez en la Universidad de Stony Brook en una actividad organizada por la Dra. Zaida Corniel, profesora en esta casa de estudios.
Este mes de octubre de 2023, la escritora dominicana Aurora Arias visitó nuestro Departamento de lenguas y literaturas hispánicas en Stony Brook University para presentar por primera vez su novela Vida Verdadera en el Caribe (Caligrama, 2023). La novelista nos habló sobre su vida y nos explicó por qué ella se identifica como una autora feminista y activista. Lo que la llevó a dedicarse al activismo social es que en su país no existían lugares para ayudar a mujeres con problemas como el alcohol y las drogas y entonces ella decidió aportar con la literatura. Su nueva novela es como una continuación de sus otras obras literarias, muchas de las cuales han sido traducidas al inglés, francés y alemán.
Aurora Arias nos contó historias personales que la influenciaron al escribir su novela, como cuando conoció a mujeres que necesitaban ayuda y ella las plasmó en sus novelas, demostrando así la importancia que tiene su obra en la cultura dominicana. Además, la escritora nos narró la importancia que ha tenido la música en su familia y cómo ella fue iniciada en el canto por su abuela. Arias nos precisó que los espacios de su universo narrativo se mantienen siempre llenos de música y luego confesó, por primera vez en público, que de niña la llevaban a una estación de televisión a cantar y que allí le pusieron el sobrenombre de “La Estrellita”.
En su novela Vida Verdadera en el Caribe, Arias se enfoca en temas que impactan la sociedad dominicana y nos presenta la verdadera realidad del país. Su novela presenta problemas fundamentales en la vida de la isla, como el turismo sexual, la migración y la explotación de las mujeres. La República Dominicana es generalmente representada como un paraíso, pero ¿para quién es un paraíso? Arias explicó el papel que jugó la política gubernamental en la industria del turismo al promover oficialmente el slogan “sonría al turista”, proyectando así una imagen paradisíaca para los visitantes.
La novela muestra la importancia en el imaginario nacional de los turistas “gringos”, mayoritariamente europeos y norteamericanos, y el sueño común de que estos turistas van a sacar de la pobreza a las mujeres de la República Dominicana. Del mismo modo, esta idea ha aumentado el interés en el turismo sexual en la isla. Las mujeres tienen la esperanza de que estos hombres les puedan dar oportunidades para obtener una vida mejor y ayudar a sus familiares. Tanto en la realidad como en la novela, podemos ver que las mujeres dependen de estos hombres extranjeros para tener un mejor futuro. Realmente, lo que llama la atención es la normalización en la isla de este tipo de pensamiento y la valoración del turista, que es considerado como “un salvador”. Sin embargo, la profesora Corniel explicó que en esa dura economía del turismo “las mujeres se convierten en proveedoras de sus familias”. Esto transforma el papel tradicional asignado al género femenino y tiene, por tanto, un gran impacto en la estructura social dominicana.
Después de la actividad, la escritora nos concedió una breve entrevista. La conversación con Aurora Arias nos llevó a hablar de diferentes temas, como la migración e identidad.
P: ¿Qué nos puede decir sobre las razones de la gran emigración dominicana a Estados Unidos, especialmente a Nueva York?¿Viajan buscando el “sueño americano”?
ARIAS: Siempre me he preguntado hasta qué punto lo del sueño americano es o no un mito creado por los mismos estadounidenses. Supongo que para muchas personas luchar por conseguir ese sueño ha sido importante, lo han logrado o creen que se ha hecho realidad, sin importar el precio a pagar, y para otras no. Supongo también que el valor se lo da cada cual. Para mí particularmente no tiene un valor significativo.
Pregunta: ¿Usted cómo ve la identidad dominicana desde Estados Unidos? ¿Cree que pertenecer a la comunidad dominicana desde otro país es una experiencia distinta?
ARIAS: Emigré a Estados Unidos en una edad adulta en la que ya había vivido, me había formado académicamente y había publicado mis primeros libros en mi país. Por eso, años después de emigrar sigo sintiendo que pertenezco a la comunidad dominicana, sin importar a dónde vaya ni dónde esté. Lo que ha cambiado y se ha ampliado es mi visión de mí misma dentro del espacio social en el que ahora vivo, en el sentido de que más allá de ser dominicana o caribeña, ahora me identifico más como latina, algo que antes no me pasaba con la misma intensidad.
Pregunta: ¿Cómo ve usted la situación de los migrantes en su país, al ver que la sociedad dominicana ve a los “gringos” como gente mejor que a sus propios compatriotas dominicanos, y cómo influye esto en su libro?
ARIAS: Desde hace varias décadas y gobiernos se sembró en la sociedad dominicana la idea de que los gringos (y eso incluye a cualquier persona blanca, norteamericana o europea), poseen un poder y una superioridad especial, ya sea por su color de piel o por su condición económica. Como nuestra economía depende en un 15% de la industria del turismo, hay un constante tránsito de viajeros provenientes de Europa, Canadá y Estados Unidos, principalmente. A los dominicanos se nos ha inculcado que debemos ser “hospitalarios por naturaleza” con los turistas, mientras los turistas, viajeros y expatriados buscan obtener una porción del Paraíso, lo que a veces implica la explotación de los propios lugareños, el incremento del turismo sexual, la prostitución de menores, el tráfico de personas, etc. Muchos de estos europeos o norteamericanos se quedan a vivir en el país sin ocuparse de legalizar su estatus migratorio, pero no son perseguidos ni deportados como sucede con los haitianos. Todo esto y mucho más me influyó para escribir la novela.
Pregunta: ¿Cómo se sintió al hablar sobre su novela, Vida verdadera en el Caribe, por primera vez en público en la universidad de Stony Brook?
ARIAS: ¡Muy bien! Después de pasar años encerrada escribiendo una novela de 386 páginas, estar en un espacio acogedor y lleno de personas inteligentes, de diferentes edades, algunos estudiantes, otros profesores, interesadas en lo que escribo, es como el paraíso, no sólo para mí, sino para cualquier escritor o escritora. Siento que fue una excelente manera de “estrenar” la Vida verdadera en el Caribe.
En conclusión, Aurora Arias nos muestra con su libro cómo es la verdadera vida en el Caribe, dándole voz en esta novela y su obra anterior a diferentes tipos de personas con diferentes problemas sociales. En esta novela la escritora dominicana nos da una narrativa que se alimenta de temas como la migración, la miseria y el caos en un Santo Domingo agotado que lucha en contra de la pobreza, la desigualdad, y que también atraviesa por el peso de la discriminación que existe hacia personas procedentes de Haití, país con el que comparte la isla. Arias, empezó a publicar en la década de 1980, después de la segunda presidencia de Joaquín Balaguer. Los personajes de su mundo de ficción, como James Gatto y Gladys Agramonte, reflejan situaciones que revelan las preocupaciones sociales de la autora y nos hacen reflexionar sobre la realidad dominicana. Es un mundo lleno de conflictos, pero también lleno de vitalidad y sentido del humor. En fin, vemos como la República Dominicana puede llegar a ser un paraíso para los extranjeros blancos y adinerados, mientras que al mismo tiempo está muy lejos de serlo para los locales.
Aurora Arias nació en Santo Domingo en la República Dominicana, el 22 de abril de 1962. Es escritora, periodista, feminista y astróloga; además ha estudiado arte y psicología.
This past Thursday Nov 2, 2023, our department received the visit of professors Susana Bardavío Estebán (U of Burgos), Santiago Díaz Lage (UNED), María Xesús Lama (U of Barcelona) and Antonio Pedrós-Gascón (Colorado State U), who came to our campus to participate in a workshop on women writers and the representation of domestic violence in Spanish periodicals from the second half of the nineteenth century . The guests scholars participate in an international research group (GenViPreF) that collaborate in the preparation of databases, studies and editions of texts about gender and violence published in the Peninsular women’s press between the years 1848 to 1918 .
The workshop started after lunch in our doctoral seminar room with a fascinating conversation of Prof. Vialette and our Emeritus Professor Lou Charnon-Deutsch, author of Hold that Pose: Visual Culture in the Late Nineteenth-Century Periodical (2008) and other seminal publications on gender in Spanish literature of the 19th century. Prof. Charnon-Deutsch described the challenges of compiling data and doing archival research at the National Library in Madrid before the digital age and the impact that the digitalization of vast collections of periodicals in the last decade has had on our studies.
The second session was structured as a conference panel with three paper presentations in Spanish. Prof. Díaz Lage opened the table with a talk on a case of gender violence unusually alluded to in Ellas, one of the feminine periodicals, considering that these publications tended to avoid current events and politics. The second paper was presented by Prof. Bardavío on two novels published in El Correo de la Moda, and the particularities of the feminine Spanish role model compared to the Victorian ideal of the “angel in the house.” Finally, Prof. Pedrós-Gascón presented on Concepción Gimeno de Flaquer’s figure as an intellectual and how most of her novels represented conservative images of women, in contrast to her essays and political activity.
This enriching event was organized by our colleague Prof. Aurelie Vialette –a member of the GenViPref project–, together with María Xesús Lama and Álex Alonso Nogueira (Brooklyn College). The details of the full workshop can be seen in the poster and program here.
The Department of Hispanic Languages and Literature is holding its annual undergraduate informative session this Wed Oct 25th (2023) from 1.00 pm to 1.45 pm in the Humanities Building room 2036 (second floor). All interested students are welcome to attend and explore our courses, academic programs, cultural events and enjoy a free lunch!
The Open House will present an overview of our Major, Double Major, Minor, Honors Program, as well as our spring 24 course offerings, Teaching Program and the path to the BA/MAT. Explore our website for more information.
Students that came to Stony Brook with prior knowledge of Spanish (but no standardized tests, such as AP) should take the Foreign Language Placement Exam (FLPE) or a Challenge Exam. In either case, start by contacting the Language Learning Resource Center (LLRC). For more information on challenge exams (offered for SPN 112, SPN211, SPN212 and SPN311) see here or contact the Spanish director of undergraduate studies.
The Spanish Major (BA in Spanish) give students a solid education in the languages, literatures, cinema, arts and cultures of Latin America, Spain and the Latinx communities of the United States. The Major requires twelve Spanish courses in the 300/400 level. If the student decides to combine two majors (Double Major), the requirement of courses drops to ten. Many students do Double Majors in Spanish and Biology, for example, but combinations with English, History, Psychology or other languages are also popular.
The Spanish Minor is one of the largest and more popular Minors in the College of Arts and Sciences. Our Minor program is very flexible and requires six Spanish courses in the 300/400 level. Any student can easily change from a Minor to a Double Major. It only requires four more courses in Spanish.
Tip: Don’t forget to consult both directors of undergraduate studies to be sure that you can fulfill all requirements for your Double Major in time for graduation.
Students that are interested in research or are considering applying to graduate or professional schools (such as Medicine or Law), can explore our Honors Program, which is similar to our Major but requires a senior thesis.
Many of our Spanish Majors (BA in Spanish) opt for the Secondary Teaching Preparation Program (Teaching Certificate) or decide to pursue a 5-year combined BA with a Master of Arts in Teaching (BA/MAT). For all questions related to pedagogy courses and field experience, please see here or contact Prof. Sarah Jourdain.
If you have any questions about your Spanish courses or our Programs, email Prof. Joseph Pierce (Fall 23) or Daniela Flesler (Spring 24).
Born and raised in Chile, Sebastián López Vergara traversed the continent for his education and career as researcher and instructor in the field of Latinx and Indigenous Diaspora Studies. He came to our department under the IDEA Fellows program, a new Stony Brook initiative from the Office of the Provost designed to hire, engage, and mentor Inclusion, Diversity, Equity & Access (IDEA). The program brought this 2023 a total of eight fellows to our campus for two-year post docs with faculty positions at the lecturer level, and the option, after successful completion of the program, of staying as tenure-track assistant professors.
Sebastián holds a BA in English Literature and Linguistics from the Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile, and an MA and PhD from the University of Washington at Seattle in Comparative Literature, Cinema and Media. He has extensive experience in teaching and community outreach, and this fall 2023 he is offering a class in Spanish (SPN 415/510 Hispanic Cultures in Contact) centered on contemporary issues of land exploitation, Indigenous and feminist politics, racial oppression and justice, and colonial dispossession, as well as on different historical projects of social liberation from Mexico to Patagonia.
As a way of welcoming Sebastián to our academic community and getting to know him better, we engaged in a conversation on the train about his personal and academic background, his first impressions of New York and his plans for the following semesters.
PF: Sebastián, welcome to Stony Brook! The department is extremely glad and honored to have you in our team. I hope you had an uneventful moving experience from Seattle to New York. Since you have lived most of your life next to the Pacific Ocean, in Chile and Washington, any thoughts about your first encounters with the Atlantic and the New York area?
SLV: Thank you so much for the welcome! It’s been so good to be here these weeks, getting to know my colleagues, graduate and undergraduate students. They all have been so warm and genuinely friendly. It is indeed my first sustained encounter with the Atlantic. I always thought of New York as the northernmost Caribbean island with its rich and complex history of the Black diaspora. Being here, I’m starting to learn that it is that and also the histories of the Shinnecock as well as so many other diasporic/migrant communities, particularly these days, from Latin America, West Africa, and Asia. It is incredible to see that in the urban space where it materializes as a global and local experience.
PF: Can you tell us more about your academic background and previous community engagement?
SLV: My undergraduate education was in “letters” (Letras), in English, and that training taught me the centrality of language in all the operations of life. Not so much that language “creates” realities, but that it is indissoluble from the multiple and conflicting realities we socially create. But I felt uneasy with the “English” part of “letters,” having studied in Chile. And I’d say that this academic uneasiness became more noticeable after I read Edward Said’s Orientalism for an undergraduate literary theory class and, at the same time, a renewed cycle of Mapuche protests against state violence and for territorial autonomy in the late 2000s, early 2010s emerged in Chile. My graduate education, I am starting to realize, was my attempt to understand that. I studied Comparative Literature at the University of Washington, Seattle, where I had excellent mentors who trained me in the fields of Indigenous studies, critical theory, and Latin American cultural studies.
And, while I was writing the dissertation, I had the opportunity to be part of University Beyond Bars,an organization that offered post-secondary education to the incarcerated in the Washington State Reformatory in Monroe. With a good friend, I co-taught Spanish language and Latin American history and it was a really important pedagogical experience to facilitate the completion of incarcerated students’ associates’s degrees in such adverse conditions.
PF:. You recently defended your dissertation in Seattle, can you summarize the main ideas and research involved in that work?
SLV: My dissertation is titled “Archives of Post-Occupation: Indigenous Peoples and the Biopolitics of Modern Chile,” and studies discourses on Indigenous recognition and erasure in modern Chile as they relate to the histories of the Mapuche and Selk’nam peoples throughout the twentieth century. I close-read photographic collections, poetry, political theory, and testimonials, and propose three main points. The first one is to understand that the Chilean state used a range of colonial strategies of recognition and elimination that are seldom thought to work together in current scholarship to occupy Mapuche and Selk’nam territories. Second, to grasp that Mapuche and Selk’nam political traditions used the very same discourses on recognition and elimination to propose anticolonial strategies. The last point is to think that dispossession is organized by paradoxical relations of power. That is to say, the discourses that shape dispossession, as much as they support the violent displacement and oppression of Indigenous peoples, also function as levers for Indigenous anticolonial projects. Broadly speaking, I propose an approach to understanding shifting forms of power between the state and Indigenous peoples in twentieth-century Latin America.
1916 map of land ownership in Mapuche territory (Southern Chile)
PF: Your research and fascinating reflection on anticolonial projects immediately open a wider conversation about cultures and politics. I see in that dynamic of power that you describe a crucial political strategy since the colonial period, when natives would use Castilian laws and texts to defend their rights and recompose their traditions.
SLV: Exactly! For example, the political and spatial negotiations of the Mapuche with the Spanish crown in the Parliament of Quilin in 1641 articulate the contemporary Mapuche autonomist political project of recovery of Mapuche ancestral territories, Wallmapu, against ongoing Chilean state occupation of Mapuche lands. Similarly, in the Bolivian Andes, the movimiento de apoderados generales, an Indigenous movement that sought to defend communal lands (the ayllu) in the late 1800s, found in the declassification of colonial land titles from the archives a tool to stop land dispossession in oligarchic Bolivia.
PF: We are currently at a very exciting moment at Stony Brook for the development of Indigenous Studies, how do you see the future of that field?
SLV:The future looks really promising. I could just mention, for example, how the current dialogues between Native American studies and Latin American Indigenous studies are very fruitful in developing a hemispheric understanding of Indigenous politics and culture and colonialism. That means being very attentive to particular histories, intellectual and political traditions while, simultaneously, understanding those formations relationally without abstracting their differences. In fact, I think the fields are very intentional in learning from the histories and “methods” of Indigenous politics and activism since these have always been in dialogue across geographies. I’d also say that a really important development is taking place through this dialogue, which is to think of Indigenous forced migration and diaspora as a structuring reality across contemporary Indigenous societies. I think this last point is extremely important since it underscores how the shared experiences of Indigenous migration across the hemisphere are shaping emerging understandings of Indigeneity and strategies to contend with state and economic structures driving the forced displacement of different communities. Or, to put it simply, I think the question that is making the field of Indigenous studies so productive is to understand how the multiple histories of Indigenous politics have strived to create truly democratic societies. And that’s a very pressing question in today’s political climate.
PF: Considering those migrations and diasporas that have changed the human landscape of the Americas and are currently re-shaping our societies here in New York, how do you see your research and teaching in relation to inclusion, diversity, equity and access, which are the keywords and core values of the IDEA fellows program?
SLV: I think being now in a Hispanic Languages and Literature department is extremely advantageous to address those core values. With the student body changing the university, I think HLL has a very important role in attending to the questions that Latinx, Indigenous, Afro-Latinx, and other minoritized students (both graduate and undergraduate) have about the field, the knowledges they’re learning, and the university itself. I think that listening to those questions, about the changing character and patterns of migration, as well as the social, cultural, and political relations that shape displacements and many other issues will not only reveal to students “alternative histories” and “knowledges” that were previously considered as “differences to be suppressed” or “peripheries” and not as core forms of knowing. But also, and I think this is very important, focusing on these questions brings the possibility of unsettling categories that were thought to be self-evident in the field and that still organize it. In other words, I think that it is the kinds of questions that students are posing around access, linguistic/cultural diversity, and inclusion and equity that actualize the role of education at the university level.
I also think that the emerging institutional ties between different departments at Stony Brook to support the creation of a Native American and Indigenous Studies minor and program are extremely important, and I’m more than happy to support that effort. I think it’s instances like this that take up the spirit of land acknowledgments (that we all reckon with Indigenous presence and tenure of the land) with concrete institutional practices that start undoing histories of dispossession and inequalities.
PF: Indeed, this scenario of interdepartmental collaboration and institutional support is already creating new conversations on campus and the community. It seems that we have an exciting road ahead!
Sebastián being tested by the Long Island Rail Road in his first week of classes.