Staff Instructor in Spanish Noelia Cigarroa-Cooke and Professor of Spanish Carlos de Oro presented the paper “Monstruosidad y poder: Alegorías de la injusticia en Sin señas particulares y La llorona” at the 77th annual convention of the Rocky Mountains Modern Language Association in Las Vegas, NV, on October 10-12.

Sabrina Woodward ’25 presented the paper “Motocicleta lúdica/Playful motorcycle” at the Latin American and Latinx Studies Symposium held at Rollins College on March 22. Her presentation was based on the course “Leisure and Play in Latin America” (Fall 2023) that Sabrina took with Associate Professor of Spanish María de los Ángeles Rodriguez Cadena, who mentored her to present at the Symposium.

Professor of Spanish Carlos de Oro presented the paper “Revelando el impacto y el trauma del conflicto armado: La espectralidad como estrategia cinematográfica en el cine colombiano del nuevo milenio” at the 2024 Southwest Council on Latin American Studies in Panama City, Panama.

Professor of Spanish Katy Ross and Andrea Stanescu ’24 presented their paper “La doble alteridad en Carmen & Lola” at the Northeastern Modern Languages Conference in Boston, MA, March 8-10.

Associate Professor of Spanish Abby Dings and coauthor Tammy Jandrey Hertel of the University of Lynchburg presented a talk titled “The study abroad experiences of heritage Spanish speakers” at the Georgetown University Round Table on Languages and Linguistics (GURT) in Washington, D.C., March 1-3, 2024. This year’s theme was “Education Abroad: Language, Learners, and Communities.”

Assistant Dean of Strategic Initiatives and Professor of Spanish Laura Senio Blair had her article titled “Unlocking the Door to Shadow and Substance: Nona Fernández’s La dimensión desconocida” published in the 50th issue of the journal Ciberletras: Revista de crítica literaria y de cultura. Learn more here.

Professor of Spanish Katy Ross had an article, “Las técnicas de reproducción asistida y la donación: el caso de Samanta Villar,” published in the Revista de ALCE SXXI, Journal of Contemporary Spanish Literature and Film.

Associate Professor of Spanish Abby Dings and coauthor Tammy Jandrey Hertel of the University of Lynchburg presented a talk titled “Language Variation and Standard Language Ideologies in Spanish Classrooms” at the American Council on the Teaching of Foreign Languages (ACTFL) Annual Convention and World Languages Expo held November 17–19 in Chicago, Illinois.

Associate Professor of Spanish María de los Ángeles Rodríguez Cadena presented “Ecofeminismo y poesía indígena Latinoamericana” at the Asociación de Estudios de Género y Sexualidades Conference at the Universidad Autonóma de Querétaro. Querétaro, Mexico. October 5-7, 2023.

Staff Instructor of Spanish Noelia Cigarroa-Cooke and Associate Professor of Spanish María de los Ángeles Rodríguez Cadena presented research papers at the annual Canadian Association of Hispanic Studies Conference in Ottawa, Ontario, June 3-5, 2023. Cigarroa-Cooke presented “En las entretelas del corazón guatemalteco: tradición y justicia en la película La Llorona de Jayro Bustamante (Guatemala, 2020).” Rodríguez Cadena presented “Mujeres del pasado en las series históricas de televisión en México.”

Professor of Spanish Katy Ross and Bailey Barlow ’23 had their second co-authored article come out in print. The article “The Mother-Daughter Relationship in Gazpacho Agridulce” was published in Hispanic Journal vol. 44, no. 1 (spring 2023).

Professor of Spanish Katy Ross and Bailey Barlow ’23 presented their paper “The Mother-Daughter Relationship in Gazpacho Agridulce” at the Northeast Modern Language Association conference in Niagara Falls, New York, on Saturday, March 25. A longer version of this paper has been accepted for publication in Hispanic Journal and will come out this summer.

Professor of Communications Studies Valerie Renegar and Kristi Cole co-edited the book Refiguring Motherhood Beyond Biology, which was published this month. The book features essays that challenge the biological expectations of motherhood and features work by communication, rhetoric, and motherhood scholars across the country, including Southwestern’s Renegar, Assistant Professor of Communication Studies Lamiyah Bahrainwala, Professor of Spanish Katy Ross, and her student Bailey Barlow ’23.

Professor of Spanish Laura Senio Blair 2023 has been selected as one of the Associated Colleges of the South (ACS) 10 academic leadership fellows. The program is aimed at providing leadership experiences to a diverse cohort of humanities faculty members and will combine leadership training, mentoring, and hands-on leadership experiences for a diverse group of tenured humanities faculty as they enter administration leadership.

Professor of Spanish Katy Ross, Visiting Assistant Professor of Political Science Katie Aha, and Catherine Hiebel ’22 published an article in Women’s Studies: An Interdisciplinary Journal. Their article, “Populism and Surrogacy in Spain,” can be found here.

Associate Professor of Spanish Abby Dings and coauthor Tammy Jandrey Hertel of the University of Lynchburg presented at the Heritage Languages Special Interest Group panel of the American Council on the Teaching of Foreign Languages (ACTFL) Annual Convention and World Languages Expo held November 18-20 in Boston, Massachusetts. Their talk, titled “Heritage Spanish Speakers’ Reflections on Their Study Abroad Experiences,” was based on a thematic analysis of follow-up interviews with a subset of participants who had completed their original survey. It explored how the participants’ heritage speaker status impacted their study abroad experiences.

Professor of Spanish Katy Ross presented a paper titled “La Adopción Internacional en La Adopción de Daniela Féjerman” at the Asociación Internacional de Literatura y Cine Españoles Siglo XXI annual conference, held July 12–15 in Oviedo, Spain.

Spanish majors Evelyn Eason ’22 and Danielle Perales ’23 presented papers at the Latin American and Latinx Studies Symposium at Rollins College on April 8. Eason presented “Poesia Indígena y Ecofeminismo en la Obra de Irma Pineda Santiago (Indigenous Poetry and Ecofeminism in the Work of Irma Pineda Santiago).” This presentation is based on her Spanish honor thesis. Perales presented “La Importancia de Conocer: El Humanismo Lúdico en Diarios de Motocicleta(The Power of Knowledge: Ludic Humanism in The Motorcycle Diaries).” Both presentations were delivered in Spanish and stemmed from upper-level courses taught by Associate Professor of Spanish María de los Ángeles Rodriguez Cadena.

Staff Instructor in Spanish Noelia Cigarroa-Cooke and Professor of Spanish Carlos de Oro copresented the paper “En el Umbral de la Pubertad: Viaje al Interior Femenino en Niña Errantede Rubén Mendoza” at the Southeastern Council of Latin American Studies 69th Annual Meeting, held March 10–12 in Charlotte, North Carolina.

Professor of Spanish Katy Ross, visiting Assistant Professor of Political Science Katie Aha, and Catherine Hiebel ’22 presented a panel titled “Populism and Surrogacy in Spain” at the XXIX Congreso Internacional de Literatura y Estudios Hispánicos, held March 8–10 in San Juan, Puerto Rico. Ross presented “Surrogacy in Spain: the Bioethical and Feminist concerns”; Aha presented “Populism and Surrogacy”; and Hiebel presented “Spanish Populist Parties and Their Positions on Surrogacy.” The three were told that their presentation was the most coherent and organized panel the audience heard.

Associate Professor of Spanish Abby Dings presented a talk titled “Heritage Spanish Speakers’ Reflections on Their Unique Study Abroad Experiences” with coauthor Tammy Jandrey Hertel of the University of Lynchburg at the 9th National Symposium on Spanish as a Heritage Language, held February 24–26 in Tallahassee, Florida.

Associate Professor of Spanish Abby Dings presented a recorded talk titled “The Unique Experiences of Heritage Spanish Speakers Studying Abroad” with her collaborator Tammy Jandrey Hertel (University of Lynchburg) at the 2021 American Council on the Teaching of Foreign Languages (ACTFL) Annual Convention and World Languages Expo, which was held virtually November 19–21.

Professor of Spanish Laura Senio Blair presented a paper at the International Conference of Hispanic Women Filmmakers titled “Burying Ashes and Making Dust: Memorial Acts in the Latin American Road Movie.” The paper analyzed how Ecuadorian film director Tania Hermida subverts and decenters the traditional (Hollywood) characteristics of road films to represent a Latin American and feminist perspective. 

Professor of Spanish and Wilhelmina Cullen Robertson Endowed Professor Katy Ross presented a talk titled “Faculty-Student Research in Spanish” at the virtual 2021 Mountain Interstate Foreign Language Conference, held October 7–9.

An article cowritten by Professor of Spanish Katy Ross and Lizzeth Cepeda Lozano ’20, “La Adopción China en El Alfabeto de los Pájarosde Nuria Barrios,” was recently published by ConSecuencias.

Professor of Spanish Katy Ross presented a paper titled “La Ovodonación Dentro del Marco Neoliberal” at the ALCE SXXI virtual conference during the week of July 12–16.

Double major in Spanish and environmental studies Jasmine Herrera ’21 and history major Saul Zuñiga ’22 presented “Mapping the Past” at the ninth Phi Alpha Theta History Conference, held at Texas State University (TSU) on April 24, 2021. Their poster was awarded first place for undergraduate virtual presentations. The poster was selected from 19 submissions by students from TSU, Baylor, and UT Dallas, and the award included an honorarium and a certificate.

Please join us in congratulating the recipients of the following awards:

• 2021 Teaching Awards
• Tenured: Associate Professor of Education Alicia Moore
• Tenure-track: Assistant Professor of Business Gabriela Flores
• Visiting, part-time, and staff with faculty rank: Director of General Chemistry Labs Willis Weigand
• 2021 Jesse E. Purdy Excellence in Scholarly and Creative Works Award
• Tenured: Associate Professor of Communication Studies Bob Bednar
• Tenure-track: Assistant Professor of History Joseph Hower
• 2021 Excellence in Advising Award
  • Professor of Spanish Laura Senio Blair

Double major in Spanish and environmental studies Jasmine Herrera ’21 and history major Saul Zuñiga ’22 presented a paper titled “Mapping the Past: A Look into the Distribution of Midwives from Escuela Libre de Obstetricia y Enfermeria in Mexico City during the 1920s and 30s” at the 9th Phi Alpha Theta History Conference organized by Texas State University and held virtually on April 24, 2021. Herrera and Zuñiga undertook their research, wrote the paper, and prepared the presentation under the mentorship of Associate Professor of History Jethro Hernández Berrones during the 2020–2021 academic year. You can see their presentation here.

Associate Professor of Spanish Ángeles Rodriguez Cadena moderated the panel “Music and Social Movements” at the Latin American and Latinx Studies Symposium, an annual undergraduate event organized by Rollins College, which was held virtually on April 9 this year.

Jasmine Herrera  ’21, double major in Spanish and environmental studies, presented a paper in Spanish titled “La Revolución de Testimonios en el Gran Abismo de Chile” as part of the panel “Reexamining Historical Events” at the Latin American and Latinx Studies Symposium, an annual undergraduate event organized by Rollins College, which was held virtually on April 9 this year. Herrera wrote that paper for Associate Professor of Spanish Ángeles Rodriguez Cadena’s class Cultural Memory in Latin America.

Associate Professor of Spanish Abby Dings presented a poster titled “On Becoming Bilingual: Students’ Language Ideologies in a (Second) Language Acquisition Course” with her collaborator Suzanne García-Mateus (California State University, Monterey Bay) at the American Association for Applied Linguistics annual conference, which was held virtually March 20–23, 2021.

Professor of Spanish Katy Ross and Bailey Barlow ’23 presented a paper titled “The Commercialization of Infertility: Quien Quiere Ser Madre (2017) by Silvia Nanclares” at the 2021 MLA Annual Convention on January 8. The talk was part of the panel “Politics as Usual: Women Writers in Contemporary Spain Confronting a Bias System,” and the paper is the result of a faculty–student research project that began in the summer of 2020 and was made possible by funding from the Wilhelmina Cullen Robertson endowed professorship held by Ross.

Professor of Spanish Katy Ross and Lizzeth Cepeda Lozano ’20 had their article “Un Viaje Fantástico: La Adopción China en El Alfabeto de los Pájaros de Nuria Barrios” accepted for publication in the Journal ConSecuencias. The article started as a summer faculty–student research project and continued as a semester-long independent study that culminated in this publication. Ross and Lozano examine the adoption of Chinese babies by Spanish families, as depicted in the novel El Alfabeto de los Pájaros  by Nuria Barrios.

Associate Professor of Spanish Carlos de Oro published the article “Cine de Guerra, Drama, Comedia y Thriller: Representaciones del Trauma, La Violencia, y la Insuficiencia Estatal en el Cine Colombiano” in the peer-reviewed journal Hispanófila.

Professor of Spanish Katy Ross  participated in Maternidad, Reproducción Social y Cuidados en la É poca Neoliberal: Descolonizando el Imaginario Patriarcal,  a virtual conference hosted by the Asociación Internacional de Literatura y Cine Españoles Siglo XXI (ALCES XXI) July 13–16. She presented the paper “Maternofobia: El Miedo a la Maternidad Patriarcal,” in which Ross analyzes the book Maternofobia  by Diana López Varela. The conference was scheduled to be held in Oviedo, Spain.

Associate Professor of Spanish Carlos de Oro  published an article titled “Traveling Narratives, Neorealism, and Marginalization: Ciro Guerra’s Cinema of Denunciation and Resistance” in the peer-reviewed journal Latin American Perspectives . He also presented a paper about the same topic at the 2020 Southeastern Council of Latin American Studies conference in Austin, TX.