TEXAS TECH UNIVERSITY
DEPARTMENT OF CLASSICAL & MODERN LANGUAGES & LITERATURES

GRADUATE PROGRAM IN SPANISH

Spanish Graduate Faculty 

Laura J. Beard, 
Associate Professor (Ph.D., Johns Hopkins, 1994) specializes in women writers of the Americas, twentieth-century Latin American narrative, and critical theory. She has published articles on narratives by Julieta Campos, Luisa Futoransky, Ana María Shua, Nélida Piñon, Helena Parente Cunha and Jorge Luis Borges, narratives by First Nations women of British Columbia and she is currently finishing work on a book on contemporary women writers of the Americas. She spent the 1999-2000 academic year as a Fulbright Senior Scholar in Mexico doing research on the social construction of gender. She has also received grants for other research projects in Mexico, Brazil and Argentina.  She has participated in NEH summer programs in narrative theory, and in environmental ethics and issues in Alaska as well as a Newberry Library summer institute on "American Indian Autobiography as Tribal and Personal History: Who Gets to Tell the Story?"  Dr. Beard also teaches courses in Brazilian literature and is on the faculties of Comparative Literature, Women's Studies, and Latin American and Iberian Studies. She is Editor of the comparative literature journal Intertexts. laura.beard@ttu.edu

John Beusterien, Associate Professor (Ph.D., University of Wisconsin-Madison, 1997) specializes in early Spanish literature and culture, especially sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Spanish drama.  His research focuses on race theory and subaltern studies, approaches to transatlantic studies, and aesthetics in literary studies.  He has published articles on anti-Semitism, Black Spanish, psychoanalysis, pedagogy and post-colonial studies in the Spanish comedia.  He is the author of An Eye on Race: Perspectives from Theater in Imperial Spain (Bucknell University Press, forthcoming).  john.beusterien@ttu.edu

George Cole, Assistant Professor (Ph.D., Arizona State University, 2005) specializes in 20th-century Latin American literature and culture, with an emphasis on Cuba and Puerto Rico, on Afro-Cuban literature, culture and religions, and on 20th-century Latin American drama. Dr. Cole, who also holds a degree in French language and literature from the University of Puerto Rico, has over 12 years of experience working in the theatre as an actor, producer and director. He has been nominated to an AriZoni Theatre Award twice for his work as an actor in the plays "The Mission" and "Romeo y Julieta". He is currently researching the way Santería is represented in the Cuban cultural production of the past 100 years and how this representation varies based on the historical period in which it was produced. He also researches Caribbean ritual theatre, theatre as a tool for social criticism and change, and Cuban and Puerto Rican cinema. Dr. Cole’s professional papers and presentations treat themes ranging from the artistic production of Roberto Ramos Perea to the portrayal of popular culture in literature. george.cole@ttu.edu

Idoia Elola, Assistant Professor of Spanish and Applied Linguistics (Ph.D., University of Iowa, 2005). She holds degrees in English Philology, Teaching Spanish as  a Second Language, and Second language Acquistion from Universidad del País Vasco, Universidad Complutense de Madrid and the University of Iowa. Her research interests include: Foreign language writing; feedback in writing and speaking; language and gender issues in language acquisition; context as a factor in language acquisition; technology as a variable in language acquisition; and classroom-based research. She has published articles on the topics of gendered language and the use of technology in the language classroom. idoia.elola@ttu.edu

Antonio Ladeira, Assistant Professor of Portuguese (Ph.D., University of California at Santa Barbara, 1999), Lecturer of Portuguese at Yale University, 1997-2002. His research interests include 19th- and 20th- century literatures of Brazil and Portugal, contemporary fiction and poetry of Lusophone African countries, contemporary Iberian and Latin American poetry, immigration literature and Portuguese American and Portuguese Canadian literature of the diaspora. He is the author of a book on poetry Uma Obscura Soberania: a questao da subjectividade em 'Poesia Toda' de Herberto Helder (Angelus Novus, forthcoming). He has published articles in books, anthologies and journals on Afro-Luso-Brazilian literary topics. Among the classes he has designed and taught are numerous courses on Portuguese, Brazilian and Lusophone African literatures, film and culture. He has taught and coordinated Language Courses in Portuguese and Spanish. Dr. Ladeira was the main organizer of two international conferences at Yale University on 'Luso-American Literature' (2001) and on the 'Portuguese and Brazilian novel' (2002). He has published three books of his own poetry: A Minha Cor Favorita e a Neve (2000), Todas as Linguas Sao Estrangeiras (1996) and As Sombras do Silencio (1987). antonio.ladeira@ttu.edu

Carmen Pereira-Muro, Assistant Professor (Ph.D., University of Wisconsin-Madison, 1998) specializes in 18th- and 19th-century studies, with a focus on questions of gender and nationalism. Dr. Pereira-Muro, who also holds a degree in Geography, History and Art from the Universidad de Santiago de Compostela in Spain, has published on 18th-century male friendship poetry and the construction of gendered sensibilities. She is preparing a book for publication on Emilia Pardo Bazán and the role of the intellectual woman on 19th-century central and regional nationalisms. She also researches Galician studies and her next research project is on the transatlantic relations between Cuba and Galicia's cultural nationalisms at the end of the 19th century and beginning of the 20th. Dr. Pereira-Muro is the author of Culturas de España: Una perspectiva histórica y temática, a textbook for upper-level students of Spanish. Culturas de España challenges the traditional teaching of "Spanish civilization,” emphasizing topics such as Spain's cultural plurality, women's history, and the political values of "culture" in the era of small nationalisms. carmen.pereira@ttu.edu

Alberto Julián Pérez, Professor (Ph.D., New York University, 1986) teaches nineteenth-century Spanish American literature, Modernism, twentieth-century Spanish American poetry, Spanish American essay, and Jorge Luis Borges. His books include Poética de prosa de Jorge Luis Borges (Gredos, 1986); La poética de de Rubén Darío (Orígenes, 1992); Modernismo, Vanguardias, Posmodernidad (Corregidor, 1995) Los dilemas políticos de la cultura letrada (Corregidor, 2003). He is the author of more than 60 journal articles or chapters in books, published or currently in press, and is presently working on a research project on the Spanish American Essay. Professor Pérez is Director of the Latin American & Iberian Studies Program and President of Instituto Sarmiento de Sociología e Historia of the Southwest of USA.  julian.perez@ttu.edu

Genaro J. Pérez
, Professor (Ph.D., Tulane, 1976) has specialized in the contemporary novel, both Peninsular and Latin American, teaching these fields as well as courses in the Mexican novel and the Hispanic novel in the United States. His research interests include the twentieth-century English and American novel in relation to their counterparts in Spanish, as well as the areas of oral literature, Hispanic children's literature, and Spanish detective fiction. His publications include Formalist Elements in the Novels of Juan Goytisolo; La novelística de J. Leyva; La novela como burla/juego: siete experimentos novelescos de Gonzalo Torrente Ballester; La narrativa de Concha Alós: texto, pretexto y contexto; and Ortodoxia y Heterodoxia de la novela policiaca hispana: Variaciones sobre el género negro; plus more than 100 articles and papers on the foregoing and on other novelists such as Carlos Fuentes, Camilo José Cela, Julio Cortázar, Teresa Pamies, Gustavo Sainz, Juan García Ponce, Rosa Montero, Carmen Riera, and Manuel Puig, as well as studies on García Lorca and Chicano literature. He is co-editor of Monographic Review/Revista monográfica (monographicreview.org) and Book Review Editor of Hispania. His present work-in-progress is a monograph elucidating the typology of intertextuality in selected post-modern Hispanic writers. He has published poetry (Prosapoemas, 1980) and fiction (The Memoirs of John Conde, 2000). genaro.perez@ttu.edu

Janet Isabel Pérez,
Paul Whitfield Horn Professor, Qualia Chair in Spanish (Ph.D., Duke, 1961) specializes in twentieth-century Spanish literature, with emphasis on the post-Civil War novel. Her teaching fields include all genres for twentieth-century Peninsular literature-poetry, theater, prose fiction, and essay—and she has published in all of these areas. Her books include The Major Themes of Existentialism in the Works of Ortega y Gasset (1970); Ana María Matute (1971); Miguel Delibes (1972); Novelistas femeninas de la postguerra española [ed.] (1983); Gonzalo Torrente Ballester (1984); Women Writers of Contemporary Spain (1988); Critical Studies on Gonzalo Torrente Ballester [ed. W/Stephen Miller] (1988); The Spanish Civil War in Literature [ed. w/Wendell Aycock] (1990); Dictionary of Literature of the Iberian Peninsula [ed. w/Germán Bleiberg and Maureen Ihrie], 2 vols. (1993); Modern & Contemporary Spanish Women Poets (1996; CD-ROM, 1997);  Camilo José Cela Revisited: The Later Novels (2000); and Feminist Encyclopedia of Spanish Literature [ed. w/Maureen Ihrie, 2002]. She has published more than 230 articles and chapters in books, more than 80 of them on women, and presented more than 150 professional papers. Her current research involves a second book on Spanish women poets, 1969-2000. Dr. Pérez is co-editor of Monographic ReviewlRevista monográfica, and Editor of Hispania, national journal of AATSP. janet.perez@ttu.edu

Comfort Pratt, Assistant Professor of Spanish and Applied Linguistics; Coordinator of First Year Spanish (Ph.D., Louisiana State University, 2000). She holds degrees in Spanish, French, Linguistics, and Translation from University of Ghana, Universidad Complutense de Madrid, and Texas A&M University. Her areas of specialization and research include linguistics, pedagogy, translation, and Peninsular literature. Her teaching fields include a wide range of courses pertaining to Applied Linguistics, Second/Foreign Language Teaching, Spanish language, Translation, and Medieval and Golden Age literature. She also has a lot of experience in program coordination and curriculum design. Dr. Pratt is the author of El español del noroeste de Luisiana: Pervivencia de un dialecto amenazado (Spanish in Northwestern Louisiana: Survival of a Threatened Dialect), which was published in 2004 by Editorial Verbum of Madrid, Spain. She is currently working on the English translation of her book. c.pratt@ttu.edu

Rosslyn M. Smith,
Professor, Assistant Vice Provost, Director of the Teaching, Learning & Technology Center (Ph.D., New Mexico, 1975), works in applied and descriptive linguistics, Spanish linguistics, and the teaching of English as a second language. She has recently been named Vice Provost for Distance Learning. rosslyn.smith@ttu.edu

Susan Isabel Stein,
Associate Professor (Ph.D., University of California, Irvine, 1991) specializes in Spanish American prose fiction and offers courses on colonial chronicles, nineteenth-century prose fiction,  vanguardista/criollista/indigenista prose fiction and critical/literary theory. She has written articles on Sor Juana and Inca Garcilaso, nineteenth-century literature, twentieth-century novels and psychoanalytic theory, and is currently at work on a book project on Inca Garcilaso's Historia general del Perú. She is the Spanish graduate program admissions advisor.  susanisabel.stein@ttu.edu  
Web page: http://www5.tltc.ttu.edu/sstein

Jorge Zamora,
Assistant Professor (Ph.D.,Texas Tech University, 1999) also holds a law degree from Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México (his thesis dealt with corporate and mercantile law and he practiced law in Mexico City for nearly a decade). Dr. Zamora has taught Spanish conversation for Law Enforcement, Spanish for Banking Professionals, for Spanish Speakers, and Commercial Spanish, and has worked as a research assistant and international business consultant to the International Trade Center as well as a freelance translator. His professional papers and presentations treat themes ranging from Francisco Ayala to Renaissance poetry; immigration, investment, and trade law; and numerous aspects of doing business in Mexico.  jorge.zamora@ttu.edu

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