News

 

Commencement 2006

Led by Kelsey Riley, the CAS Dean's Outstanding Senior for Romance Languages, RLL students received their diplomas at General Commencement on May 14th, 2006. The keynote speaker at RLL's Commencement Celebration was UB Law student Cindy Navarro, class of 1999 with a BA in Spanish and Social Sciences Interdisciplinary and a minor in Latino studies.

  

     

     

     

     

     

 

New faculty

The Department is very pleased to welcome two new full-time faculty members this year: Professor Colleen Culleton (PhD Cornell University), who works on modern peninsular Spanish and Catalan, and Professor Dario Brancato (PhD University of Toronto), who works on the language and literature of medieval Italy.

 

RLL recent faculty highlights

RLL faculty have enjoyed a busy and productive spring and summer. Amy C. Graves received a prestigious Humanities Institute Fellowship which will enable her to complete a research project on the uses of propaganda during Europe's Wars of Religion. Ramón Soto-Crespo was given a Nuala Drescher Award to enable him to complete a book-length manuscript to be entitled "Primitive Futures: Sexual Variance, Cultural Landscapes, and Latin American Writing." Christian Flaugh traveled in the Caribbean this summer doing research on ... and meeting with writer Aimé Césaire. Galen Brokaw has begun a one-year visiting assistant professorship at Harvard University. Maureen Jameson traveled in the Middle East recruiting for UB and developing collaborations for Litgloss.

 

Soto-Crespo's work focus of Baldy Center event

Ramón Soto-Crespo's recently compled manuscript, entitled The Mainland Passage: Migration, Cultural Anomaly, and Puerto Rican Writing, will be the focus of a Book Manuscript Workshop organized by the Baldy Center on October 10th from 2:00 to 5:00 pm. Guest commentators include Professor Arcadio Diaz-Quiñones , Emory L. FordChair of Spanish at Princeton University, and Professor Donald Pease, Avalon Foundation Chair of the Humanities at Dartmouth College. The event is free and open to the public.

 

César A. Salgado to lecture on Joyce

Havana Joyce: Translating "A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man" into Revolutionary Cuba (1964) will be the title of a lecture by César A. Salgado, Associate Professor in the Department of Spanish and Portuguese at the University of Texas at Austin (UT) on Wednesday October 4, 2006 in 930 Clemens Hall. Says Professor Salgado:

Considerations about the relationship of Joyce's work to European imperial history or postcolonial theory should not be limited to a new revisionist analysis of Joyce's texts according to postcolonial principles and precepts (exemplified by Vincent Cheng's Joyce, Race, and Empire). It would be also illuminating to consider how Joyce's works have been translated, read, and interpreted in colonial and postcolonial contexts where critical awareness of "First World" forms of domination, prejudice, and exploitation would translate into a type of reception very different from that of Joyce's "intended" Anglo-European audience. A history of the reception of Joyce in the Third World--in Latin America in particular--would help demonstrate the most discernible elements in Joyce's critique of colonialism. In their readings of Joyce, Latin American writers tend to emphasize the political dimensions of his work as much as the literary or technical ones, a result perhaps of a process of self-recognition--of anagnorisis--in the colonial or postcolonial representations present in Joyce.

In this paper I will concentrate on the reception of Joyce's work in Cuba during the Revolutionary Period after 1959. First I briefly review the history of the dissemination and reading of Joyce through different cultural periods in the history of Cuba: 1. the period of "Plattismo" during the 1920's and 30's (including the Machado regime), when references to Joyce's work could be found in articles in avant-garde journals penned by Alejo Carpentier, Lino Nov´s Calvo, and other writers; 2. the "Batistato" in the 30's, 40's, and 50's, concentrating on references in articles published in journals such as José Lezama Lima's Espuela de Plata and Orígenes. I then move to the Revolutionary Period, first commenting on the writings of Guillermo Cabrera Infante and the "Lunes de Revolución" group of writers in the early 60's to discern to what extent Lukács' critique of Joyce's high modernism took root in Marxist Cuba and to what extent a positive evaluation of Joycean aesthetics due precisely to a recognition of the anti-colonial elements in his work overrides Lukács' critique in the Cuban reading.

In the core of the paper I analyze the motives behind writer Edmundo Desnoes' publication of an "improved" Spanish translation of A Portrait of the Artist as a A Young Man early during the revolutionary period under the auspices of the UNEAC (the Cuban Union of Writers) and the Biblioteca del Pueblo. I will make comments about the colloquial style of this little known Cuban translation of Portrait in order to see how this edition was done to de-legitimize and override the estheticism of the canonical 1926 translation by Dámaso Alonso and make Joyce's modernism more congruent to Cuban revolutionary ideology.

Professor Salgado's lecture is ponsored by the Program in Caribbean Studies, the Department of Comparative Literature, and the Department of Romance Languages and Literatures.

 

Symposium: Rethinking the Americas

RLL and co-sponsors invite students and faculty to a symposium to be held on October 11th, 2006. "Rethinking the Americas" seeks to provide a forum for the exchange of ideas across languages and geographical regions within the Americas. In establishing a format for Latin American and Anglo-American dialogue, the symposium begins with a lecture by

Professor Arcadio Díaz-Quiñones (Emory L. Ford Chair of Spanish, Princeton University) on the work of Caribbean cultural theorist Antonio Benítez Rojo.
"Antonio Benítez Rojo: Exile and Shipwreck in The Repeating Island."
11: 00 A.M. in 904 Clemens Hall

followed by

Professor Donald E. Pease (Avalon Foundation Chair of the Humanities, Dartmouth College), who will lead a manuscript workshop on his research on American philosopher Ralph Waldo Emerson.
"'Experience,' Anti-Slavery, and the Crisis of Emersonianism."
1:30 p.m. in 436 Clemens Hall.

Both events are free and open to the public. For a copy of Professor Pease's article and/or other information, contact Professor Ramón E. Soto-Crespo.

 

RLL students honored

At an awards ceremony held on Friday, September 29th, the Educational Opportunity Program recognized UB undergraduates for having achieved high academic distinction. Among the group were several Romance Languages students:

• Jesus M. Fuentes
• Catherine Garcia
• Geraldine Lee
• Rosario E. Malaver
• Sara T. Marioles
• Leonardo Panchon
• Gabriela Perez
• Jose Perez
• Lisett Planche
• Angel Rosa

Congratulations to all for outstanding performance.

 

Alberto Moreiras lectures

Alberto Moreiras, Professor at the University of Aberdeen, spoke on Monday, February 5 with the title "Infrapolitics and the Thriller: A Prolegomenon to Every Possible Form of Anti-Moralist Literary Criticism." He is the author of Interpretación y diferencia (1991), Tercer espacio: Literatura y duelo en América Latina (1999), The Exhaustion of Difference: The Politics of Latin American Cultural Studies (2001); he is also co-editor with Nelly Richard of Retrazos de la transición (2001) and co-editor of the Journal of Spanish Cultural Studies.

 

"Albertine en cinq temps" French-language play performed

The weekend of February 10th saw the presentation of Québecois author Michel Tremblay's Albertine en cinq temps by the Théâtre de la chandelle verte. The performance was described by NYU's Judith Miller in these terms: "How does she go on? This Albertine trampled by life, surviving all the same with a blend of self deprecation, urban pluck, and profound joy in the beauty that a night sky and rural landscape can still offer... Francine Conley takes us on a moving and revealing five-stop voyage with Albertine at different moments of her life: a wise incarnation of the spirit of a certain Quebec but, also, of human indomitability writ large."

 

Amy Graves to present research

On March 5th, French professor Amy Graves will present a Humanities Institute Fellows Lecture entitled "The History of Our Time: A Revolutionary Moment for Propaganda." Serving as respondent will be Distinguished Professor of History Jonathan S. Dewald, and the moderator will be Professor Randy Schiff of the Department of English. The lecture will take place at 4:00 pm at UB's Center for the Arts in the Screening Room.

 

Three RLL Graduate Teaching Assistants honored for excellence

On Friday, March 23 at 3:00 pm in the Screen Room of the Center for the Arts, the University community will honor recipients of the coveted Graduate Student Excellence in Teaching Awards, to be conferred by Dean of the Graduate School John T. Ho. Three RLL TAs will be honored for their "exceptional competence and dedication" to teaching:

• Paola Kersch, Honorable Mention
• Virginia Gutierrez-Berner, Excellence in Teaching Award
• Sophie Letter, Excellence in Teaching Award

Congratulations to these outstanding graduate student teachers!

 

Urban Landscapes: New Directions in Brazilian Cultural Studies

A one-day symposium will bring together scholars from around the country to consider new areas of focus in Brazilian cultural studies. All sessions will be held on Friday March 30th in 904 Clemens Hall:

• 1:00 pm
  Justin Read, University at Buffalo
  "Introduction: the Brazilian City and the Globe"
  
  
• 2:00 pm
  Charles A. Perrone, University of Florida
  "The Endless -suffix: Textual Imagination and the Cosmópolis of São Paolo"
  
  
• Coffee break
  
  
• 3:30 pm
  David William Foster, Arizona State University
  "Days and Nights in the Edifício Copán with Regina Rheda"
  
  
• Reception
  
  

The symposium was organized by David Castillo and is supported by the Department of Romance Languages and Literatures, the College of Arts and Sciences, and the Department of Comparative Literature. All events are free and open to the public.

 

 

 

Silvia Alvarez Curbelo to lecture

Silvia Alvarez Curbelo is the author of six very influential books and countless articles. She is currently a professor at the University of Puerto Rico where she directs the Research Center for Communications and Culture. The following activities are programmed. All are free and open to the public.

• lecture on Thursday April 12th at 1:30 in Clemens 904, entitled: "The Siege as Metaphor: Urban and Cultural Cartographies of San Juan de Puerto Rico (1508-2008)."
• workshop on Caribbean Cultural Studies (preceeded by Prof. Alvarez Curbelo's discussion of Undoing Empire), Friday April 13th, from 2-4 PM in Clemens 902.
• reception Friday evening from 6-7:30 (contact Professor Buscaglia for details)
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RLL students selected for Phi Beta Kappa

Congratulations to RLL majors who have been selected for induction into this prestigious honor society:

Genevieve Aguera, Kimberly Butts, Devin Callan, Catherine Dunning, Daniel Geyer, Heidi Griffiths, Amy Hardy, Amanda Karl, Julia Lasch, Leila Manteghi, Melissa Marino, Jenna Masso, Ian Phillips, Jenifer Scharphorn, Brooke Shaughnessy, Ka Ho Tong, Heather Turo, Ann Zykina, Dara Farber, Tori Gonzalez, Iluska Lippke, Diemthuy Nguyen, Alexander Nye,and Melissa Stark.