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In Memoriam: Professor C. Christopher Soufas
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With great sorrow, the Department mourns the passing of our retired colleague, C. Christopher Soufas Jr. who died on December 28, 2020. He is survived by his wife Teresa Scott Soufas (also a former professor at our department and a former Dean of the College of Liberal Arts) and by his son Paul and his granddaughters, Cassandra and Payton Soufas.
Professor Soufas obtained his Ph.D from Duke University and held professorial positions at West Chester University, Louisiana State University and Tulane University before coming to Temple University in 2008. He was an active and valued member of the department until his retirement in 2016. His expertise was on 19th and 20th Peninsular Literature. Chris was awarded several prestigious scholarly honors during his career, among them a Guggenheim Fellowship and a National Endowment for Humanities Fellowship. In the span of a long and prolific career Chris wrote five books (the latest one in 2015, Subject, Structure, and Imagination in the Spanish Discourse on Modernity), edited four volumes, published fifty-two articles in academic journals, and presented numerous conference papers. In his free time Chris enjoyed traveling and collecting paintings from around the world. Those of us, faculty and students, who had the privilege of knowing him during his tenure at Temple University will miss him.
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Department of Spanish and Portuguese Graduate Student Conference
Liminality in Literature and Language: Affect and Migration
Theme: Liminal spaces in literature and other forms of cultural production, intersections of race, class, and gender, analyses of mobilizations and transgressions of borders, environmental and political crises, and social movements.
Keynote Speakers:
Dr. Junyoung Veronica Kim (University of Pittsburgh)
Dr. Rebeca Hey-Colón (Temple University)
February 5, 2021 from 8:15am-5:30pm
Register Here
For additional information, please contact 2020tuspancon@gmail.com
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As a Temple PhD Student, María Camila Franco is very interested in engaging current and relevant research topics, and she was accepted to the The NY-St. Petersburg Institute of Linguistics Winter Session through a mini-grant and a competitive selection process. During the Winter course, participants will engage into 2 week-long seminars with international scholars in a range of fields, especially those that do not fall neatly into traditional discipline areas. Maria decided to engage this course in preparation for her dissertation proposal in Spring 2021. So far she has interacted with Scholars from MIT, Stony Brook University, Herzen University (Russia) and will be learning alongside students from around the world. Most topics are focused on contemporaneous approaches to Syntax, Cognition and Language.
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Last year, the journal Linguística y Literatura, from Universidad de Antioquia (Colombia) published PhD student Daniel Guarin's article "A Social-Phonological Approach to Colombian Spanish in Philadelphia, United States: The Case of the Phonological Variable /S/ in Four Speakers From Different Regions of the Country". This article came from a paper he wrote for Associate Professor Augusto Lorenzino's seminar last year. The article is available here. The literary magazine Collage also published one of his short stories, "Lumbrambinos" in its 7th edition. The magazine can be read online here. Another article of Daniel's was accepted for publication in the journal Linguistica y Literatura. This article is from his final paper for Professor Jose Pereiro's seminar. His article is Andres Hurtado and the failed hero’s journey in Pío Baroja’s The Tree of Knowledge. The article will be published in April 2021.
Another one of our PhD students receiving accolades is Alodia Martin-Martinez, as she received a Dissertation Completion Grant for this Spring semester. Congratulations Alodia!
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Associate Professor Adam Shellhorse recently published an article, entitled, "The Verbivocovisual Revolution: Anti-Literature, Affect, Politics, and World Literature in Augusto de Campos", in the peer-reviewed journal, CR: The New Centennial Review. In addition, his essay, “A Política do Barroco em Osman Lins: A Escritura da Violência e O Ornato", will be published in the peer-reviewed journal, Veloz Littera, in Spring 2021. He is currently completing a new essay, entitled, "Theses on Affect and Anti-Literature in Augusto de Campos: The Untimely Power of Brazilian Concretism," which will be published in Spring 2021 in the peer-reviewed journal, Santa Barbara Portuguese Studies. Lastly, his organized double-panel, entitled, “Postutopian Form: Literature, Aesthetics, and Politics in Posthegemonic Times / Forma Pós-Utópica: Literatura, Estética e Política nos Tempos Pós-hegemônicos” , has been accepted for the XXXIX International Congress of the Latin American Studies Association, Virtual Conference, in May 2021.
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Associate Professor Victor Pueyo had his article “On Impure Communism: Rethinking Radical Democracy in Two Early Latin American Utopias (1516-32)” published in New Centennial Review 20.1 (2020): 123-145.
His article “El escándalo de Celestina: magia, inquisición y acumulación primitiva en la España del Holocausto (1486-1507)” was also included in Edad de Oro 38 (2019): 35-53.
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Assistant Professor Rebeca Hey-Colon is currently a Fellow of the Center for the Humanities at Temple (CHAT) Fellowship for 2020-2021. Her work establishes connections between the Caribbean diaspora, Chicanx communities, and broader Latinx Studies by analyzing the presence and valence of water. As a CHAT Fellow, Hey-Colón will work on her book manuscript Rippling Borders: Women Writing Water in Latina Literature.
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We are excited to have welcomed Dr. Christina Baker to the Department of Spanish & Portuguese this past fall as an Assistant Professor of Latin American Popular Culture. Last year Christina published the following two articles:
- “Santiago-Orlando: Performances of Queer Vulnerability and Futurity in the Work of (Me llamo) Sebastián.” Chasqui 49.1 (Spring 2020): 202-221.
- “Soundtrack of an (After) Life: Transfemicide, Mourning, and Pop Music in La Prietty Guoman by César Enríquez.” Latin American Theatre Review 53.2 (Spring 2020): 5-31.
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A huge congratulations goes out to Alexander Voisine (CLA '18, Global Studies and Spanish, Honors Program) as he is Temple University's first recipient of the Gates Cambridge scholarship. The Gates Cambridge Scholarship programme was established in October 2000 by a donation of US$210m from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation to the University of Cambridge. Each year Gates Cambridge offers c.80 full-cost scholarships to outstanding applicants from countries outside the UK to pursue a full-time postgraduate degree in any subject available at the University of Cambridge. Approximately two-thirds of these awards will be offered to PhD students, with approximately 25 awards available in the US round and 55 available in the International round, making this award even more competitive than the Rhodes scholarship.
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Alex spent two years on a Fulbright, studying at the Universidad Autonoma de Mexico where he earned his master's in International Relations and a research project on LGBTQ+ refugees living in Mexico, which involved over a year of participatory fieldwork at a local NGO. He was also a CLA graduation speaker in May 2018. Alex had internships at the Niskanen Center in DC, Project Citizenship in Boston, Tierra de Lenguas in Mexico City, and is currently a consultant for the United Nations Program for Development (PNUD). At the UN he has been pioneering a training program for public officials and NGOs on the protection of trans migrants’ personal data. He has volunteered at HIAS Pennsylvania, Casa Refugiados in Mexico City, Puentes Hacia el Futuro in Philly, among others. While at Temple, he was cofounder of Freely Magazine (which is still thriving) and Temple Refugee Outreach.
He will be pursuing a PhD in Latin American Studies at the University of Cambridge while on the Gates scholarship. For his PhD, he is interested in looking historically at refugees/exiles who resettled in Mexico from the 20th century to the present, and who challenged gender and sexuality norms. He will focus on writers, artists, intellectuals and activists from across the world, examining how they impacted (and were impacted by) the artistic and political landscapes of Mexico. He hopes to situate his research within a growing body of work in the humanities and social sciences that seeks to critically examine and radically (re)imagine the possibilities of migration, at a time when the effects of climate change are slated to displace millions. He is looking forward to working alongside a global community of scholars who are unified by a common commitment to social justice and progress, and especially grateful for his professors, advisors, friends and colleagues at Temple (and beyond) who have helped him along the way. He is particularly grateful for the expansive Spanish language and humanities training he received while at Temple, which has provided him with a solid intellectual foundation upon which he will continue to build in the years to come.
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In December of 2020, Dr. Megan DeVirgilis (CLA '18), Assistant Professor of Spanish at Morgan State University, gave the keynote speech at the IX International Gothic Literature Congress “Internationalizing the Gothic.” Her keynote, “(Re)producing Terror: Gothic Beginnings in Latin America,” exposed how early Latin American Gothic is a uniquely female space ripe with domestic and social anxieties. In particular, she argued that the Gothic in Latin America is a continuous process of decolonization, one that hit its peak in the late 19th century, when Western trends such as the rise of feminism threatened to further expose the vulnerabilities of the public/private distinction, and regional literary trends such as modernismo suggested Latin American writers were capable of producing their own models. To access the full talk, click here. |
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Dr. DeVirgilis was also recently awarded a National Endowment for the Humanities Faculty Award. This one-year fellowship will allow her to complete her book project, The Female Vampire in Hispanic Short Fiction at the Turn of the 20th Century: A Critical Anthology. Through transatlantic, historical, and feminist interpretive frameworks, she will synthesize and expound upon existing scholarship on the lesser or unknown works of established Spanish and Latin American authors such as Leopoldo Lugones, Clemente Palma, Emilia Pardo Bazán, and Carmen de Burgos. A large part of the project will also be dedicated to translating their Gothic-inspired stories to English, a task that would introduce these stories within the context of a greater Hispanic Gothic tradition into the British and Eurocentric field of Gothic Studies. Click here to view the Press Release, “NEH Announces $33 Million for 213 Humanities Projects Nationwide.” She is listed under the award recipients for the state of Maryland.
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Despite the pandemic, Anales de la Literatura Española Contemporánea (ALEC) has been able to publish and distribute volume 45 (2020). The journal is currently working on the first issue of volume 46 (2021). The contents may be consulted here.
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