Speakers

Keynote Speakers

Barbara Fuchs
Barbara Fuchs

Barbara Fuchs is Professor of Spanish and English at UCLA, where she also directs the Center for 17th-and 18th- Century Studies and the Clark Memorial Library. A comparatist by training, she specializes in literature and empire in the early modern period. Her recent books include Exotic Nation: Maurophilia and the Construction of Early Modern Spain (Penn, 2009) and The Poetics of Piracy: Emulating Spain in English Literature (Penn, 2013). She is one of the editors for the Norton Anthology of World Literature. She has also published translations of Cervantes’ plays of captivity and of early modern Spanish Moorish tales, and directs the Working Group on the Comedia in Translation and Performance at UCLA.

Jenaro Taléns-Carmona
Jenaro Taléns

Jenaro Taléns is a renowned Spanish essayist, literary critic, and poet. He has been Professor of Literary Theory at the University of Valencia (Spain) and at the University of Geneva (Switzerland), and since 1983 he has been a regular Visiting Professor at the University of Minnesota. He has also been Visiting Professor at the Universities of Montreal, Berlin, Buenos Aires, Bari, Bologna, and Madrid. He has published more than 20 academic books and hundreds of articles in Spanish, French, English, and Catalan on semiotics, history and theory of literature and film. In addition, he has translated more than 40 literary and academic texts from a variety of languages, including works by Hölderlin, Shakespeare, Beckett, Hesse, Goethe, Stevens, Lu Hsun, Montale, Eliot, Novalis, Trakl, Stevens, Brecht, and Rilke. His creative work (over 30 poetry books) has been awarded very prestigious international awards.

Eduardo Urbina
Eduardo Urbina

Eduardo Urbina is Professor of Hispanic Studies at Texas A&M. He is the founder and Director of the Cervantes Project, an online digital humanities archive established in 1996. In 2003 he was named Director of the Cervantes Chair at the University of Castilla-La Mancha (Spain). He is the author of Principios y fines del Quijote (1990), El sin par Sancho Panza: Parodia y creación (1991), Don Quixote Illustrated, ed. (2005), Electronic Variorum Edition of Don Quixote, ed. (2005-2009), Textual Iconography of the Quixote Archive (2003-2013), and La ficción que no cesa: Paul Auster and Cervantes (2007). He is the founder and co-editor of the Anuario de Estudios Cervantinos, founding member of the Cervantes Society of America, and a member of the Academia Norteamericana de la Lengua Española. Dr. Urbina has received over $2 million in research funding from the National Science Foundation, the National Endowment for the Humanities, and the Bank of Santander Foundation. Finally, he has created the E. Urbina Cervantes Collection, a world-class rare book collection housed at the Cushing Library dedicated to the study of the illustrated history of Don Quixote.

David Castillo
David Castillo

David R. Castillo is a Professor working in the Department of Romance Languages and Literatures at SUNY Buffalo. He is the author of Baroque Horrors: Roots of the Fantastic in the Age of Curiosities (The University of Michigan Press, 2010); reprinted in paperback in 2012 and Awry Views: Anamorphosis, Cervantes, and the Early Picaresque (Purdue University Press, 2001), and co-author of Zombie Talk: Culture, History, Politics (Palgrave Macmillan, forthcoming 2016). Castillo has also coedited Reason and Its Others: Italy, Spain, and the New World (Vanderbilt University Press, 2006), and Spectacle and Topophilia: Reading Early and Postmodern Hispanic Cultures (Vanderbilt UP 2012). He is currently completing a co-authored book on media and ideology with the title Medialogies: Reading Reality in the Age of Inflationary Media (under contract with Bloomsbury). In addition, Castillo has published some 40 articles on different aspects of early modern and postmodern culture, including a recent New York Times piece on the cultural fascination with the undead entitled “Dreamboat Vampires and Zombie Capitalists.” He has made media appearances in The Voice of America, NPR, and other media outlets.

Sherry Velasco
Sherry Velasco

Sherry Velasco is Professor of Early Modern Spanish literature and culture in the Department of Spanish and Portuguese and Professor of Gender Studies at the University of Southern California. Velasco is the author of four books: Lesbians in Early Modern Spain (Vanderbilt University Press, 2011), Male Delivery: Reproduction, Effeminacy, and Pregnant Men in Early Modern Spain (Vanderbilt University Press, 2006), The Lieutenant Nun: Transgenderism, Lesbian Desire, and Catalina de Erauso (University of Texas Press, 2000), and Demons, Nausea, and Resistance in the Autobiography of Isabel de Jesús 1611-1682 (University of New Mexico Press, 1996). She has also published articles and book chapters on early modern Spanish prose, theater, and women’s narrative with special emphasis on gender studies, sexuality, and visual cultural studies.

Additional panelists and speakers

Matthew Borden is an Associate Professor of Spanish at Carthage College. He has published and lectured on Language Pedagogy, Community Engagement Learning, Interdisciplinary Teaching, and Cervantes’ Don Quixote.

Paul Chilsen is a Professor in the Department of Electronic Communication at Middle Tennessee State University. He has directed and written feature films, documentaries, and Emmy-winning TV programs. A filmmaker and published author, he has taught at Columbia, Northwestern, and Carthage College. He has worked on several projects that enhance instruction with digital media, including a course on Don Quixote.

Susana Díaz is a Professor in the Department of Journalism and Audiovisual Communication at the Universidad Carlos III, Madrid. She specializes on media history in Spain, audiovisual narrative, and gender and audiovisual culture.

Claire Fox is a Professor in the Departments of English and Spanish and Portuguese and co-director of the Latina/o Studies minor. Her teaching and research interests include literary and cultural studies in the Americas, Latina/o American Literary and cultural studies, visual cultural studies, and cultural policy studies.

Mónica Fuertes-Arbois is an Associate Professor of Spanish specializing in the 18th-and-19th-century Spanish novel, theatre, and poetry. She also works in cultural studies as well as Catalan literature and culture.

Ana Merino is an Associate Professor in the Department of Spanish and Portuguese at the University of Iowa, and Director of the MFA in Spanish Creative Writing. She is an award-winning writer who has published, among other works, seven books of poetry, a young adult novel, plays, and a scholarly book on comics.

Marcela Ochoa-Shivapour is a Professor of Spanish at Cornell College. She is the author of Reescrituras del Quijote (Re-writings of Don Quixote), where she analyzes parodies, imitations and versions of Don Quixote in Spanish and Latin American literature and culture.

John Durham Peters is A. Craig Baird Professor in the Department of Communication Studies at the University of Iowa. He researches on media and cultural history, communication and social theory, and understanding communication in its historical, legal, philosophical, religious, and technological context.

Pablo Rodríguez-Balbontín is a PhD student in the Department of Spanish and Portuguese at the University of Iowa. He is writing a dissertation on the crisis of authorship in Spanish literature in the information society.

Manuel Vilas is a Spanish poet, novelist, and essayist. He publishes regularly in newspapers, magazines, and literary journals. He has won several literary awards in Spain, including the prestigious Premio Generación del 27 in 2015.

Panelists for Saturday’s “Don Quixote’s Journeys: from the University of Iowa to the World”

Sophie Amado graduated from the University of Iowa in May 2014 with University Honors and with Distinction, earning a BA with Honors in English (Creative Writing) and in Spanish. A descendent of Sephardic Jews expelled from Spain in 1492, Sophie held a Fulbright English Teaching Assistantship in Madrid, Spain, 2014-15. Read about her experiences on tumblr: http://lavidamadrilena.tumblr.com/.

Cortney Benjamin is currently a PhD student in Spanish at The University of Iowa. A graduate of Tulane University, Cortney completed her MA in Spanish at UI in May 2011 and expects to defend her thesis on women travelers in early modern Spain and Latin America in Spring 2016.

Emily Frerichs graduated from the University of Iowa in May 2010, earning a BA in Spanish with University Honors. A gay rights activist, Emily is currently working toward her PhD in Spanish at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

Christine Garst-Santos is an Assistant Professor of Spanish at South Dakota State University, having earned her PhD in Spanish at the University of Iowa in Fall 2013. An award-winning teacher, Christi frequently teaches Cervantes’ Don Quixote and more general courses on Spanish literature and culture.

Nathaniel Gier graduated from the University of Iowa in May 2014, earning a BA with Honors in Spanish and a BS with University Honors and with Distinction in Economics and Mathematics. Nathaniel is now working for Teach for America.

Jennifer Heacock-Renaud graduated from the University of Iowa with Special Honors with High Distinction in May 2008, earning a BA with Honors in Spanish. Currently a PhD student in Spanish at the University of Iowa, Jennifer is working on her thesis, focusing on Moriscos [Christians of Muslim heritage] in early modern Spain.

Annemarie Pearson De Andrés is a dual-degree MFA Student in Literary Translation and PhD student in English. She translates from English and Spanish, and is a native speaker of both. She grew up on the U.S.-Mexico Border in Brownsville, Texas, and attended the University of Texas at Austin, graduating in 2009. She is currently translating a historical novel about Victoria Eugenie of Battenberg, wife of Alfonso XIII of Spain.