Arts

"Poetry and Poetics: Poesía at UVA" (2019-2021). Organized by Fernando Operé, Fernando Valverde, and Nieves García Prado.

Aj Xol Héctor Rolando, "Significados de 'tiempo' en el Popol Wuj" (2020). Organized by Allison Bigelow, Winnie Pérez Martínez, and the Multepal Project at UVA. Sponsored by the Mellon Indigenous Arts Initiative at UVA. Slides and article available here.

"Las Fallas de Valencia" -- A Celebration of Art, Satire, and Fire (2019). Organized by María J. Jorquera Hervás and Laura Aguilar García.

"Tricontinental Acts of Solidarity" (2019). Organized by Anne Garland Mahler.

SIP FilmFest 2019: Visual Narratives of Diversity, Displacement, and Inclusion from the Mediterranean and Latin America (2019). Organized by Lilian Feitosa, David Flórez-Murillo, Esperanza Górriz Jarque, Hiromi Kaneda, Alicia López-Operé, Esther Poveda Moreno, Paula Sprague, Matthew Street, and Zaida Villanueva García.

SIP FilmFest 2018: Contemporary Visions from Spain, Italy, and Latin America (2018). Organized by Sarah Annunziato, Francesca Calamita, Lilian Feitosa, David Flórez-Murillo, Esperanza Górriz Jarque, Alicia López-Operé, Esther Poveda Moreno, Paula Sprague, Matthew Street, and Zaida Villanueva García.

Dolcissimo, a celebration of Italian and French culture through food (2017-2018). Organized by Francesca Calamita.

SIPFilmFest: Female Voices from the South (2017). Organized by Sarah Annunziato, Nuria Ballesteros Soria, Francesca Calamita, Lilian Feitosa, Sara Gastón Echevarría, Esperanza Gorriz Jarque, Alicia López-Operé, Esther Poveda Moreno, Paula Sprague, and Zaida Villanueva García.

Institute of World Languages Film Series (2017). Organized by Paula Sprague and Esther Poveda Moreno. Part of the IWL Initiatives.

Italian Movie Series (2017). Organized by Sarah Annunziato.

"Maya Cosmovision and the Poetics of Hip Hop: Lecture and Performance with Tz'utzu B'aktun Kan" (2015). Organized by Allison Bigelow.

Community Outreach and Student Groups

Public Lectures & Workshops, Center for the Liberal Arts, 1984-present.

Southwest Virginia Public Education Consortium Programs, Center for the Liberal Arts, 1984-present.

Italian Alumni Speaker Series (2019). Organized by Deborah Parker.

Apericena for Italian Students in SHEA House (2019). Organized by Stella Mattioli.

Concurso de Startups en Español (Spanish 3040, 2019). Co-organized by Esther Poveda Moreno and Paula Sprague with the Darden School of Business Latin American Student Association.

Día de los Muertos (2019). Co-organized by Esther Poveda Moreno and students in Spanish 3020.

FAFSA Parties en Español (2019). Co-organized by Esther Poveda Moreno and Max Luna (UVa Hospital) for the UVa Equity Center.

Kids Corner, Cville Sabroso (2019). Co-organized by Esther Poveda Moreno.

Jornada de Relajación / Spanish MIndfulness Night (2018-2019). Organized by Zaida Villanueva, Esther Poveda Moreno, and Alicia López-Operé.

"Untold Stories from Colonial Latin America," Our Sisters' School (independent, tuititon-free school for girls in grades 5-8), 5 April 2018. Delivered by Allison Bigelow.

"Charlottesville Mural by Obama 'Hope' Poster Artist Causes Controversy," Black Agenda Report, 4 April 2018. Authored by Anne-Garland Mahler.

"Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz," Holy Women of the Americas Student Reading Group, St. Anselm Institute for Catholic Thought, 10 February 2017. Delivered by Allison Bigelow.

“Castas de metales, el saber indígena y la ciencia colonial,” Faculty Lecture Series, Casa Bolívar, 9 November 2016. Delivered by Allison Bigelow.

“Our Voices Will Be Heard: Race, Immigration, and Deportation in the Americas,” Student Organization for Caribbean Awareness and Latino Student Alliance, 14 October 2015. Delivered by Allison Bigelow.

Paseo a UVa, Latino Student Alliance, Charlottesville, VA, 8 April 2015. Delivered by Allison Bigelow.

Conferences

“Uq’ijol ri loq’olaj Popol Wuj (El día del Popol Wuj).” 30 May 2022. Multepal Project, University of Virginia (Zoom). Organized by Allison Bigelow, Ajpub' Pablo García Ixmatá, Irma Pomol, Miguel Óscar Chan Dzul.

“La codificación de la cosmovisión maya: Retos y oportunidades para investigadores indígenas en el Sur Global.” 13 April 2021. Institute of Global Humanities and Cultures, University of Virginia (Zoom).

"Decolonizing the Digital Humanities: Indigenous Arts, Histories, and Knowledges from the Material to the Screen" (2019). Co-organized by Allison Bigelow and Douglas Fordham.

"Meaning-making With E-portfolios: SE Regional Association for Authentic, Experiential, and Evidence-Based Learning" (2017). Co-organized by Karen James, Yitna Firdyiwek, and Emily Scida.

"Latin American Studies: Past, Present, Future" (2016). Co-organized by Thomas Klubock, Allison Bigelow, and Hector Amaya.

"Translation and Transmission in the Early Americas: 4th Early Ibero-Anglo Americanist Summit" (2016). Co-organized by Allison Bigelow and Ralph Bauer (UMD).

"The Eighteenth Centuries" (2013). Organized by David T. Gies.

"Biennial Conference of the Society for Renaissance and Baroque Hispanic Poetry" (2013). Organized by Ricardo Padrón.

"Thirty Years of DIECIOCHO" (2009). Organized by David T. Gies.

Gerszten Family Visiting Professor

Alejandro de la Fuente (February 2024). Lecture: "Their 'Exquisite Works': Rewriting the Art History of Cuba." Seminar: "Becoming Free, Becoming Black: Race, Freedom, and Law in Cuba, Virginia, and Louisiana."

Marcia Ochoa (March 2023). Lecture and Seminar: "Queen for a Day: Transformistas, Beauty Queens, and the Performance of Femininity in Venezuela."

Macarena Gómez-Barris (April 2022). Lecture and Seminar: "Atacama: An Integrated Research Practice." (Zoom)

Ignacio López Calvo (February 2022). Lecture and Seminar: "A Latin American Proto-Model Minority: Empowering the Chinese While Denigrating Blacks." (Zoom)

Nick Jones (February 2021). Lecture and Seminar: "Cervantine Blackness." (Zoom)

Ralph Bauer (September 2020). Lecture: "The Matter of the Popol Vuh: Death, Transformation, and Survival in Early (Latin) American Indian Literatures." (Zoom)

H. Rosi Song (November 2019). Lecture: “Tasting Barcelona: A History of Culinary and Cultural Identity.” Seminar: “Nation Building and Cooking: Spain in the 19th and early 20th Century.”

Ignacio Sánchez Prado (November 2018). Lecture: “Mexican Necropolitics and the Question of World Literature.” Seminar: "Juan Rulfo."

Felipe Fernández Armesto (October 2017). Lecture: "North America in the Global Spanish Monarchy in the Eighteenth Century." Seminar: "Visions of Clio: The Modern History of Global History."

José Koser (October 2016). Lecture: "Toward a Biography of the Very Necessity for Beauty." Seminar: Poetry Workshop.

Nicolás Wey Gómez (October 2015). Lecture: "'The World Not be Round': Popes, Slaves, and Science in Columbus's Atlantic Voyages." Seminar: "Columbus and the Tropics."

Jo Labanyi (March 2015). Lecture: "Cinema and Everyday Life in 1940s and 1950s Spain: An Oral History." Seminar: "Los retos de la cultura popular."

Francine Masiello (October 2014). Lecture: "The Senses of Democracy: Crossing South by North in the Americas of the 19th Century." Seminar: "Sense and Sensibility: Women’s Experience in the Nineteenth Century."

María M. Delgado (March 2014). Lecture: "Interviewing Pedro, Interpreting Almodóvar." Seminar: "Contemporary Spanish Culture: Working with Theatre and Film"

Interdepartmental Lectures

Stella Nair (UCLA), “Inca Ephemerality.” December 7, 2023. Co-organized with Douglas Fordham (Art). Sponsored by the Department of Spanish, Italian, and Portuguese and Department of Art.

Sean Austin (University of Arkansas), “From Warriors to Soldiers: Indigenous Mission Militias and Cultures of Violence in the Río de la Plata via Guaraní Worlds.” February 24, 2023. Co-organized with Brian Owensby (History). Sponsored by the Corcoran Department of History and the Department of Spanish, Italian, and Portuguese.

Barbara Mundy, "The Materiality of Maps and the Guises of New World Colonialism." University of Virginia, 11 November 2021. Sponsored by the Department of Spanish, Italian, and Portuguese; Corcoran Department of Art; and Program in Latin American Studies.

María Tausiet, "Holy Children: Accusing Jews of Ritual Murder in Early Modern Spain." University of Virginia, 20 February 2017. Sponsored by the Program in Jewish Studies and the Department of Spanish, Italian, and Portuguese.

Albert Laguna, "Diversión: Play and Popular Culture in Cuban America." University of Virginia, 16 Feburary, 2017. Spnosored bythe Americas Center, Department of Media Studies, and Department of Spanish, Italian, and Portuguese.

Irene Zanini-Cordi, "When Women's Lives Began to Matter: Eighteenth-Century Italian Women's Autobiography and the Case of Angela Veronese." University of Virginia, 9 February 2017. Sponsored by the Program in Women's, Gender, and Sexuality Studies and the Department of Spanish, Italian, and Portuguese.

Ryan Kashanipour (Omohundro Institute of Early American History and Culture), “Between Magic and Medicine: Colonial Yucatec Healing and the Spanish Atlantic World.” University of Virginia, 24 April, 2015. Sponsored by the Program in Latin American Studies, Department of Spanish, Italian, and Portuguese, and Department of Anthropology. Co-organized with Eve Danziger (Anthropology).

Roundtables

"New writing assignments for language, film, and composition courses," Institute of World Languages, November 15 2019. Presentations by Zaida Villanueva, Alicia López-Operé, Sarah Annunziato, Rachel Geer. Organized by Alicia López Operé.

“Global and Local: The Migration Crisis Today”. Organized by the Spanish Theater Group, Spring 2019. Presentations by Harriet Kuhr (Charlottesville International Rescue Committee), Alexa Jeffries, Katerina Silis, and Diana Sánchez Godinez (Spanish-English translation studies, Department of Spanish, Italian, and Portuguese).

Symposia

"The Spanish Pacific: An Interdisciplinary Symposium" (2019). Organized by Ricardo Padrón.

"Humboldt, Jefferson, and the American West" (2019). Organized by Ricardo Padrón and Sandra Rebok.

"Cyberspace, the Final Frontier: Reshaping Language Education through Online and Hybrid Learning" (2019). Organized by Esther Poveda Moreno.

"Art and Confrontation in the Americas" (2019). Co-organized by Mathilda Shepard, Herbert (Tico) Braun, Federico Cuatlacuatl, Debra Guy, Mona Kasra, Lydia Moyer, Mathilda Shepard, Lucie Stylianopoulous, and Miguel Valladares-Llata.

"Global South Studies: A Symposium and Workshop" (2019). Organized by Anne-Garland Mahler.

"Eating God: Imagining the Eucharist in the Early Modern World" (2017). Organized by Alison Weber.

"Environmental Post-humanities in the Anthropocene" (2016). Organized by Enrico Cesaretti.

UVa Spanish Theater Group (1981-present)

Forty years of Spanish Theater at the University of Virginia

The history of the Spanish Theater Group at the University of Virginia goes back to 1981. Since then the group has developed an annual activity aimed at producing plays written in Spanish by Spanish and Latin American authors for North American audiences.

Under the direction of Fernando Operé the group has produced the following plays:

Flamenco y Exilio, by Fernando Valverde (2023)

Fractales, by Alejandro Ricaño (2020), marking the 40th anniversary of the Spanish Department Theater Group. This production and celebration of the anniversary was made possible with the support of the Parents Fund and the Department of Spanish, Italian and Portuguese.

Cifras by Mar Gómez Glez (2019)
Las putas de San Julián by Ramón Mosquera (2018)
El gesticulador by Rodolfo Usigli (2017)

En la ardiente oscuridad by Antonio Buero Vallejo (2016)

La Nona by Roberto Cossa (2015)

Idiotas contemplando la nieve by Alejandro Ricaño (2014)

Botánica by Dolores Prida (2013)

Entre Villa y una mujer desnuda by Sabrina Berman (2012)

Homenaje a Miguel Hernández (2011)


Decir sí; La que sigue; Oficina; and Pisar el palito by Griselda Gambaro (2010)

El amor del gato y el perro by Enrique Jardiel Poncela (2009)

Breve encuentro by José Luis Alonso de Santos (2009)


Resguardo personal by Paloma Pedrero (2009)


Ana en el trópico by Nilo Cruz (2008)

Fuera de quicio by José Luis Alonso de Santos (2006)

Noches de amor efímero by Paloma Pedrero (2005)

Yonquis y Yanquis by José Luis Alonso de Santos (2004)

Bodas de sangre by Federico García Lorca (2003)

Retablo de la avaricia, la lujuria y la muerte by Ramón del Valle-Inclán (2002)

La mariposa blanca by Gabriela Roepke (2001)


El delantal blanco by Sergio Vodanovich (2001)


Bodas que fueron famosas del Pingajo y la Fandanga by José María Rodríguez Méndez (1999)


Benito Fernández; and Un hogar sólido by Elena Garro (1998)


Don Fausto by Pedro Orgambide (1997)


La casa de Bernarda Alba by Federico García Lorca (1996)


El cementerio de automóviles by Fernando Arrabal (1995)


Ardiente paciencia by Antonio Skármeta (1994)


Noche de guerra en el museo del Prado by Rafael Alberti (1993)


Miguel Hernández: El hombre y su poesía (1992)


El concierto de San Ovidio by Antonio Buero Vallejo (1992)


Ámbar by Hugo Hiriart (1991)


El día que soltaron los leones by Emilio Carballido (1990)


El llano en llamas by Juan Rulfo (1989)


El Filántropo by Virgilio Piñera (1988)


Chúo Gil by Arturo Uslar Pietri (1987)


Historias para ser contadas by Osvaldo Dragún (1986)


Romantic Theater by several authors (1985)


Pic-Nic and El triciclo by Fernando Arrabal (1985)


El retablillo de Don Cristóbal; and Amor de Don Perlimplín y Belisa en su jardín by Federico García Lorca (1984)


Farsa italiana de la enamorada del rey by Ramón del Valle-Inclán (1983)

La Orgía by Enrique Buenaventura (1982)


La Guerra y el hombre y several authors (1981)


Tibor Wlassics Faculty Lecture Series (1984-present)

• February 16, 1984: Donald McGrady. “The Telltale Mirror in Renaissance Italy and Spain”
• March 22, 1984: David Haberly. “Race in Brazilian Culture:Consequences of a Topic”
• October 4, 1984: Gustavo Pellón. “García Márquez’s Crónica:The Scapegoat Ritual”
• November 15, 1984: Karen Zagona. “Remarks on Predication”
• February 14, 1985: Glenn Pierce. “Manzoni and the Arts”
• March 28, 1985: Heles Contreras. “On Certain Syntactic Gaps”
• October 3, 1985: Alison Weber. “Bandits, Romantics, and Don Quijote”
• November 14, 1985: Juan Cano Ballesta. “Cubism in Modern Poetry”
• February 13, 1986: David T. Gies. “Juan de Grimaldi and the Romantic Stage”
• March 27, 1986: Fernando Operé. “The Camila:A Functional Heroine”
• October 9, 1986:Javier Herrero.“Hot Air:Literary Theory Today”
• December 4, 1986: Deborah Parker. “Eco:The Open and the Closed Rose”
• February 5, 1987: Kenneth Chastain. “The Brain and Learning”
• March 26, 1987: Donald L. Shaw. “Borges and the Alert Reader”
• October 29, 1987: Ignacio Javier López. “Reading the Realist Text:La desheredada”
• December 3, 1987: John Gutiérrez. “Sex Differences in Spanish in New Mexico”
• February 25, 1988: Julian Weiss. "Medieval Literary Didacticism:Theory and Practice”
• March 31, 1988: Joel Rini. “The Grammaticalization of the Clitic in Old Spanish”
• October 27, 1988: David T. Gies. “Zorrilla’s Don Juan Tenorio as a Magical Comedy”
• December 1, 1988: Darby Tench. “Women Listening: An Alternative to Gaze?”
• March 23, 1989: Donald McGrady. “The Abbey in Eco’s Il nome della rosa”
• May 4, 1989: Tibor Wlassics. “Twice Told Tales:Mythography in Dante’s Comedy”
• October 26, 1989: Jonathan Shiff. “Style in the Questione della Lingua”
• November 30, 1989: David Haberly. “Form and Function in Two New World Legends”
• March 3, 1990: Gustavo Pellón. “Recent Trends in the Latin American Novel”
• March 3, 1990: Javier Herrero. “Structuralism After PostStructuralism”
• October 25, 1990: Donald L. Shaw. “Skármeta and Sexuality”
• November 29, 1990: Fernando Operé. “The Missionary Theater of Colonial Mexico”
• February 21, 1991: Deborah Parker. “Trifone Gabriele’s Critique of Landino”
• April 4, 1991: Alison Weber. “Traffic in Women:Cervantes’ La gitanilla”
• September 27, 1991: Zygmunt Baranski. “Medieval Literary Theory and Dante’s Comedy”
• November 14, 1991: Keith Mason. “Acoustic Phonetic Comparison of /s/ in Three Dialects”
• October 15, 1992: Kenneth Chastain. “Reflections on Language and Learning”
• November 19, 1992: Juan Cano Ballesta. “Miguel Hernández:New Texts, New Images”
• February 25, 1993: Jonathan Shiff. “The Authorship of the Grimani Banquet Plays”
• April 8, 1993: Elizabeth Scarlett. “Inscriptions in the Novel of Post Transition Spain”
• October 21, 1993: David T. Gies. “Lost Jewels and Absent Women:The Theatre in 19th Century Spain”
• November 18, 1993: Cristina Della Coletta. “Apocalypse and Carnival in Eco’s Il nome della rosa”
• February 17, 1994: Javier Herrero. “On Man”
• April 14, 1994: Joel Rini. “The Origin of ser Revealed”
• September 29, 1994: Donald L. Shaw. “Post Boom and Postmodernism”
• November 3, 1994: Fernando Operé. “Indians’ Captives:Captives of Literature”
• February 16, 1995: George Greenia. “Art and Delirium:Manuscripts of the Apocalypse in the Middle Ages”
• March 30, 1995: Peter Armour. “Ugolino’s Jubilee Inscription:Florence and the Tartars in 1300”
• September 28, 1995: Carmen García Fernández. “Venezuelan Conversational Style”
• November 16, 1995: David Haberly. “Introducing Quincas Borba”
• February 8, 1996: Gustavo Pellón. “Cortázar and the Idolatry of Origins”
• September 19, 1996: Alison Weber. “What to Do When Your Mother is a Saint?”
• November 21, 1996: Clara Giménez Fernández. “Huesca and Madrid”
• April 10, 1997: Alessandro Vettori. “Prayer on Stage”
• October 8, 1997: Javier Durán. “Theories of the Laughable”
• November 20, 1997: Javier Herrero. “Three Lines of Verse”
• March 1998: Ruth A. Hill. “Atoms and Goths in Eighteenth Century Spanish Fiction”
• October 1, 1998: David T.Gies. “In Praise of Meaning:Spanish Literature and the Post Modern Dilemma”
• December 3, 1998: Ricardo Padrón. “Mapping New Worlds in Early Modern Spain”
• March 25, 1999: José del Valle. “The Cultural Origins of Spanish Linguistics”
• April 29, 1999: Susan Martin Márquez. “Shifting Perspectives on North African Otherness in Galdós and Fortuna”
• October 7, 1999: Deborah Parker. “Broncino:Renaissance Painter as a Poet”
• November 11, 1999: Adrienne Ward. “Italian Exoticism(s) in the 17th and 18th Century”
• March 9, 2000: Enrico Cesaretti. “Recuperating the Rejected:Temporal Ambivalences in F.T. Martinetti’s Writing”
• March 30, 2000: Alicia Andreu. “The Construction of Woman in Spanish Fascist Literature Written by Women”
• October 26, 2000: Cristina della Coletta. “The White Lies of Guido Gozzano’s Second Hand India”
• November 30, 2000: E. Michael Gerli. “Truth, Prevarication, and Fiction in El curioso impertinente”
• May 3, 2001: Alex Longhurst. “Quixote’s Brood:Cervantine Paradigms in Unamuno, Valle Inclán, and Pérez de Ayala”
• October 23, 2001: Emily Scida. “A Theoretical Approach to Predicting the Syntactic Distribution of the Portuguese Inflected Infinitive”
• November 15, 2001: James Monk. “Before ‘antes’: The Linguistic and Literary History of enante”
• March 21, 2002: Robin Fiddian. “Open bracket, Close bracket. Parenthetical Stament in a Selection of Poems by Jorge Luis Borges”
• April 25, 2002: Dave T. Haberly. “Edinburgh in the Pampas”
• November 21, 2002: Donald L. Shaw. “The Boom and After”
• February 20, 2003: Alison Weber. “Lope de Vega’s Rimas sacras: Can Religious Poetry be Macho?”
• March 20, 2003: David Gies. “Useful Fictions: Making Literary History”
• February 19, 2004: Deborah Parker. “Directors and DVD Commentary: The Specifics of Intention”
• April 8, 2004: Andrew Anderson. “An Avant Garde ‘Paysage d’Âme’?”
• Fall of 2004: Cristina della Coletta. “From Nice to Mompracem; Emilio Salgari and the Topography of Adventure”
• March 3, 2005: E. Michael Gerli. “Things only Michael knows about the Libro de buen amor”
• October 11, 2005: Fernando Operé. “El tango, la frontera que se baila”
• November 10, 2005: Gustavo Pellón. “Challenges in Translating Azuela’s Los de abajo”
• Febuary 16, 2006: Fernando Tejedo. “Speaker’s Perceptions of the Term ‘Latin’ in Hispano Romance (13th - 15th centuries)”
• April 6, 2006: Randolph Pope. “The Disappeared in Argentina, Chile and Spain, Evoked”
• September, 2006: Enrico Cessaretti. “Utopian Aspects in F.T. Marinetti’s ‘La cucina futurista’”
• October 26, 2006: David Haberly. “Re-opening Facundo”
• February 21, 2007: Joel Rini. “When Spanish h- Went Silent: How Do We Know?”
• November 1, 2007: Ricardo Padrón. “Spain and the Pacific: The Spanish Lake and the Imperial Imagination”
• March 12, 2007: Daniel Chávez. “The Eagle and the Serpent on the Screen, Imagining the State in Mexican Cinema”
• April 24, 2008: Mané Lagos. “‘Hechura y confección’: Subjectivity and Writing in Narratives by Latin American Women”
• September 30, 2008: Andrew Anderson. “Itinerario de Touring-Car. Guía de Touring-Club. Baedeker espiritual de España: Ernesto Giménez Caballero's Trabalenguas sobre España”
• March 26, 2009: Deborah Parker. “The World of Dante: Teaching the Divine Comedy with Digital Resources”
• November 19, 2009: Ruth Hill. “Aztecs, Incas, and Other Aryans in Nineteenth-Century Latin America”
• March 23, 2010: Alison Weber. “The Fool's Holy Body: Masculinity and Sanctity in Early Modern Spain”
• October 28, 2010:  Donald L. Shaw. “Does Hispanism Need the Term Modernism?”
• April 26, 2011: E. Michael Gerli. “‘Agora que voy sola’: Celestina, Magic, and the Disenchanted World”
• October 20, 2011: Emily Scida. “Self-Reflection through Video in Teacher Development”
• November 29, 2012: Adrienne Ward. “The Drama of Marriage in 18-Century Venice”
• March 28, 2013: Andrew Anderson. “Editing Poeta en Nueva York”
• November 5, 2015: Allison Bigelow. “From chaupi mitta to metales mulatos: Color, Caste, and Colonial Science Under and Above Ground”
• March 24, 2016: Gustavo Pellón. “Translating La sombra del Caudillo, Martín Luis Guzmán’s roman à clef”

• November 17, 2016: Charlotte Rogers. “Trauma in Paradise: Mario Vargas Llosa’s The Green House”  

• April 11, 2017: Ricardo Padrón. "ReOrienting the Indies"

• October 26, 2017: Deborah Parker. “JFK’s Dante”

• March 27, 2018: David Gies. “‘Volvía Galdós triunfante’: Fortunata y Jacinta on Stage (1930)”