The Department of Romance Languages and Literatures, College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, University of Florida, Issue No. 5.1, Fall 1999

Editors: Geraldine Nichols, George Diller, Diane Marting

In This Issue...

• Greetings from the Department Chair

• Department News and Announcements

• From the Coordinators' Desks

• Faculty News

• RLL Awards and Honors

• Graduate Student News

• News From Alumni

• News for the Next RLL Newsletter

-----

We bid you welcome with a new feature: short articles of general interest to our alumni/ae and friends. Professor Efraín Barradas joins the department in January 2000. Professor Gayle Zachmann is in her sixth year at the University of Florida.

Don Quijote baila el danzón

por Efraín Barradas

Veracruz, la primera ciudad que los españoles fundaron en México, ha sido para mí, desde mi infancia, un lugar mítico. Mis primeros recuerdos de la palabra Veracruz son musicales y salen de la garganta de Toña la Negra. Entonces no sabía quién era en verdad María Antonia del Carmen Peregrino Álvarez (1912-82), pero sí podía asociar su voz con la música y el cine mexicanos. Definitivamente a través de Toña la Negra—llamarla María Antonia Peregrino sería una falsificación, como lo sería llamar a Pancho Villa por su nombre de pila, Doroteo Arango—creaba yo un puente entre mi Puerto Rico natal y el México que sólo conocía a través del cine y de la música. Toña la Negra era México para mí y su canción "Veracruz" era mi "ábrete-sésamo" para llegar a ese mítico lugar. Fue, pues, por Toña la Negra que descubrí que México es también caribeño, mulato y hasta casi antillano. Fue para descubrir ese México que conocí a través de ella que decidí visitar Veracruz, que hasta entonces era sólo el estribillo de esa canción que me obsesionaba y un dato más sobre México: era la ciudad mexicana con mayor población de origen africano. Llegué a Veracruz y de inmediato sentí que arribaba a un lugar ya conocido.

La arquitectura de la parte vieja de la ciudad tiene mucha semejanza con la de La Habana, especialmente los portales que casi rodea la plaza central y que se extienden por los edificios de las calles aledañas. Mucho de San Juan había también por todos lados. Pero, más que los edificios, lo que me impresionó de Veracruz fue su gente. Indios y mestizos hay como en todo México, pero negros y mulatos hay como en pocos otros lugares del país. Fueron esos mulatos y mulatas quienes me hicieron sentir en mi Caribe. En toda Veracruz hallaba detalles familiares y, a la vez, me topaba con mucho que me hacía sentir distancias y diferencias. Ese juego de acercamientos y distanciamientos culminaba varias noches a la semana en el Zócalo y, sobre todo, en el Parque Zamora, una gran plaza a unas cuadras del centro y donde se encuentra una estatua a Toña la Negra. Éstos son grandes espacios públicos donde se ejecuta el gran ritual de la ciudad: el baile del danzón. No hay polémica posible sobre el origen cubano de esta música y su llegada a Veracruz en el siglo XIX. Pero lo que fue importación ha adquirido carácter propio y el danzón es ya también veracruzano. Describir la controlada euforia y la elegante rigidez que demuestran los veracruzanos cuando participan en ese baile ritual es casi imposible. Describir al pueblo veracruzano bailando el danzón en la plaza es intentar definir el Caribe. (¡Y eso es muy difícil! Sólo apunto que el Caribe es esencialmente mulato, no indio. Quizás por eso, entre otras razones históricas y sociales, éstos parecen auto-excluirse de este baile ritual.)

A Veracruz llegué por la voz de Toña la Negra que oí en una vieja película. Y a Veracruz volví a llegar por otro filme mexicano, "Danzón." La trama de esta película es sencilla: Julia, una telefonista de la capital, va a bailar danzón un día a la semana a un salón de clase obrera donde siempre se encuentra con el mismo compañero de baile, Carmelo, un mulato, mayor, elegante, supremo bailarín de danzón y algo misterioso, quien desaparece al ser acusado de robo en el restaurante donde trabajaba como cocinero. Julia decide irlo a buscar a su tierra, Veracruz, cuando se entera que han hallado al verdadero culpable. Llega a esa ciudad y entra a un mundo exótico para una mexicana del altiplano: un universo de calor, sensualidad, música y mar. Pronto se junta a ella en la búsqueda de Carmelo un travestí que se convierte en su lazarillo. Julia, sin ser veracruzana, tiene una clave para entrar a ese cosmos ya que es gran bailarina de danzón, baile que le trata de enseñar a Suzie, su nueva amiga, quien se convierte en compañera de aventura: Julia y Suzie son una nueva encarnación de Don Quijote y Sancho Panza, encarnación novedosa donde todos los términos masculinos quedan invertidos y donde Dulcinea es un cocinero que también baila el danzón. Pero esta nueva Don Quijote no queda derrotada por molinos de vientos, ni por magos ni malandrines. "Danzón" es un Don Quijote cuyos personajes no tienen que repetir las desaventuras de los originales, aunque es una obra que rinde, como pocas, homenaje a Cervantes y el danzón. Por la voz de Toña la Negra en una película descubrí en mi infancia a Veracruz. Ahora, cada vez que quiero regresar a esa ciudad, que más que lugar es una forma de estar en el mundo, veo otra película, "Danzón," y me transporto a Veracruz una vez más. Pero al abrir esas puertas descubro que, como en un cuento de Borges o un texto de Lewis Carroll, hay puertas que abren puertas que, a su vez, abren más puertas: por Toña la Negra llegué a Veracruz, y por esta mágica ciudad, al danzón y, por este baile ritualizado en una cinta, regreso una y otra vez más a nuestro padre Don Quijote.

-----

Sur le pont d'Avignon

by Gayle Zachmann

As Director of UF in Provence, I am pleased to report that the first year of this innovative interdisciplinary program took 44 students to Europe. Classes were held on two separate campuses, one in Avignon, the other in Aix-en-Provence, and featured an array of multi-disciplinary courses to students drawn from 26 majors and 7 colleges at the University of Florida. There were two academic tracks at each site. Avignon provided an innovative Intensive Intermediate French track and an Advanced Intensive Interdisciplinary French Program. The Aix site was open to French and non-French speakers, and featured an Interdisciplinary track, with courses in language, international relations and business, art history and archeology, as well as a Studio Art track, offering an art criticism seminar, studio art and French conversation. In addition to an outstanding and innovative academic program, the program highlights immersion in a rich cultural environment. The dates of the program coincide with the Avignon theater festival, and an international music festival at Aix. Students live and share their meals with French host families and participate in a number of excursions and activities with French university students. As we begin announcing the millennium program, we are pleased to announce major developments at both sites: Avignon has been chosen as THE city of culture in France for the year 2000. Students will be at the heart of a dynamic cultural celebration, and we are expanding our offerings at Aix to include a new faculty member from the English department: Professor Maureen Turim will be offering a course in French film. Professor Read Baker and I will be teaching at the Avignon site in Summer 2000.

-----

Greetings from Geraldine Nichols, Department Chair

Dear Alumni/ae and Friends,

We're pleased to send you tidings of the department's activities over the past year. We've changed the face of our yearly missive, and hope you will find it more readable. Thank you for your increased participation! It gives teachers such joy to hear from former students, and we know you'll like reading about classmates.

In these pages you will see how busy we've been since last year's Newsletter. If 1999-00 has a particular color, it is that of change: we are poised on the scary and exciting edge of a new era in terms of faculty. Everyone realizes that students are here only briefly, but faculty members seem as permanent as the buildings. Not so! Last year, four colleagues (of 22) retired or resigned, and 2002 will see the retirement of three professors who are nearly synonymous with French at UF: Jean Casagrande, George Diller, and Raymond Gay-Crosier. To fill these vacancies, we are searching for four new colleagues (two in Spanish, one in Italian, one in French) to join the two professors of Spanish who arrived this year. Hiring is a momentous undertaking, because it is not simply filling a vacancy, but shaping the future of the department, and by extension, of our disciplines. We seek colleagues who will strengthen us in areas for which we are already known, or help us expand into new domains of scholarship and teaching—such as applied linguistics, film studies, and translation—that will make us leaders among modern language departments within the next decade.

Undergraduate enrollments since 1994 are stable in French, Haitian Creole, and Portuguese, while they have increased in Spanish and Italian. There are approximately 110 undergraduate Spanish majors, 67 French, and 1 Portuguese (Italian and Haitian Creole do not offer a major). Our graduate program is healthier than ever: 55 graduate students are pursuing an MA or a PhD in French or Spanish, most with the help of a teaching assistantship and attendant tuition and fee waivers. Last year the department used Foundation funds to grant its first-ever prizes for Excellence in Scholarship to graduate students in our program (listed elsewhere). This Fall we were able to support for five dissertation research projects.

Undergraduate majors have won many awards, as well, as you will see in this Newsletter. The small and large prizes, scholarships, and recognition that we dispense at our Undergraduate Awards Ceremony—many funded by the donations of our alumni/ae—are part of the human glue that binds us together in RLL: faculty and students, those who are here now, those who preceded us, and those who will follow. I think it important that we see ourselves as connected: by our passion for other languages, other cultures, other ways of being in the world; by our enthusiasm for learning and for fostering curiosity in others. It is satisfying to be able to recognize our current students' achievements with awards, bestowed in a public ceremony, and celebrated at a reception that offers a bit of food, drink and camaraderie. UF can be a large and forbidding place, but within Romance Languages we have never lost our interest in shaping and inspiring individual students.

Before closing, I want to thank those of you who contribute so generously to the RLL fund at the Foundation. We use your donations judiciously, to foster a better educational environment for students and faculty.

Keep well, and remember to send us your news!

-----

Department News and Announcements

Late Breaking News

RLL to benefit from two large bequests

Col. and Mrs. Ernest G. Atkin, Jr., have made a munificent donation to the Department of Romance Languages and Literatures. It is land valued at approximately $225,000; the endowment from this gift will yield a yearly income of some $12,000, which may be spent on priorities set by the department, especially but not exclusively in support of French. What a marvelous windfall! Col. Atkin's father, Ernest G. Atkin, was professor of French and Chair of the Department of Foreign Languages at UF. Dr. Wayne Conner, retired Chair of RLL and emeritus professor of French, knew Dr. Atkin, although he was already retired when Connor arrived at UF in 1962. (The department changed names from Foreign Languages to RLL in 1970, when German and Slavic were spun off into a separate department; Classics followed in 1975, African and Asian in 1981). Dr. Atkin, born in England in 1884, received his Ph. D. in French from Harvard University in 1916. He taught at many distinguished private and state universities before coming to the University of Florida in 1927. We will do more research on Dr. Atkin before our next issue of the Newsletter, and hope to hear from his son and others who knew him.

Dr. William Calin has made a very generous bequest to the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences to create a visiting professorship to rotate from year to year among the six disciplines that are "closest to his heart": French, Spanish, German, English, history, and religion. Having observed the wonderful leavening effect that visiting scholars can have on a department, and noting the infrequency with which the College appoints such sojourners, Dr. Calin has done some leavening and leveraging of his own. RLL will benefit enormously from his generosity, and we thank him warmly.

Campus Lecture

Dr. Cristina Sanz, from Georgetown University, visited the University of Florida in November 1998 to offer a practical presentation on language teaching entitled "Ground Zero: Immersing the Students in the Target Language from Day One." The language she chose for this demonstration was Catalan. This workshop attracted a large audience of UF faculty, students, and high school teachers from the area. It was sponsored by a U.S. Department of Education Title VI grant, the Center for Latin American Studies, and the Department of Romance Languages and Literatures.

Entre Nous

Entre Nous, RLL's faculty and graduate student forum, created and sustained by the efforts of Professor Bernadette Cailler, has presented or slated the following speakers:

Spring 1999: Frank Di Trolio, Kyle Echols, Joaquim Camps, and Danielle Bro. Fall 1999: J.Wayne Conner; Charles Perrone, Giovanna Summerfield, and S. Read Baker.

In Memoriam...

Alfonsina Lorenzi (1963-1999), ABD in Spanish, succumbed to cancer in August, one month prior to her 36th birthday. She came to the University of Florida from Italy in Fall 1995 for an MA in Spanish, but soon decided that two short years of study would never be enough to satisfy her boundless interest in the topic of Spanish American literature. She applied for and was accepted into the PhD program. A popular teaching assistant in Spanish and in Italian, Alfonsina was also a careful, hardworking scholar. She had passed her Qualifying Examinations and successfully defended her dissertation proposal—"Cultura y comunicación en el escenario latinoamericano a final de milenio"—when she first fell ill. She delivered a scholarly paper, soon to be published, on the topic of her dissertation at a conference on Latin American Literature and Mass Media at Cornell University in March, 1999. Remembered by the faculty as a promising scholar and fine teacher, by her colleagues as a wonderful classmate, and by her friends as the truest of friends, she is missed. Her most enduring and endearing qualities became apparent during her long illness. Her joy in living, her optimism, her enthusiasm and her kindness infected those who went to comfort her. In her honor and memory the department is establishing the Alfonsina Lorenzi Memorial Scholarship, which will be used to support graduate students from abroad, who may only rarely apply for scholarships in the United States. We solicit contributions. Please make your check to: UF Foundation, writing on the "For" line "Romance Languages, Lorenzi."

Thank You!

Thanks to the following for contributions to the RLL Fund between 10/98 to 9/99

Col. and Mrs. Ernest G. Atkin, Jr.

Ms. Susana Braylan MA (Sp), 90

Dr. Joaquim Camps (RLL faculty)

Dr. Donald W. Davey, PhD (Sp), 74

Gator Textbooks

Dr. Raymond Gay-Crosier (RLL faculty)

Mr. Antonio Gil (RLL faculty)

Mrs. Paula M. Goodall BA, 73

Mr. Gerald Guido Langford, BA (Fr), 77

Mrs. Valene F. Long, MA (Sp), 88

Ms. Alana Ruth Lyles, BA (Sp), 81

McGraw-Hill and Co.

Ms. Marilyn M. McLeod, BA (Fr), 74

Dr. Ruthmarie H. Mitsch, PhD (Fr), 74

Dr. Catherine G. R. Moore, PhD (Fr), 90

Ms. Kelly Anne Moss, BA (Sp), 90

Dr. Carol Murphy (RLL faculty)

Dr. Sylvia Simard Newman, PhD (Fr), 92

Dr. Geraldine Nichols (RLL faculty)

Dr. Michael Paden (RLL faculty)

Mrs. Ann Marie Phillips, BA (Fr), 90

Ms. Kelly Ann Powers, BA (Sp), 96

Mr. Mark D. Protheroe, BA (Sp), 87

Ms. Lisa Anne-Marie Simmons, BA (Fr), 94

Mr. Michael I.Trentalange

Wallace Bookstore (University Book and Supply)

-----

From the Coordinators' Desk

News from the Undergraduate Coordinator in French

The wealth of good news is such that it is difficult to select the most important items. Contrary to the national trend, our undergraduate French program continues its steady growth pattern. As of October 1999, we have 68 majors (including 15 double majors) and 43 minors in French. In the same calendar year, 8 majors graduated with a French BA (or, in some cases, with two BA's or a BA and a BS) while we certified 21 minors. This past summer, we also conducted the first and highly successful version of our new UF in Provence Program in Avignon (see article). The following majors received their Bachelor's degree in 1999: Adel Borges, Courtney Collins, Brittany Hilliker, Sasha Kurbegov*, Théodore Martinot*, Emily Mazo, Paul Moreaux, April Mullins, Shelley Spaulding. Three students wrote successful honors theses: Lotta Rao (dir. Sylvie Blum), Théodore Martinot (dir. Raymond Gay-Crosier), and Emily Mazo (dir. Carol Murphy), while five candidates obtained the Certificat Pratique de Français Commercial et Économique de la Chambre de Commerce de Paris: Heather Davis, Lauren Oken, Nicole Pasricha, Debra Rostorfer, Crista Wetherington. The administration of the exam leading to this certificate continues to be ably coordinated by Mrs. Juanita Casagrande. Four candidates successfully passed the demanding oral and written exams leading to the Baccalauréat Supérieur: Sasha Kurbegov, Théodore Martinot, Emily Mazo, and Paul Moreau. We like to hear from our former students and encourage them to write to us so that we can relate their professional progress in next year's Newsletter.

Raymond Gay-Crosier, Undergraduate Coordinator in French

Italian Section News

In Summer 99, Dr. Michael Paden served as Director of the CLAS/CFA Summer Program in Rome, with the assistance of Gianfranco Balestriere. They were accompanied by 36 students from UF. Beginning Italian 1 and 2 were offered, allowing students to begin or to complete their language requirement. The program also included courses taught by Dr. Gerald Murray, Anthropology and Dr. Barbara Barletta, Art History. Students live in a centrally located hotel, within walking distance to the Pantheon and other Roman landmarks. Weekly class times are lengthened in order to allow students to explore Italy on their own over long week-ends. Two scheduled field trips took the students and faculty to Florence to visit the major museums and churches, and to Pompeii to visit the ruins of that ancient Roman city. Students had the opportunity to go on weekly walking tours with the Paden and some classes were conducted in museums. Plans are under way for next year's program.

Portugese Section News

The Portuguese program continues to attract new students, especially with the offering of multiple sections of the accelerated introduction to Portuguese and Brazil, a course that integrates language and cultural components in challenging fashion. The Business School has initiated a new double-major in international business in conjunction with foreign-language concentrations, which is promising for the Portuguese section given the prominence of Brazil as a top-ten world economy and leading trading partner with Florida. Some new business students are already well along in the POR course sequence. The Brazilian Portuguese Club has completed a web page, and all are invited: <grove.ufl.edu/~bpc>. Information on Professors Perrone and Ginway can be found on their own colorful web pages, <web.clas.ufl.edu/users/cap/> and <web.clas.ufl.edu/users/eginway>. The latter contains updated information on the summer program in Rio. The University of Florida's Instituto Brasil-Estados Unidos (IBEU) program in Rio de Janeiro has had another successful year. Libby Ginway recruited and advised students from UF, while Charles Perrone supervised the students on site. This year twenty-four students enrolled in the UF Summer Program in Rio de Janeiro. University of Florida undergraduates Enid Nunez and Sanjay Sinha participated along with graduate students Brandon Knox, Samantha Stone, and Kristin Conway from the Center for Latin American Studies, and Fernando Ojeda from RLL. Florida International University sent three graduate students, and the UF-FIU Consortium between the Centers for Latin American Studies sponsored FIU faculty member Ted Young, who wrapped up the last two weeks of the program. The remaining participants were from the following colleges and universities: Connecticut College, Amherst College, Spelman College, Duke, Vanderbilt, Yale, Harvard, North Carolina, Berkeley, Illinois and Georgia. One enthusiastic undergraduate participant wrote to the University of Florida International Center saying: "I wanted to commend the University of Florida for a great program in Rio de Janeiro with IBEU. It was very well organized and educational (as well as a blast)." The year 2000 will be the nineteenth year of the program, and Libby Ginway is recruiting students and planning to fly down to Rio in July.

New Members of Phi Lambda Beta, Portuguese Honor Society: Fred Boltz; Nara Matos; Fernando Ojeda; Natércia Príncipe

From the Graduate Coordinator in Spanish

The 1999-2000 AY opened in late August with 12 new graduate students, bringing fresh strengths and enthusiasm to Spanish graduate studies. The composition of this group reflects the diversity that has characterized our program in the last five years: they are split roughly in half regarding the degree sought (MA Or PhD) and the field of concentration (literature, Spanish or Spanish American; and linguistics). A quarter of the newest members of our community are international students, from Spain and Argentina; the rest come from colleges or universities in Georgia, New York, Pennsylvania, North Carolina, and Florida. Three were awarded generous fellowships in recognition of their outstanding academic records and promise ($15,000 a year for 4 years, plus tuition waiver); others were given teaching assistantships and full tuition remission. With this new generation, the Spanish graduate student population reaches an all-time high of 35 students, with five more writing the dissertation in absentia. This growth is the result of several important recent changes. In the first place, we developed a new tracking system to help students to define and to time-manage their objectives, providing close advising and periodic follow-up of course work, final examinations and thesis/dissertation proposal writing. A regular pace of graduation was thus established, allowing for a reasonable projection of growth from year to year (number of admissions, fellowships, and teaching assistantships allocated). Second, the sustained hiring of new faculty over the past five years greatly contributed to the perception of the Spanish graduate program as one with outstanding teachers and researchers in the three fields of Spanish American literature, Spanish literature, and Spanish linguistics. Third, the Spanish graduate program has been modified to better fit contemporary academic needs: there are more seminars and courses for graduate students only, now accounting for 75% of the courses graduate students take; we reshaped the qualifying examination, now seen as the initial step towards the writing of the dissertation proposal and the assembling of the dissertation bibliography; and there are improveed financial incentives, including better salaries for teaching assistants, more and better fellowships, and a system of financial support for academically related travel (attendance at professional meetings, research, etc.). All of these measures have made our Spanish graduate program more attractive for prospective students: to arrive at this year's incoming class, the graduate coordinator's office processed approximately 200 inquiries through e-mail, telephone, and regular mail, and evaluated 50 complete applications. We are of course very glad to see how our efforts to improve the program are matched with greater accomplishments, but we know that there is no better progress than creating the next challenge. That's why the Spanish graduate faculty, with the help of Spanish graduate students—through both their elected representative to the Section, and the students appointed to the various graduate committees—are already planning new improvements to the program. Andrés Avellaneda

From the Undergraduate Coordinator in Spanish

Spanish undergraduate studies at the University of Florida are alive and well. Renewed energy and sense of purpose in faculty and students keep the Undergraduate Coordinator busy and his office a bustling venue where students obtain information and explore options. It's a tough (and immensely satisfying) job but "somebody's got to do it." With the participation of new and existing faculty, the Spanish Section just completed a revision of the Major and Minor descriptions, and continues the process of expanding course offerings and enhancing opportunities for academic study abroad. We have greatly improved dissemination of information through our webpage and more traditional means. A new, closer advising policy has been implemented, in accord with UF's "Universal Tracking" system, which has the additional benefit of ensuring students' timely graduation. There growing enthusiasm for Spanish studies at UF; the number of declared majors has increased to 111 (including at least 24 double majors), up 10% over last spring alone. The number of minors remains steady at 53. Another indicator of increasing interest in Spanish is the number of requests for advising on academic study abroad. The Undergraduate Coordinator has signed 30-40 petitions for credit transfer for students who will be participating this AY in semester and summer study abroad programs in Madrid, Salamanca, Seville, and Buenos Aires, to name a few of the favorite locations. In this context, Dr. Greg Moreland is carrying out a review and selection of the best U.S. university-sponsored programs in Spain, so that we may better advise our students. Dr. Ximena Moors will be doing a similar study on programs based in Spanish America. The "Spanish for Bilingual Students" track, under the watchful eye and able coordination of Susana Braylan, continues to attract the interest of this segment of UF's student population, which grows from year to year. She is also the originator and coordinator of the Spanish Film Series, which is generating quite a bit of interest among our students. With two new faculty members having joined us this year, and two more slated to arrive in Fall 2000, we will better prepared than ever to serve our growing student population. Stay tuned for the next installment of "News from the Undergraduate Coordinator's Desk" and expect even better news. Reynaldo Jiménez

-----

RLL STAFF

(left to right): Cheryl Lewis, Terry Lopez, Veronica B-Foreacre, Sue Ollmann, Donna Rivera. Many of you may notice with disbelief the absence of Vita Zamorano in this picture. She and her husband retired in early summer to move to their dream house north of Atlanta, where they are an hour's drive from all of their children and their growing number of grandchildren. We miss her sorely but wish her well! Sue Ollmann has taken over her position as office manager.

-----

The Hispanic Honor Society Sigma Delta Pi

is dedicated to promoting interest in Hispanic culture. The UF chapter of Sigma Delta Pi, Beta Rho is celebrating its fiftieth anniversary this year! It was founded in 1949, by Professor Pedro Villa Fernández, who continued as its faculty sponsor during the first decades of its existence. Meetings were often held at his home, according to the (yellowing) minutes in our possession. Sigma Delta Pi is open to outstanding students of the Spanish language and Hispanic literatures. One of the signal benefits of membership is eligibility (for Spanish majors) for a scholarship from the national office of Sigma Delta Pi for study abroad in a Spanish-speaking country. Under the superb faculty sponsorship of Lecturer Sherrie Nunn (herself initiated into the Beta Rho chapter in 1983), our chapter members have won three study abroad scholarships over the past 4 years: Ana Hofstetter (1996), Ariadne Ferro (1997), Catherine Osborne (1999). We are proud to list initiates into the chapter from Fall 1998 to Fall 1999. Initiated on November 19, 1998: María Cisterna, Sueli Wilkerson, John Doyle, Vanesa Anthony, Lourdes Lorenzo, Ashwini Kothekar; on April 10, 1999: Cristina Mendoza, Tania Fisher, Carolina Raijer, Melanie Mabrey, Kyrenia Tages; on October 13, 1999 (and pictured above): Lisa Ward, Mezeda Meze, Elinor Marsalisi, Jennifer Volmar, Jennifer Carvalho, Jennifer Kraham, Charlotte Arana and Diana Serrano (not in picture).

-----

RLL Faculty News

Shifra Armon delivered a paper at the Eleventh Annual Romance Language, Literature and Film conference hosted by Purdue University in October, 1999. The title of her talk was "Juan Pérez de Montalbán's 'Not-so-Terrible Mothers'", a reference to the curiously bland treatment of incest and female abjection in Montalbán's 1624 novel La mayor confusión. By situating the novel within the discourse of dynastic politics at the Royal Court of Philip IV, Dr. Armon finds that incest and female abjection actually played a positive role in the construction of young Philip IV's public image in the early years of his reign.

Andrés Avellaneda was invited by the Institute of Latin American Studies and the Department of Spanish of the University of Texas-Austin to give a plenary presentation titled "Mentar a la patria: cincuenta años de historia, política y ficción en Argentina" at the Research Symposium "Borges and the New Spanish American Literature" (March 5-6, 1999). On March 29 he also read an invited paper—"Postmodern Mixtures: Globalization and Literature"—at the XVII Fulbright Symposium (The Fulbright Institute of International Relations, University of Arkansas). Professor Avellaneda's essay "Desde las entrañas. Revistas de y sobre Latinoamérica en los E.E.U.U.," was published in La cultura de un siglo: America Latina en sus revistas, edited by Saul Sosnowski (Buenos Aires: Alianza Editorial, 1999). In Fall 1999, Professor Avellaneda was designated as the 1999-2000 Herb and Catherine Yardley Term Professor in the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, in recognition for excellence in both scholarship and teaching.

Efraín Barradas, Professor of Spanish Caribbean Literature and Culture, is the department's first joint appointment with the Center for Latin American Studies. He comes to us from the University of Massachusetts at Boston. Barradas recently published a book which collects some of his own essays and articles on Puerto Rican literature and culture in the United States (Partes de un todo: Ensayos y notas sobre literatura puertorriqueña en los Estados Unidos, University of Puerto Rico Press, 1998). Two of his literary texts on Mexican popular culture have also appeared: "Cine mexicano, modernidad y memoria" (El Nuevo Día [San Juan], 1999) and "Veracruz, Toña la Negra y Don Quijote" (Diálogo [University of Puerto Rico], 1999). An abridged version of this second text is published in our newsletter.

Read Baker writes: "I gave a paper at the joint meeting of the North American Society for the Study of Seventeenth-Century French Literature and the Société Racine at the University of Santa Barbara (Oct. 14-16, 1999). I was also elected to the executive committee of NASSCFL."

Sylvie Blum sends her news: "I spent 6 weeks of last summer in Avignon teaching an intensive French language class and participating in the new UF in Provence study-abroad program. In mid-July I attended some of the Avignon off and on theatre festival with some of the students. One of the highlights for me was watching a performance of Céline's Voyage au bout de la nuit by an Italian troupe, and attending a play made of Marguerite Duras's Pluie d'été and a reading of La Douleur. In July I gave a paper on French photographer Christian Boltanski at the 16th International Conference on Literature and Psychology in Urbino (Italy). In April, I participated in the Association for French Cultural Studies annual meeting held in New York, at Baruch College, where I was invited to give a paper on French Cinema in the 1990s. I will conclude the year with a presentation at the MLA Convention in Chicago." Dr. Blum received a TIP Teaching Award in 1998. She is coordinator of the Intermediate French sequence.

Bernadette Cailler tells us: "I have had two essays published: Réponse d'une Française de Floride à Lettres Algériennes et FIS de la Haine (Rachid Boudjedra) in Hafid Gafaiti, Rachid Boudjedra: Une Poétique de la subversion,Tome 1. L'Harmattan,1999; and Totalité et infini, altérité et relation: d'Emmanuel Lévinas à Edouard Glissant in Poétiques d'Edouard Glissant. Presses de l'Université de Paris-Sorbonne, 1999. I organized and chaired two sessions at the 1999 Meeting of the African Literature Association, in Fez, Morocco: 1) Poetics of Love: The Caribbean/The Maghrib (my paper was: Blessures sacrées: de Césaire à Djaout par la trace de Glissant); 2) A multilingual creative text recital. Texts were read or performed in Guadeloupean Creole, French, Igbo, Engligbo, Ewe, Hassania, Spanish, Arabic, and English. In May, I was awarded a Certificat d'Honneur Maurice Cagnon (Meeting of the International Council for Francophone Studies, in Lafayette, Louisiana) for "exceptional contributions to the development of Francophone Studies in the World". In September I presented a paper and chaired a session at an Conference on Caribbean Writing in French: Place and Displacement at University College in Dublin, Ireland."

William Calin has published numerous articles: Ernst Robert Curtius: The Achievement of a Humanist. Studies in Medievalism; Deschamps's 'Ballade to Chaucer' Again, or the Dangers of Intertextual Medieval Comparatism, in Eustache Deschamp, French Courtier-Poet: His Work and His World (New York: AMS Press); Dante on the Edwardian Stage: Stephen Phillips's "Paolo and Francesca", in Medievalism in the Modern World: Essays in Honour of Leslie J. Workman (Turhout: Brepols, 1998); Making a Canon, Philosophy and Literature; Machaut's Legacy: The Chaucerian Inheritance Reconsidered, in Chaucer's French Contemporaries: The Poetry/Poetics of Self and Tradition (New York: AMS Press, 1999). He delivered six papers at conferences international and national, including the MLA, and the universities of Vienna and Rennes. His book, Minority Literatures and Modernism: Scots, Breton, and Occitan, 1920-1990, will be published by the Univ. of Toronto Press. In 1998-99 he taught an honors course on "King Arthur" and a course on "Modern French Poetry." He was elected to the Executive Committee of the Provencal and Catalan Division of the MLA. 1998-99 was the first year of his tenure as a UF Research Foundation Professor. Dr. Calin's recent handsome bequest to the University of Florida is described on page 3.

Joaquim Camps presented two papers: "Attitudes Toward Code Switching in the University Environment" at the XVII National Conference on Spanish in the United States, in Coral Gables, Florida, in March 1999; and "Preterite and Imperfect in Spanish: The Early Stages of Development" at the 1999 Conference on L1 and L2 Acquisition of Spanish and Portuguese, in Washington, DC in October, 1999. Research for the second paper was sponsored by an RLL research grant. This project is part of a large database of both oral and written data collected from students in the first-year Spanish program to analyze the development through time of their production skills. Collection of the data was possible thanks to the cooperation of the adjunct faculty and graduate students who teach in the program. Dr. Camps also gave two seminar presentations on campus: "Processing Input in Spanish as a Foreign Language: In search of Pronominal Reference" in February, and "Why Would I Want to Learn Catalan? The Future of a Less-commonly Taught Language in the U.S." in March.

For George T. Diller, this has been a year working toward the completion of two long-term publication projects: a paper-back edition of Froissart's Chroniques (Book I) for the Hachette "Lettres Gothiques" series and a final volume (VI) of his edition of the Amiens manuscript for Droz (Geneva): an index and guide to proper names for the edition. "Since last year's RLL Newsletter, I have published Notes on Rondeaux of Love Within the Series Nos 596-700, in Eustache Deschamp French Courtier-Poet. His Work and his World, edited by D. M. Sinnreich-Levi, AMS Press, Inc., NY 1998. Another article on Froissart will soon appear in Fifteenth-Century Studies. During the past summer I developed and taught, at the Avignon site of UF in Provence program, an interesting well-received course on modern French prose inspired by Provence.

María Luisa Freyre comes to the RLL as Visiting Professor for the academic year 1999-2000. She is a professor at the University of la Plata (Argentina) where she also directs the Center for Linguistic Research. She has taught at several American universities including the University of Pittsburgh, SUNY at Binghamton, and the University of Florida, where she was a Visiting Professor more than a decade ago. Dr. Freyre is active in research, her basic interests being Semantics, Pragmatics and Translation Studies. She has recently published "Modal Alternation in Spanish," "Extensional Answers: a Pragmatic Analysis," and "Technical Texts: its Understanding and Translation by Specialists and by Translators." At present she is working on embedded questions in Spanish and preparing a book on Linguistics and Translation to be published by Edicial (Buenos Aires).

Joseba Gabilondo will be a Visiting Associate Professor of Spanish in the spring of 2000. He will teach a senior seminar, "Literatures and Cultures of the Periphery in Spain," and a graduate course on the Nineteenth-Century Spanish Novel. Currently an assistant professor at Bryn Mawr College in Pennsylvania, Dr. Gabilondo has a PhD in Comparative Literature from the University of California at San Diego. He has published film, literature and culture in English, Spanish, and Basque. For more information, consult his web page: <www.brynmawr.edu/Acads/Langs/spanish/gabilondo/>, or contact him at: Spanish Department, Bryn Mawr College, Bryn Mawr, PA 19010; Phone: (610) 526-5079; <joseba@erols.com>.

In 1999, Raymond Gay-Crosier improved the critical bibliography on his Albert Camus web site, which has attracted over 4,600 visitors thus far. (See <www.clas.ufl.edu/users/gaycros/Bibliog.htm>.) This fall, he took over the French undergraduate coordinatorship. He has had two articles published: Les codes ironiques dans La Chute: un humanisme à rebours, in Gilles Phillipe and Agnès Spiquel [eds.], Pour un humanisme romanesque, Paris, SEDES, 1999; and (by invitation) Les masques de l'impossible: le théâtre de Camus aujourd'hui, special issue of Europe. Revue littéraire mensuelle, October 1999. He also put the finishing touches on issue 18 of the Camus series (212 p., Paris, Lettres Modernes), a book on irony in Camus (Toronto, Paratexte, in press), and continued his work as Assistant Editor of the French Review.

Libby Ginway's articles appeared in Modern Language Studies and The Brazil Reader over this past academic year. She gave papers at the MLA, Kentucky and SALALM conferences and received an RLL internal summer grant.

Reynaldo Jiménez, Spanish Undergraduate Coordinator, was reappointed Chief Faculty Consultant for the AP Spanish National Examinations for the AY 1999-2000 by the College Board. Between June 10-19, 1999 he directed the Spanish Advanced Placement Reading at Clemson University. A total of 425 high school and university faculty members across the nation participated in the grading of over 65,000 exams in language and literature.

Diane E. Marting published an interview with a Puerto Rican author, "I Sing my Song for my Friends, An Exclusive Interview with Pulitzer Prize Nominee Giannina Braschi," in Brújula/Compass 32 (primavera/spring 1999). "The Representation of Female Sexuality in Amor, ciudad atribuida, poemas by Nancy Morejón," published in the Afro-Hispanic Review, was reprinted in a new book on the Cuban poet and past visitor to the University of Florida: Singular Like a Bird: The Art of Nancy Morejón, ed. Miriam DeCosta-Willis (Howard University Press, 1999). In the past year, Marting served as chair of the Nominating Committee of the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences and a member of the Steering Committee of the Humanities Council for a Committee. Her book, Women's Dangerous Desires, is under contract to the University of Florida Press.

Carol Murphy spent three weeks in the south of France this summer as on-site coordinator for UF in Provence's program at Aix-en-Provence. In 1999, she presented a paper on Marguerite Duras at the International Twentieth-Century French Studies Colloquium at the Univ. of North Carolina. Three articles appeared in print: Gracq, lecteur de Poirier was published in The French Review (March 1999) ; Écrire, dit-elle': Marguerite Duras sur l'écriture came out in a special Fall issue of Dalhousie French Studies on Duras; and Marguerite Duras on La Vie matérielle was reprinted in Marguerite Duras Lives On. She continues her research on the collaboration between the writer-editor Jean Paulhan and the artist Jean Fautrier in Paris during the Occupation and was awarded a CLAS Faculty Enhancement Grant to advance her project. In July, she assumed the position of Associate Dean for Academic Affairs in the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, but will continue her ties to RLL through continued teaching and thesis/dissertation activity.

Geraldine Nichols has been busy being Chair, parsing budgets, hiring staff and faculty, advising her graduate students, teaching two classes (a survey of modern Spanish literature and Hispanic Women Writers), serving on the governance board of the Center for Latin American Studies and the Advisory Council for the CIBER grant, in the Warrington School of Business at UF. She is President of the MLA Division on Twentieth Century Spanish Literature this year, and attended the MLA Conference on the Future of Doctoral Education in Madison, Wisc. last spring. She has published two articles on fiction by Catalan women writers: "'Tras su hache mayúscula': Carme Riera and the Exploration of History in Dins el darrer blau," and "Species and Speculation in Montserrat Julió's Memòries d'un futur bàrbar." In May, she attended a conference on teaching translation at the Universitat de Vic (northeastern Spain), since she hopes to introduce translation into the curriculum in RLL. UF has also begun an exchange program with Vic.

Charles A. Perrone spent Spring '99 at Tulane University, where he co-edited and contributed two long segments to a volume on internationalization in Brazilian Popular Music (UP FL). He continued work on João Guimarães Rosa, publishing a new study on North American reception of that author. His section on the Crônica appeared in the latest volume of Handbook of Latin American Studies. In April, he gave an NEH Latin American Identity Focus seminar at the University of Scranton: " 'Erudite' Popular Culture: A Singular Brazilian Case," and spoke on song and the international gaze at the University of South Louisiana. Perrone further led "The Bossa Nova and Cool Jazz" program in the Música de las Américas series at The Smithsonian Institute and served as on-site program coordinator of the UF study-abroad program in Rio. He also has begun a term on the MLA Delegate Assembly and joined the editorial board of Xilo.

David Pharies received a research fellowship from the National Endowment for the Humanities for academic year 1999-2000. His project is entitled: Etymological Dictionary of Spanish Suffixes.

Charmant Theodore, our one-person Haitian Creole section, writes that he has begun the certification process to achieve Court Interpreter status for the State of Florida. "The orientation session was an eye-opener on the merits of good, professional, ethical interpretation. A process many often regard as simple, even trivial—i.e., a cousin fluent in English stepping in as interpreter; a bailiff claiming to have 'translated' for his grandma at the social services office; or a judge asking the courtroom 'Anyone in here speak Spanish/or Haitian French (read Haitian Creole)?' (and, the most surprising of all, actually getting a volunteer)—is in fact a most complex one. It requires great preparation, and knowledge of court system and its jargon. Reality hits when someone's very liberty or life is on the line. After training in Hillsborough County Courts, I have compiled a manual and a glossary of legal terms, as well as translating several documents that are in daily use, to limit the amount of sight translation required and save time. Later, in collaboration with Haitian lawyers and physicians, I am planning to produce a dictionary of medical and health related terms."

Rena Torres Cacoullos is our newest linguist, with a research focus on language variation and change and language contact in the Spanish-speaking world. She received her degree in Romance Languages at the University of New Mexico in 1999, with a dissertation directed by John Lipski, formerly of RLL. This year she has published two articles: "Variation and grammaticization in progressives" (Studies in Language 23); and "Construction frequency and reductive change" (Language Variation and Change 11). In June she presented a paper, "Evidence for bleaching versus metaphor in the development of aspectual grams," at the conference "New Reflections on Grammaticalization," in Potsdam, Germany. In October she presented on "Register considerations in evaluating the effects of language contact" at the Linguistic Association of the Southwest XXVIII, in San Antonio, and on "Variation in the domain of progressive aspect in Spanish" at New Ways of Analyzing Variation (NWAV), in Toronto. Current projects include a comparison of grammatical innovations in Mexican and Puerto Rican Spanish and a diachronic study of variation in the use of the article in possessives (as in "el mío Cid"). Dr. Torres Cacoullos is currently teaching courses on Spanish sociolinguistics and phonetics and hopes to develop courses on varieties of Spanish spoken in the United States. She is also our new Intermediate Spanish coordinator.

Gayle Zachmann had an active spring 1999, directing UF in Provence (see lead article). She taught a French civilization course, won a TIP Teaching Award, and an RLL Mini-grant. She chaired the Graduate Awards and Placement committee, which provides workshops and professional advisement to graduate students; served on departmental and external MA and PhD Committees; raised funds for three Nancy Ellen Kaufman Scholarships for Study Abroad. Over the past year, Dr. Zachmann's book, Frameworks for Mallarmé, was contracted by the State University of New York Press, and she had four articles accepted for publication: Frameworks for Mallarmé's Photo-Graphics, by L'Esprit Créateur; Villiers de l'Isle-Adam"s L'Eve future, by Romance Quarterly; Offensives Moves in Mallarmé: Dancing with Des Astres, to appear in a forthcoming book; Surreal and Canny Selves, Photographic Figures in Claude Cahun, by Studies in Twentieth-Century Literature. An article on the newly released correspondence between Mallarmé and Méry Laurent appeared in the book Corps/D cors. She wrote books reviews for the SAR and Romance Quarterly, presented a paper entitled "Fin de siècle Visions" at the Nineteenth Century French Studies Colloquium in Canada, and was invited to the Twentieth Century French Studies Colloquium to speak on the future of undergraduate studies in French.

-----

RLL Awards and Honors

Romance Languages and Literatures

Graduate Student Research Awards 1999

Advanced 7LS or ABD students were invited to submit proposals for funding to carry out research on their dissertation topics. The projects had to be designed to improve the quality of the dissertation, e.g. travel to carry out primary research, or equipment or services. The proposals were uniformly cogent and careful in their budgeting. The Advisory Committee and Chair read the proposals and awarded grants to the following students:

Maritza Bell-Corrales: "The Role of Negative Feedback in Second Language Instruction"; recording equipment, photocopying, graders. Chair of Supervisory Committee: Joaquim Camps

Francisco Bustamante: "Jesuit Missionary Representations of Guarani Indians"; supplement to Newberry Library Fellowship. Chair: Félix Bolaños

Martha Cuba-Cronkleton: "Literary Representations of the Cholo in Bolivia and Peru"; travel to Bolivia for research, interviews. Chair: Andrés Avellaneda

Liliana Dorado: "Narrativa de cuatro republicanas españolas: testimonio personal y custodia de la memoria"; travel to Madrid to interview author Juana Doña. Chair: Geraldine Nichols

Luz Marcela Hurtado: "The Spanish of Colombians in Miami"; travel to Miami for field work. Chair: David Pharies

Romance Languages and Literatures

Undergraduate Awards Ceremony,

April 15, 1999

Academic Excellence at Intermediate Level

Susan Mendez (French)

James Power (French)

Amber Schmale (Spanish)

Teresa Cao (Spanish)

Stephanie Litka (Portuguese)

Veronica Alcorta (Italian)

UBS Scholarship for Study in a

Spanish- or Portuguese-Speaking Country

Charisse Record

Nancy Ellen Kaufman Scholarships for

Study Abroad in French

Leigh Ann Bauer

Heather Marie Howell

Thomas Patterson

Michael Hauptman Medal for Outstanding Major

Emily Mazo (French)

Alexandra Vargas (Spanish)

Ligia Courneya (Portuguese)

Faculty Awards 1999

NEH Fellowship

David Pharies

1999-2000 Herb and Catherine Yardley Term Professor in the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences

Andrés Avellaneda

Certificat d'Honneur Maurice Cagnon

Bernadette Cailler

Scholarship Enhancement Grant, College of Liberal Arts and Sciences

Andrés Avellaneda, Félix Bolaños, Kyle Echols, Carol Murphy

Graduate Student Awards 1999

Graduate Student Teaching Awards

(only sixteen are given in the entire university)

Marcela Hurtado (Spanish) Beth Droppleman (French)

International Student Awards

Vanesa Anthony (Spanish) Liliana Dorado (Spanish)

Krzysztof Kristóbal Kulawik Maxine Neill (Spanish)

Else Duelund Scholarship for Study in France

Jennifer Svienty (French)

FLAS Academic Year Fellowship

(through Center for Latin American Studies)

Keith Lindley (French)

UF Outstanding PhD Student, ABD level 9 LS

Daniela Hurezanu (French) Krzysztof Kulawik (Spanish)

RLL Outstanding PhD Student 8LS

Keith Lindley (French) Diana Serrano (Spanish)

RLL Outstanding MA Student

Jennifer Svienty (French) Catherine Osborne (Spanish)

Dissertation Fellowships

Martha Cuba-Cronkelton (Spanish) Pam Paine (French)

McGraw Hill Stipends for Travel to National Conferences

Bernadette Cesar-Lee (French) Alfonsina Lorenzi (Spanish)

Barbara Domcekova (Spanish) Maritza Bell-Corrales (Spanish)

McQuown Scholarship for Graduate Students

in College of Liberal Arts and Sciences

Liliana Dorado (Spanish)

Rotary Fellowships

Beth Droppleman (French); for 99-00

David Henderson (French); for 00-01

Alumni Scholarship

Gary Baker (Spanish)

Sonia Ramírez-Wohlmuth (Spanish)

Minority Scholarship

Alexandra Vargas (Spanish)

CLAS Recruitment Scholarship

Juan Gómez-Canseco (Spanish)

-----

RLL Graduate Student News

Spanish Graduate Student News:

Two of this year's new Spanish graduate students introduce themselves:

Gary Baker: "I did my MA in Romance Languages at the University of Georgia (Spanish and French, linguistics track); last October, I moved back to the States from Madrid, where I taught English at a private branch of the Complutense for several years.

Alexandra Vargas: "I'm Puerto Rican, born and raised, until I was 13 years old. Interests—Social justice, ultimate frisbee, and rollerblading :) I'm still deciding between Peninsular and Latin American Literature."

Guido Arze wished to share one of his poems, excerpted here:

CANTO A LA JUVENTUD DE LOS SETENTA por Guido J. Arze

Nosotros éramos la rebeldía,

los rostros

alzados ante el huracán de la injusticia,

Nosotros éramos la montaña,

la acción que lo detenía.

Y éramos la herida.

Sangraba en nuestras palabras la rosa blanca

incorruptible de José Martí;

Sangraba, también, la rosa roja

del viejo Marx, lejana.

éramos nosotros quienes sangrábamos.

. . . .

Giró su rueda la história,

la gloria es como la arena

entre los dedos

y hasta el éxito es efímero

como el olvido que al fin se olvida

Sólo el soñar no se acaba.

. . . .

Ni la vida que es desafio nos domina,

soñamos que soñamos que debemos seguir soñando,

nuevas voces entonan nuestro viejo canto.

Ni la muerte que es muerte nos calle!

Marcela Hurtado received the Calvin A. Vander Werf Award for "Outstanding Service as a Graduate Teaching Assistant," one of four recipients of this special award among sixteen other TA's from the University of Florida.

In the Spring of 1999, Krzysztof (Kristóbal) Kulawik received two awards (listed elsewhere); he is currently working on his dissertation in the field of contemporary Latin American fiction.

Linc Lambeth, who will defend his dissertation in Spring 00, has become an assistant professor at the College of the Ozarks, in Missouri.

Maxine Neill is finishing her thesis on Cuban writer Severo Sarduy and will be moving to Edinburgh in January. An address for the future is: 50 Ennismore Rd., Old Swan, Liverpool L13 2AT, UK.

Fernando Ojeda escribe: "mi cuento 'Papi la leecheee' será publicado en una revista que trata de temas multiculturales, Multicultural Anthology. La revista fue creada por Erica Fuller (editora), una estudiante graduada de la Universidad de Florida." También dio una charla en el programa de lingüística: "If cadavers could teach, it would be exquisite: the Application of French Surrealist Word Games in Second Language Pedagogy."

Eric Schramm is Assistant Professor of Spanish at Lenoir-Rhyne College in Hickory, N.C., teaching two first-year language courses and another on the culture and civilization of Spain, while preparing for Lenoir-Rhyne's Summer Program in Cuenca, Ecuador. Progress is steady on his dissertation, "Solitude and Solidarity: Octavio Paz and Oscar Lewis on the U.S. Influence in Post-War Mexico." When he is not working, Eric occasionally finds time to go hiking with his family in the nearby Blue Ridge Mountains. Lenoir-Rhyne College, P.O. Box 7205 Hickory, N.C., (828) 328-7220, schramme@lrc.edu.

Lynn Scott successfully defended her dissertation on November 1. It deals with early twentieth-century Spanish author Carmen de Burgos. Lynn is running as a regional delegate to the Modern Language Association. She is enjoying a new challenge this semester, teaching "The Culture and Civilization of Spain" (SPN 3510). She writes that it is a pleasure to combine what she has learned in the RLL graduate program with her undergraduate college major of Art History and her travels in Spain. Many of her students have already participated in a study program in Spain, or plan to do so in the coming semester, so they bring enthusiasm to the class as well as increasing strength to our undergraduate major.

French Graduate Student News

Keith Lindley, PhD student in French, spent July in Miami as a fellowship recipient at the Haitian Creole Summer Institute held at Florida International University. This annual event, sponsored by FIU, attracts students and scholars from around the nation and world who come to lecture and learn about Haitian culture and language, both within Haiti and in the diaspora. Keith currently holds a fellowship for the academic year '99-00 in the Center for Latin American Studies while he prepares for qualifying exams in March of next year. This fellowship, which provides full tuition plus a $10,000 stipend, recognizes graduate students from various disciplines whose research on some aspect of Haitian life or language shows particular promise.

Pam Paine (ABD in French) has been hired as a lecturer in French at her alma mater, Auburn University.

Giovanna Summerfield, MA student in French, will deliver a paper on Olympe de Gouges at the March meeting of SEACES, in Savannah, Georgia.

-----

RLL Alumni News

News from French Alumni/ae

Emily Mazo works for the UNESCO in Paris directing as Webmaster a competition for the best web site.

Sasha Kurbegov will continue his studies at the Université de Strasbourg III towards a licence en sciences politiques.

Preeti Jois is in the University of Miami's Medical School while Amanda Barrow pursues her linguistics and economics studies in London.

Eddy Hernandez (MA 95) is teaching at the Paideia School in Atlanta. It is a small, private, non-sectarian K-12 school in Atlanta. Eddy reports that it is "a wonderful place in which to teach!" <hernandez.eddy@python.paideiaschool.org>

Joe Johnson (PhD 99) has been nominated for a teaching award for his work in the I. B. Program at Vanguard High School in Ocala. He has also been nominated by the French section and by UF for a UMI/Council of Graduate Schools Dissertation Award.

Beth Droppleman (PhD 99) is currently in Lyon on a Rotary Club Scholarship.

News from Spanish Alumni/ae

Martha Castañeda (MA 1997). I am now in Tampa at the University of South Florida, pursuing a PhD In Second Language Acquisition/Instructional Technology. After teaching elementary Spanish for several years at the University of Central Florida, I discovered this relatively new program and decided to go back to school. I am working hard, but happy. New address: 5213 Presidential St., Seffner, FL 33584. <mecastan@soleil.acomp.usf.edu>

Mark Cox (PhD 1995) translated Gringa Hunter & Other Stories, the most recent collection of short stories by the young Peruvian writer Mario Guevara Paredes (Lima: Sieteculebras, 1998). He also published Una antología de cuentos escritos desde 1980 sobre la violencia política (Lima: Lluvia, 1998). Mark also presented papers at the Kentucky Foreign Language Conference and the South Eastern Council on Latin American Studies. Michael Randall Cox was born to Mark and wife Silvia in February.

María-Teresa Correa (MA 1998). "Estoy enseñando en Lake-Sumter Community College dos clases de español y trabajo en el Learning Center de 'tutor' en inglés y español. También doy clases particulares de español, e interpreto para la corte. Enseñare aquí el semestre que viene, pero busco un trabajo de tiempo completo enseñando en un college." <Teresacorrea@yahoo.com> 2117 Citrus Blvd., #8, Leesburg, FL 34748, (352)314-9270.

Alicia Genovese (PhD 1996) was awarded the prestigious 1999 "Beca del Fondo Nacional de las Artes" in Argentina for a poetry writing project. Her book, La doble voz: Poetas argentinas contemporáneas (Buenos Aires: Editorial Biblos, 1998), was included in best-seller lists for several months in Argentina, and was reviewed in prestigious literary supplements (Clarin, La Nacion). Alicia was also interviewed for several radio and TV programs in Buenos Aires.

Hilda Lopez-Laval (PhD 1993) <hlaval@CSC1.CSC.EDU>. Chadron State College, NE

Kathy Noftsger Leon (MA 1997): I am in my third year of the PhD program at the Univ. of Illinois. In the Spring I take my prelims and will then start work on the dissertation. My topic is still being defined... it will have something to do with the racialized "female body" in the Caribbean and U.S. Caribbean imaginary/ies. I read a paper called "Locating Cuba" at the 1848/1898@1998 conference at Arizona State last December. Also served on the search committee for a Latinamericanist hire last year, and will do the same this year (I'm storing up energy...). Oh, one of the most exciting things for me was my trip to Cuba this past August. I went to La Habana; had a fabulous experience! I hope to go back next summer to do some research. Home phone is 217-356-6758; <kjleon@students.uiuc.edu>.

Clary Loisel (PhD 1996.) I'm exceptionally happy at my new job at the University of Montana. I may count three years towards tenure and two towards a sabbatical leave. My teaching load is 3-2, and I can teach almost whatever I want; I have good colleagues; I like the students; I think that Missoula is a great city; and I'm extremely thankful to be doing what I'm doing. On a personal note, my partner is my inspiration. Our "family" has recently increased in number with the arrival of our border collie. I could give you a long list of conference presentations and publications, but I'd prefer to be remembered/thought of as a very thankful and happy individual who absolutely loves what he does and tries to give a hundred percent to his students.

Demi Martinez (MA 1991) has been actively collaborating in professional journals and has published several reviews for Hispania. In October she attended the 49th Mountain Interstate Foreign Language Conference in Chattanooga, TN, and read a paper on "Las estructuras del poder en la narrativa de Rosario Ferré." She is also the coordinator of the Spanish MA Program at the University of Central Florida. She received her PhD from UNC-CH in 1996; "I am currently an Assistant Professor. I don't have a permanent home address since I am in the process of moving but I can give you an office number (407) 823-3431 and <dmartine@pegasus.cc.ucf.edu>.

Kelly A. Moss (BA 1990). I graduated from PROTEACH in '91 and began teaching Spanish in the suburbs of Atlanta. I was the Foreign Language Department in our school, Dacula High School, of 600 kids. I began interning as an administrator while working toward my Specialist in Educational Leadership degree at the Univ. of Georgia (strictly a geographical convenience :)), and now I am in my fourth year as an Assistant Principal and my ninth at Dacula High, which now has 1800 students and a Foreign Language Department with 9 teachers offering Spanish, French, German and Latin. Our student population is growing more diverse; the little country school is seeing a lot of development and I am so happy we actually have about 20 Hispanic students. This year we have one from Mexico and one from Venezuela who didn't speak any English; they have become my babies and I check on them regularly to make sure those white people aren't bothering them. :) Touching base with our Hispanic students is the highlight to my days. Otherwise I am dealing with discipline matters, parent complaints, safety and security, testing, etc. 3975 Ivy Run Circle (finally bought a house, still single) Duluth, GA 30096 770/476-4670, <flgators@ mind spring.com>.

Alexander Penalta (BA 1987), of the law office of Penalta & Associates, and adjunct Associate Professor at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical Univ., recently presented "Aviation Law—Pilot Negligence and Recoverable Damages" to the Boca Raton Pilot's Association after securing a Broward County jury verdict for an injured pilot for $3,950,000.00. Mr. Penalta majored in Spanish Literature and served as Asst. Director and legal advisor to UF's academic scuba diving program. "Although I was born in Cuba, fate found me being raised in Oklahoma, far away from my native culture. At UF, I was able to learn about myself and my culture through my studies in RLL. The quality of the Spanish program as well as the close relationships that I was able to forge with my Spanish professors proved to be of great value to me in serving the American people and the Latin community—first as an Officer in the US Navy JG Corps and to this day as an officer of the Court." Penalta & Associates, 1200 N. Federal Highway,Suite 200, Boca Raton, FL 33432; Tel:561-362-7833; <law@penalta.com> www.penalta.com/

-----

News for the next RLL Newsletter

Please fill out and return.

Features you would like to see in future RLL Newsletters:

What is your most vivid memory of an RLL class or professor?

May we print it?

Name

Major/ Degree/ Year Graduated

Address

Return To: Geraldine C. Nichols

Department of Romance Languages and Literatures

P.O. Box 117405

Gainesville FL 32611-7404

-----

Would you like to make a donation to RLL?

Please send to:

University of Florida Foundation

Romance Languages Fund 6050

P.O. Box 14425

Gainesville FL 32604

Contributor:

(optional) In Honor Of:

Address:

UF Alumna/us Degree

Year Major NA

Enclosed is my gift of $

for the Department of Romance Languages

-----

Department of Romance Languages and Literatures

P.O. Box 117405