Full Time Faculty
Maria Laura Bocaz-Leiva
Associate Professor of Spanish
mbocazle@umw.edu
(540) 654-2385
María Laura Bocaz-Leiva earned her M.A. and Ph.D. in Spanish language and literature from the University of Iowa in 2010.
Her research and teaching interests include modern Latin American literature and culture, the Boom of Latin American novel, the work of Chilean writer José Donoso, and Genetic Criticism. She has shared her research work with manuscript materials through articles published in peer-reviewed journals together with conference presentations, talks, and lectures, in conferences, and universities in the United States and abroad.
She has recently edited the novel El lugar sin límites by José Donoso for Colección Biblioteca Chilena of Ediciones Universidad Alberto Hurtado
Ana G. Chichester
Professor of Spanish
Director, Bachelors of Liberal Studies Program
achiches@umw.edu
(540) 654-1989
Ph.D., University of Virginia
M.A., University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
B.A., Mary Washington College.Ana (Garcia Domínguez) Chichester was born in Cuba. She received her doctorate from the University of Virginia in 1992. Her most recent publication gathers anti-separatist images in the Havana press: “Print Media and Political bias: The Portrayal of Gender and Race in Cuban Anti-Separatist Newspapers Don Junípero and El Moro Muza.” Polymath: an Interdisciplinary Journal of Arts and Sciences. October 2014. She has also published on 19th century poetry: “Nación, activismo y solidaridad: Poetas mambisas durante las Guerras de Independencia de Cuba.” Las mujeres en la Independencia de América Latina. Lima: UNESCO, Universidad San Martín de Porres, 2010. Currently she is researching transnational Cuban literature in the work of Emilia Casanova de Villaverde.
Antonia Delgado-Poust
Associate Professor of Spanish
adelgado@umw.edu
(540) 654-1990
M.A. Ph.D., The Pennsylvania State University
B.A., Bucknell University.
Antonia Delgado-Poust earned her M.A. and Ph.D. in Spanish Literature from the Pennsylvania State University in 2011 and her B.A. in Spanish and French from Bucknell University in 2003. Her research and teaching interests include contemporary (20th and 21st century) Peninsular literature, film, and culture. In her research, she focuses on representations of gender, the female experience, cases of fragmented identity and (narrative) consciousness, as well as themes relating to historical memory and truth in post-Civil War literature and film. Her most recent publications in peer-reviewed journals and collections center on the strained relationship between mother and daughter and its correlative association with a crisis in female identity (“(It’s) All About the Mother: Scarred Memories and Amnesic Bodies in Rosa Montero’s La hija del caníbal.” Bulletin of Spanish Studies, 29 March 2016, pp. 1555-70.), as well as the role of the Spanish female detective (“Rewriting the Iberian Female Detective: Deciphering Truth, Memory, and Identity in the Twenty-First-Century Novel.” Routledge Companion to Iberian Studies, edited by Javier Muñoz Basols and Laura Lonsdale, 2017, pp. 626-38.) Currently, she is working on a book project in which she links recent feminist thought with 20th and 21st century memory studies to examine how the silencing of, or disregard for, women’s voices and memories throughout the thirty-six years of the Franco dictatorship and beyond contribute to a palpable existential crisis, as represented in the contemporary novel by women writers.
Marcelo Fajardo-Cardenas
Associate Professor of Spanish
mfajardo@umw.edu
(540) 654-1974
Ph.D., The University of Arizona
M.A., New Mexico State University
B.A., Universidad de La Habana
Jeremy G. Larochelle
Professor of Spanish
laroche@umw.edu
(540) 654-1368
M.A., Ph.D., Rutgers The State University of New Jersey
B.A., The College of William and Mary
Jeremy G. Larochelle, Associate Professor of Spanish, received his Ph.D. (2006) from Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey in Spanish with a focus on contemporary Latin American and US Latina/o literature and ecological issues. He received his BA in Spanish from the College of William and Mary where he conducted undergraduate research in Mexico and Ecuador. Dr. Larochelle’s academic interests lie in the intersection between Latin American and US Latina/o literature and environmental issues. Over the last few years his research has revolved around cultural production in the Amazon region. Through the support of a Faculty Research Grant he conducted research in the Peruvian Amazon where he interviewed writers, visited libraries and spoke with people in villages along the Amazon River. His students received Undergraduate Research Grants to travel to the Amazon as well to conduct their original research. His work on the subject has been published in the journals The Dirty Goat and Review: Literature and Art of the Americas along with ¡Más aplausos para la lluvia! Antología de poesía amazónica reciente/More Applause for the Rain: Anthology of Recent Amazonian Poetry, a critical anthology of recent poetry from the Amazon with a focus on the environment that was published in Spring 2014 by TierraNueva Press in Perú. He recently published a book chapter entitled “The ‘Brevity of the Planet’: Environmental Loss in Recent Poetry by Contemporary Amazonian Writers,” in Ecological Crisis and Cultural Representation in Latin America: Ecocritical Perspectives on Art, film, and Literature (Lexington Books). In addition, an article entitled, “A City on the Brink of Apocalypse: Mexico City’s Urban Ecology in Works by Homero Aridjis and Vicente Leñero”, was recently published in the widely-read journal “Hispania”.
Elizabeth M. F. Lewis
Professor of Spanish and Assistant Dean of the College of Arts and Sciences
elewis@umw.edu
(540) 654-1987
M.A., Ph.D., University of Virginia
B.A., Auburn University
http://elizabethfranklinlewis.net
Elizabeth Franklin Lewis earned her M.A. and Ph.D. in Spanish language and literature from the University of Virginia, with a specialty in 18th and 19th century Spanish peninsular literature, especially literature by women writers. She is the author of the monograph Women Writers in the Spanish Enlightenment: The Pursuit of Happiness . (2004) and the co-editor with Catherine Jaffe of Texas State University of an essay collection Eve’s Enlightenment: Women’s Experience in Spain and Spanish America 1726-1839 (2009). Recently she has been teaching and researching on Don Quijote, charity as social action among 18th and 19th century women, enlightenment women and the “Republic of Letters” in Spain and Latin America, and the incorporation of digital humanities into teaching and research, especially with undergraduate research.
Maria-Isabel Martinez-Mira
Associate Professor of Spanish
mmira@umw.edu
(540) 654-1986
M.A., Ph.D., University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
B.A., University of Murcia, Spain
M. Patricia Orozco Watrel
Lecturer in Spanish
morozco@umw.edu
(540) 654-1976
Ph.D., The Catholic University of America
M.A., George Mason University
M.A., University of North Dakota
B.A., Universidad Autonoma de Nuevo Leon
Jose Angel Sainz
Associate Professor of Spanish
Director, Center for International Education
jsainz@umw.edu
(540) 654-1991 (MLL)
(540) 654-1261 (CIE)
Ph.D., University of Maryland
M.A., West Virginia University
B.A., Universidad de Deusto, Spain
Gonzalo Campos Dintrans
Assistant Professor of Spanish
gcamposd@umw.edu
(540) 654-1367
B.A. English Literature and Linguistics, Universidad Católica de Chile
B.A. Education, Universidad Católica de Chile
M.A. TESOL, University of Iowa
Ph.D. Second Language Acquisition, University of IowaMy teaching and my research involve mainly two areas: second language learning and Spanish. Within second language learning, I am interested in describing learners’ “hidden” knowledge, because I assume that they know more that we can see/hear. I am also interested in how to best help learners become more proficient, and the role that computer mediated communication can have on it. As a Spanish linguist, I am interested in learning and describing the vernacular use of the language, with special attention to dialectal variation and the use of the pronoun “vos” and its corresponding verb forms. My current publications can be seen here.