Angela Cecilia Espinosa (Ph.D. UC-Irvine, 2009) is an Assistant Professor of Mexican literature and Border Studies in the Department of Languages and Literature. Her dissertation, The “Origin” of Spaces: Gender and Ideology in the Literature of the Latin American Vanguards explores the ways in which selected artists chose to represent gender and politics against the backdrop of “modern” Latin American metropolises such as Mexico City, São Paulo, Santiago, and Montevideo. Her research interests are transnational and comparative in scope, and include film, dance, and popular music. She draws on the theoretical frameworks of gender studies, postcolonial studies, and psychoanalysis to enlighten her investigations. Brazilian literature and popular music constitute a secondary area of research, and she often incorporates these into her Latin American survey courses. In 2007, Angela was awarded the Excellence in Diversity Teaching Fellowship by the University of Utah. Her article “En busca de la especifidad utópica homosexual en La virgen de los sicarios” appeared in the April 2008 issue of Semiosis: A Journal on Literature and Theory from the University of Veracruz, Mexico. She recently presented a portion of her dissertation at the Latin American Studies Association conference in Rio de Janeiro. Angela actively contributes to the Spanish and Comparative Literature programs in her department, as well as Latin American and Brazilian Studies. A native of Denver, CO, she is happy to return to the Rocky Mountains.

 Alessandra Santos is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Languages and Literature. She received a B.A. in Comparative Literature from the University of California, Berkeley, a Ph.D. in Hispanic Languages and Literatures from the University of California, Los Angeles, and she was a Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of British Columbia for two years. She specializes in modern and contemporary Brazilian literature and culture. Her dissertation, “Words in Five Senses: Arnaldo Antunes and Reinterpretations of Antropofagia,” addresses the notion of cultural cannibalism, exploring critical appropriations and the artistic implications of production and consumption. Alessandra’s research interests are literary criticism and critical theory, cultural studies and cultural history, aesthetics and politics; poetry, music, cinema, visual and performing arts; the avant-garde and satire. Her current project investigates the dynamics of democracy and culture.

Elena Shtromberg, a new hire in the Department of Art and Art History, whose main areas of research include twentieth-century Brazilian art, Latin American performance art, as well as art from the U.S.-Mexico border region.  Professor Shtromberg received her Ph.D. in Art History from the University of California at Los Angeles. Her dissertation, entitled “Conceptual Encounters: Art and Information in Brazil, 1968-1978,” investigates the turn to performance art, video art, and visual poetry by Brazilian artists during the military dictatorship. The dissertation posits that the politicized variant of conceptualism that emerged in Brazil was influenced by the need for artists to seek out alternative modes of communication. Her scholarship in the field of contemporary Latin American art attends to questions of gender, ethnic, and political identity.  During her time working for the Getty Research Institute she organized (with Glenn Phillips) Pioneers of Brazilian Video Art (October 2004), a video art screening covering the first decade of video art production in Brazil (1973-1983) and Surveying the Border: 3 Decades of Video Art about the U.S and Mexico (September 2005), a screening of video art highlighting a number of different perspectives surrounding the United States/Mexico border.  This year Professor Shtromberg’s courses include Border Art: Visual Culture along the U.S. Mexico Border.