Sarah Babb

Associate Professor, Sociology
Ph.D., Northwestern University

Faculty Web Page
Email: sarah.babb.1@bc.edu

Professor Babb is a political, economic, and historical sociologist with a special interest in Latin America. Her book Managing Mexico examines the history of the economics profession in Mexico. She is currently conducting research on Latin American experiences with the International Monetary Fund in the early Bretton Woods period.

Sarah Beckjord

Associate Professor, Romance Laguages and Literatures
Ph.D., Columbia University

Faculty Web Page
Email: sarah.beckjord@bc.edu

Professor Beckjord teaches courses on Latin American literature and culture, with particular emphasis on the colonial period and 19th century. She is especially interested in the cross-fertilization of aesthetic and ideological trends between Latin America and Europe, and has published articles on the 19th-century Cuban anti-slavery narrative and on the chronicles of the Conquest of Mexico. Her book Territories of History: Humanism, Rhetoric, and the Historical Imagination in the Early Chronicles of Spanish America (Penn State University Press, 2007), examines 16th-century debates that emerged over the writing of the history of the New World and their parallels in recent narrative theory.

María Estela Brisk

Professor, Lynch School of Education
Ph.D., University of New Mexico

Faculty Web Page
Email: maria.brisk.1@bc.edu

A native of Argentina, Professor Brisk teaches courses in language and literacy development, the social context of education, and methods of teaching bilingual learners. She is the author of the books Bilingual Education: From Compensatory to Quality Schooling and Literacy and Bilingualism: A Handbook for ALL Teachers.

Rhonda Frederick

Associate Professor, English
Ph.D., University of Pennsylvania

Faculty Web Page
Email: rhonda.frederick.1@bc.edu

Professor Frederick teaches Caribbean and African American literatures and cultures at Boston College. She is also interested in 20th-century popular fiction (futurist fiction and fantasy, detective/mystery fiction) and literatures of the African Diaspora. Her research interests are in Post-Colonial Studies, Cultural Studies, and narratives of migration. She is the author of Colón Man a Come: Mythographies of Panamá Canal Migration (Lexington Books [Rowman & Littlefield], 2005), published in the Caribbean Studies Series (series editors Shona N. Jackson and Anton Allahar).

Frank Garcia

Professor, Boston College Law School
J.D., University of Michigan

Faculty Web Page
Email: frank.garcia.1@bc.edu

Frank J. Garcia joined the BC Law faculty in 2001. He had been an Associate Professor at the Florida State University College of Law since 1993. He has served as a Visiting Professor at the University of the Republic in Uruguay, as Visiting Professor at the University of Houston Law Center, and as the Katherine A. Ryan Distinguished Visiting Professor at the St. Mary's University School of Law/University of Innsbruck, Austria.

Roberto Goizueta

Professor, Theology
Ph.D., Marquette University

Faculty Web Page
Email: roberto.goizueta.1@bc.edu

Professor Goizueta teaches courses on Latin American and U.S. Latino/a theologies. His publications–including the book Caminemos con Jesús: Toward a Hispanic/Latino Theology of Accompaniment (Orbis Books, 1995)–examine the relationship between theology and culture, focusing especially on popular religion as a source for theological reflection.

Demetrius Iatridis

Professor, Graduate School of Social Work
Ph.D., Bryn Mawr College; M.S.W., University of Pittsburgh

Email: demetrius.iatridis.1@bc.edu

Professor Iatridis is Professor of Social Policy Planning and the Chair of the Planning Department of the Boston College Graduate School of Social Work. For over 20 years he has been involved in study, research, publications, and coordinating over 20 student field trips to Cuba.

Deborah Levenson

Associate Professor, History
Ph.D., New York University; M.A., University of Massachusetts

Faculty Web Page
Email: deborah.levenson-estrada@bc.edu

Professor Levenson teaches courses on Central America, modern Latin America, and women and gender in Latin America and the Caribbean. She is the author of Trade Unionists Against Terror: Guatemala City 1954-1985 (University of North Carolina Press, 1994), and her newest book, A Tattoo on Your Heart: Youth, Violence and the Gangs of Guatemala City, will be published in 2012 by Duke University Press. She is a member of the Editorial Board of Report on the Americas, the bi-monthly publication of the North American Congress on Latin America (NACLA). She is also an active affiliate of AVANCSO, a research institute in Guatemala City.

Ernesto Livón-Grosman

Associate Professor, Romance Languages and Literatures
Ph.D., New York University

Faculty Web Page
Email: ernesto.livon-grosman@bc.edu

Professor Livón-Grosman offers courses on Latin American literature and culture, poetics, and literary theory. His research concentrates on experimental Latin American poetry and the relation between contemporary poetry and literary theory. He has also worked on travel writing in Patagonia and its connection to nation building. His most recent book is Geografías Imaginarias: El relato de viaje y la construcción del relato patagónico (Beatriz Viterbo, 2003). He has two forthcoming projects: José Lezama Lima: Selections (University of California Press) and 500 Years of Latin American Poetry (Oxford University Press).

M. Brinton Lykes

Professor, Lynch School of Education
Ph.D., Boston College

Faculty Web Page
Email: brinton.lykes.1@bc.edu

Professor Lykes teaches courses in Participatory Action Research and on psychosocial perspectives on child, family, and society, focusing on the USA, Latin America, and South Africa. She is a community psychologist and activist and has lived and worked among women and child survivors of state-sponsored violence and war in rural Guatemala, the North of Ireland, and South Africa. Her research focuses on indigenous cultural beliefs and practices and those of Western psychology, towards creating community-based psychosocial and educational development programs. Her recent publications include, Myths about the Powerless: Contesting Social Inequalities, and a co-authored photo essay, Mujeres Mayas Ixiles de Chajul/Voices and images: Maya Ixil women of Chajul.

Michael Malec

Associate Professor, Sociology
Ph.D., Purdue University

Faculty Web Page
Email: michael.malec.1@bc.edu

Professor Malec teaches undergraduate courses in Statistics, Sport and Society, and Caribbean Cultures, and graduate courses in statistics and teaching sociology. His research interests include the sociological dimensions of sports in the Caribbean region.

Diana McDonald

Part-time Faculty, Fine Arts
Ph.D., Columbia University; B.A., Harvard University

Faculty Web Page
Email: diana.mcdonald@bc.edu

Professor McDonald has two primary geographic fields of interest: the art and archaeology of the Ancient Near East, and that of the Pre-Columbian world. She is particularly interested in animal iconography, and aspects of evolutionary psychology that may help to explain the very origin of art and symbolic images. She has been focusing on fourth- and third-millennium animal imagery in Mesopotamia as well as animal symbolism in the art of Mesoamerica and Peru. Dr. McDonald also gives lectures at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, including semester course series covering the Ancient Near East as well as Pre-Columbian Art.

John Michalczyk

Professor, Fine Arts
Ph.D., Harvard University; M.Div., Weston School of Theology

Faculty Web Page
Email: john.michalczyk.1@bc.edu

Professor Michalczyk is Director of the Film Studies program in the Fine Arts department. In addition to teaching courses on Latin American cinema, he is also a documentary filmmaker, focusing on social-justice issues.

Zachary Morgan

Assistant Professor, History
Ph.D., Brown University

Faculty Web Page
Email: zachary.morgan.1@bc.edu

Professor Morgan is a specialist in Brazilian history. He is writing a book-length manuscript on race on 19th-century Brazil. His current research focuses on race, state violence, and ideas of modernity in Brazil and in the broader Atlantic world. He is currently working on a manuscript titled Legacy of the Lash: Race, Citizenship, and Corporal Punishment in the Brazilian Navy, 1860-1910.

Nancy Pineda-Madrid

Assistant Professor, Theology and Latino/Latina Ministry

Ph.D., Graduate Theological Union, M.Div., Seattle University

Curriculum Vitae

Email: pinedama@bc.edu

Dr. Nancy Pineda-Madrid holds a Ph.D. in Systematic and Philosophical Theology from the Graduate Theological Union and a M.Div. from Seattle University. She works at the intersection of systematic theology and practical theology.

Jennie Purnell

Associate Professor, Political Science
Ph.D., Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Faculty Web Page
Email: jennie.purnell.1@bc.edu

Professor Purnell's research and teaching interests focus on social movements, revolutions, and other forms of contentious politics. Her recent publications include "Popular Movements and State Formation in Revolutionary Mexico: The Agraristas and Cristeros of Michoacán and "Citizens and Sons of the Pueblo: National and Local Identities in the Making of the Mexican Nation," published in Ethnic and Racial Studies. She is currently working on a book that explores the responses of indigenous communities to state formation in 19th-century Mexico.

Harry L. Rosser

Associate Professor, Romance Languages and Literatures
Ph.D., University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill; M.A., Cornell University

Faculty Web Page
Email: harry.rosser.1@bc.edu

Professor Rosser teaches courses on Latin American literature and culture. He was raised in Mexico, a country of particular interest in his book Conflict and Transition in Rural Mexico: The Fiction of Social Realism. He has published articles in Spanish and English on Latin American writers in numerous journals. He is the Spanish narrator of the PBS 52-program telecourse Destinos which he also helped design. His present research interests are on the controversies revolving around Magical Realism as a Latin American discourse versus a global discourse, and on interartistic theory in the political and aesthetic correspondence between painters and writers.

Sylvia Sellers-García

Assistant Professor, History

Ph.D., University of California, Berkeley, 2009

Curriculum vitae
Email: sylvia.sellers-garcia@bc.edu

Professor Sellers-García’s teaching interests include colonial Latin America, the Spanish empire, and the meetings points between history and fiction. Her book manuscript, “‘At a Great Distance’: Reading Documents from the Periphery of the Spanish Empire,” examines the conception of distance in colonial Guatemala through the authorship, transportation, and storage of documents. More broadly, her research examines the history of archives, the period of Bourbon reforms in the eighteenth century, and the history of empire.

Frank F. Taylor

Associate Professor, History and Black Studies
Ph.D., University of Geneva; M.A., University of West Indies

Faculty Web Page
Email: frank.taylor.1@bc.edu

Professor Taylor is Director of African and African Diaspora Studies at Boston College. He teaches courses on the history and legacy of slavery in Caribbean and Latin American societies, and he conducts a Caribbean Summer Study program in Barbados and Antigua each year. His book To Hell With Paradise: A History of the Jamaican Tourist Industry examines the effects of tourism on Caribbean politics and society.