Latin American Studies

faculty

Roberto Avant-Mier Assistant Professor Communication PhD, University of Utah Web Page E-mail: roberto.avant-mier.1@bc.edu		Professor Avant-Mier's teaching and research interests lie primarily in the intersection of communication with culture. One emphasis includes intercultural communication and the specific trajectory of critical intercultural communication, the intersection of intercultural communication with critical theory. He has published articles on race, ethnicity, and whiteness. Some other favorite topics are identity and nationalism, and his work on his doctoral dissertation and current research focuses on the social construction of nation and identity through popular music, specifically, "rock en español," latino/a rock, chicana/o rock, etc.
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Sarah Babb Associate Professor Sociology PhD, Northwestern University Web Page: http://www2.bc.edu/~babbsa E-mail: 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.
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Sarah Beckjord Associate Professor Romance Laguages and Literatures PhD, Columbia University Web Page E-mail: 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 recently published book, Territories of History: Humanism, Rhetoric, and the Historical Imagination in the Early Chronicles of Spanish America (2007, Penn State University Press) examines 16th-century debates that emerged over the writing of the history of the New World and their parallels in recent narrative theory.
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María Estela Brisk Professor Lynch School of Education PhD, University of New Mexico Web Page: http://www2.bc.edu/~brisk/ E-mail: 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.
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Rhonda Frederick Associate Professor English PhD, University of Pennsylvania Web Page: http://www2.bc.edu/~frederir E-mail: 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)
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Frank Garcia Professor Boston College Law School JD, University of Michigan Web Page E-mail: 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.
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Roberto Goizueta Professor Theology PhD, Marquette University Web Page E-mail: 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 -- examine the relationship between theology and culture, focusing especially on popular religion as a source for theological reflection.
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Demetrius Iatridis Professor Graduate School of Social Work MSW, University of Pittsburgh PhD, Bryn Mawr College E-mail: 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 twenty years he has been involved in study, research, publications, and coordinating over twenty student field trips to Cuba.
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Deborah Levenson Associate Professor History MA, University of Massachusetts PhD, New York University Web Page E-mail: levensod@bc.edu		Professor Levenson teaches courses on Central America, modern Latin America, and women and gender in Latin America and the Caribbean. Author of Trade Unionists Against Terror: Guatemala City 1954-1985, she is now writing a book on urban youth and modernity in Guatemala to be published 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.
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Ernesto Livón-Grosman Associate Professor Romance Languages and Literatures PhD, New York University Web Page E-mail: livongro@bc.edu		Professor Livon-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).
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M. Brinton Lykes Professor Lynch School of Education Ph.D., Boston College Web Page: http://www2.bc.edu/~lykes/ E-mail: 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.
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Michael Malec Associate Professor Sociology Ph.D., Purdue University Web Page: http://www2.bc.edu/~malec E-mail: 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.
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Diane McDonald Part-time Faculty BA, Fine Arts, Harvard University PhD, Columbia University, Ancient Art Web Page E-mail: mcdonadh@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 which may help to explain the very origin of art and symbolic images. She has been focusing on fourth & 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 PreColumbian Art.
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John Michalczyk Professor Fine Arts MDiv, Weston School of Theology PhD, Harvard University Web Page E-mail: 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.
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Zachary Morgan Assistant Professor History PhD, Brown University Web Page E-mail: 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)."
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Jennie Purnell Associate Professor Political Science PhD, MIT Web Page E-mail: 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 nineteenth century Mexico.
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Harry L. Rosser

Associate Professor
Romance Languages and Literatures
MA, Cornell University
PhD, University of
North Carolina at Chapel Hill

Web Page

E-mail:
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 vs a global discourse and on interartistic theory in the political and aesthetic correspondence between painters and writers.

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Frank F. Taylor

Associate Professor
History and Black Studies
MA, University of West Indies
PhD, University of Geneva

Web Page

E-mail:
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.