May 2023
Mauro Cazzolla | Fellowship Award
Congratulations to Mauro for being awarded a Dissertation Fellowship from the College of Arts and Sciences Center for the Humanities for the 2023-2024 Academic Year.
Gabriel Das Chagas | Award
Congratulations to Gabriel for receiving 1st place for Best Oral Presentation in Arts & Humanities at the Fifth Annual Graduate and Postdoctoral Research Symposium at the University of Miami.
Gabriel Das Chagas | Conference Presentations
Congratulations are also in order to Gabriel for his presentations at various conferences.
Gabriel Das Chagas | Panel Moderation
Gabriel moderated the Gender and Sexuality in Luso-African-Brazilian Culture panel at the 2023 Graduate Student Confer-ence: Transcultural Expressions: Conflict, Identity and Revitaliza-tion in Multicultural Spheres at the University of Miami on March 3, 2023.
Jacob Dennis | Conference Paper Acceptance
Congratulations to Jacob for having their paper "Print and Propa-ganda: Representations of socialism, anarchism, and feminism in 1890s Argentine press" accepted for presentation at the 2023 Eng-lish Graduate Student Organization Conference on Reciprocity at Cornell University.
Marcia Fanti Negri | Award
Congratulations to Marcia for being awarded the 2023 Tinker Field Research Grant to conduct field research in the Theater As-sociation of the Heroines of Tejucopapo, in Recife, Brazil for Sum-mer 2023.
Marcia Fanti Negri | Paper Presentations
Congratulations to Marcia for presenting her paper “Corp(orality): a performance of the senses in The Women of Tijucopapo by Marilene Felinto” at the 54th NeMLA Annual Convention in Niag-ara Falls, NY.
Eukene Franco Landa | Fellowship Award
Congratulations to Eukene for receiving a summer fellowship from the Sigma Delta Pi association, to fund data collection for her thesis on early bilinguals' identities and ideologies on newspeaker-ism in the Basque Country.
Eukene Franco Landa | Interview
The Basque Summer University (Udako Euskal Unibertsitatea, UEU) interviewed Eukene for her recent work with Basque herit-age speakers in the USA, and for her experience as a Basque grad student at the University of Miami.
Eukene Franco Landa | Research Stay
Eukene also completed a research stay in Boise, Idaho, during Spring Break, where she interviewed Basque-Americans about their struggles in their dual identity and language ideologies about nativeness and heritage speakerism.
Eukene Franco Landa | Volume Presentation/Publication
The volume in honor of Eukene’s late aita 'dad', Jon Franco (1962- 2021), Papers on Basque Linguistics in Honour of Jon Fran-co, has recently been released.
Maytte Hernández Lorenzo | Fellowship Award
Congratulations to Maytte for receiving the 2023-2024 Goizueta Graduate Fellowship in support of the research project, “Cultural policies and cultural citizenship: articulating new narratives in Cuban theater.”
Sam Johnson | Award
Congratulations to Sam for being awarded best paper presentation prize at the Tri-University Latin American Studies Conference at Florida Atlantic University on March 27 for his paper "Defending Kawsak Sacha: Indigenous Media and Against Extrac-tivism from Sarayaku Ecuador".
Sam Johnson | Paper Presentation
Sam presented his paper "Indigenous Media Interventions in En-vironmental Disaster" at Brown University's "Laboratory of Worlds: Futures, Ruptures, Possibilities" conference which took place from April 7-8.
Sam Johnson | Position Offer
Sam accepted a job offer to teach Spanish and serve as Languages Department Chair at St. Andrews Sewanee, a private school in Tennessee.
Neta Kanny | Internship
Congratulations to Neta who will be working this summer as the Venezuela Intern for the U.S. State Department’s Bureau of West-ern Hemisphere Affairs’ Office of Andean Affairs in Washington D.C.
Massiel Medina | Panel Moderation
Congratulations to Massiel for moderating keynote speaker panel for the Exploring the Caribbean: New Questions, Methods and De-bates Conference on April 21, 2023.
Yasamin Rezai | Awards
Congratulations to Yasamin for being awarded the AELS (Academic Excellence Leadership Service) award in the Leader-ship category. This award recognizes students active in organizations, serving on committees and task forces, involve-ment in on-campus activities.
Yasamin Rezai | Book Chapter Publication
Yasamin contributed to the book The #MeToo Movement in Iran: Reporting Sexual Violence and Harassment which is out now. You can pre-order your copy here.
Yasamin Rezai | Conference Presentation
Yasamin presented “Poetry of Politics and Pain: A Study of in-stapoetry under #MahsaAmini" at Poetry and Digital Plat-forms panel at NeMLA conference in Niagara Falls, NY.
Yasamin Rezai | Guest Speaker Opportunity
Yasamin was invited as a guest speaker to give a talk and handle a class discussion on Instapoetry in general and in the context of Iranian protests in their Digital Culture course for the students of the literary criticism program at Jagiellonian University in Po-land.
Yasamin Rezai | Publication Acceptance
Yasamin’s paper “Performing Persian Poetics on Instagram” was accepted for publication in the first instapoetry special issue by the European Journal of English Studies (EJES).
Savannah Saavedra | Fellowship Award
Congratulations to Savannah for receiving a DH Graduate Stu-dent Fellowship to work with Dr. Schifani on the “Mapping Imagi-nary Miami” project during this summer.
Savannah Saavedra | Paper Presentation
Congratulations to Savannah for presenting her paper, “La perfor-mance dice más que mil palabras: Las demostraciones artísticas y teatrales durante los paros nacionales colombianos del 2019-2021” to the 21st Annual Tri-University Graduate Student Conference on Latin America and the Caribbean at Florida Atlantic Universi-ty, on March 27, 2023 at Florida Atlantic University.
Luli Schmader | Fellowship Award
Congratulations to Luli for being recently awarded the Foreign Language and Area Studies Summer Fellowship 2023 (FLAS) by the University of Pittsburgh to study the Kichwa language in the Napo Province of the Ecuadorian Amazon. She will receive 140 contact hours of intensive instruction spread over six weeks. This fellowship is funded by the U.S. Department of Education.
Luli Schmader | Conference Presentations
Luli presented her essay titled: “Indigenous Women of the Ecuado-rian Amazon: the first line of Defense of their territory,” where she analyzes how Amazonian women of Ecuador are creating new ven-ues to advocate for their communities, resist extractive oil indus-tries, and reclaim their territories the NAGIS Conference held at the University of Miami from April 24-25, 2023.
Luli Schmader | Research Assistant Position
On February 2022, Luli was offered a research assistant position as part of the U-Link Social Equity NAGIS award. She served as NAGIS conference panel co-coordinator and simultaneous transla-tion assistant throughout Spring 2023.
Euge Stumm | Fellowship Award
Congratulations to Euge for receiving a Digital Humanities Grad-uate Student Fellowship for Summer 2023.
2023 Graduate Student Congratulations
Many thanks to Gabriel Das Chagas, Eukene Franco Landa, Vijay Navarro, Ernesto Rumbaut, and Luli Schmader for organizing this year’s Graduate Student Conference held March 2-3, 2023. The did a wonderful job at organizing the panels and coordinating the keynote speakers.
Graduate Student Newsletter, May 2023
March 2023
Gabriel das Chagas | Article Publication
Congratulations to Gabriel, whose article “A língua dos anjos caídos não se ouve no Brasil: uma leitura decolonial do conto “O moleque”, de Lima Barreto” was published in Revista REVELL-Universidade Estadual do Mato Grosso do Sul (Brazil).
Gabriel das Chagas | Conference Presentation
Gabriel presented his paper “The Violence of a Costume: A Decolonial Approach to the Short Story “Cló,” by Lima Barreto” at the Diálogos XX Conference at Indiana University held February 24-25, 2023.
Gabriel das Chagas | Paper Acceptance
Additionally, his paper, “The Flaws of an American Dream and The Violence of a Tropical Paradise: Black Counterdiscourses in the United States and Brazil”, was accepted for presentation at the 5th Graduate and Postdoctoral Research Symposium at the University of Miami.
Gabriel das Chagas | Research Group Co-convening
Congratulations to Gabriel for serving as a co-convener of the Queer Studies Interdisciplinary Research Group in the Center of Humanities at the University of Miami on February 17, 2023.
Eukene Franco Landa | Talk Invitation
Congratulations to Eukene for being invited to give a talk called Irulegiko eskua [The hand of Irulegi]: How a treasure from the past can help us understand Basque new-speakerism in contemporary Navarre, by the Basque Museum of Boise (the biggest Basque center in the diaspora).
Yasamin Rezai Pacella | Podcast Participation
Congratulations to Yasamin for recently appearing as a guest speaker on Gozaar Podcast, a podcast that serves as a repository and collection of voices from different experts on the ongoing revolution of “Woman, Life, Freedom” in Iran.
Yasamin Rezai Pacella | Radio Participation
Yasamin also served as a guest speaker with 021 Radio, a Persian-speaking local radio station based in Houston, to discuss the recent changes in U.S. foreign policies with Iran.
Graduate Students Newsletter, March 2023
January 2023
Gabriel de Chagas | Article Publication
Congratulations to Gabriel, whose article “A modernidade interseccional nos contos de Lima Barreto”, was published in the Revista Interdisciplinar (Federal University of Sergipe—Brazil), this past December 2022.
Gabriel de Chagas | Conference Acceptances
Gabriel’s paper “The Violence of a Costume: A Decolonial Approach to the Short Story “Cló,” by Lima Barreto” was accepted for presentation at the Diálogos XX Conference at Indiana University held February 24-25, 2023.
Gabriel de Chagas | Lecture
Congratulations to Gabriel for giving an in-person lecture titled “A implosão de um sonho americano: Os contos da juventude de Langston Hughes” for the English and American Literature program at the University of the State of Rio de Janeiro—Brazil (UERJ) on January 5, 2023.
Eukene Franco Landa | Article Application
Congratulations to Eukene for the publication of her article "Basque quantifier agreement variation throughout the old texts of Southern Basque Country", a study on the change of
the Basque quantifiers across time in the journal Fontes Linguae Vasconum.
Eukene Franco Landa | Conference Acceptance
Congratulations to Eukene for having her paper "New speakers: a misconception based on otherness" accepted for presentation at the XIX International Conference on Minority Languages
at the University of Wales.
Neta Kanny | Conference Acceptance
Congratulations to Neta for having her paper “O movimento de gênero: representações migratórias da mulher em Vidas secas e Xica da Silva” accepted to the Graduate Conference “Transcultural Expressions: Conflict, Identity, and Revitalization in Multicultural Spheres” at the University of Miami in Coral Gables, Florida, from March 2-3, 2023.
Massiel Medina | Conference Acceptance
Congratulations to Massiel for having her paper "Nociones de idio-ma en How the García Girls Lost Their Accents y Dominicana" ac-cepted for presentation at the 2023 Graduate Student Conference Transcultural Expressions: Conflict, Identity, and Revitalization in Multicultural Spheres held at the University of Miami from March 2-3, 2023.
Yoán Moreno | Community Archive Project
Congratulations to Yoán for launching an ongoing community ar-chive project here in Miami.
Yasamin Rezai Pacella | Grant Award
Congratulations to Yasamin whose project, Poetics of Politics & Pain: A Study Of Iran’s Ongoing Revolution With #MahsaAmini, which is a part of her dissertation, won a $20,000 grant of Expanding the Use of Collaborative Data Science from the Institute for Data Science and Computing (IDSC).
Yasamin Rezai Pacella | Panel Award
Congratulations to Yasamin for presenting #metoo staged: Performance of Embodied Hashtags in Feminist Digital Movements on the panel “Data Performance at MLA” in San Fransisco.
Yasamin Rezai Pacella | Live Broadcast
Yasamin will be going live on Kaarnamaa, a journal of Art History and Criticism, in discussion with artists and scholars Aida Shira-zi, Nazanin Noroozi, and Niyoosha Ahmadikhoo about the performance of protest in ongoing Iran's revolution on Saturday, Janu-ary 28, 2023 at 10 AM EST.
Ernesto Rumbaut | Conference Acceptance
Congratulations to Ernesto for having his paper “Catalizador Femme” accepted to the XXXII Congreso Internacional de Litera-tura y Estudios Hispánicos (CILH) in Cartagena de Indias, Colom-bia, from March 9-11, 2023.
Savannah Saavedra | Published Article
Congratulations to Savannah for the acceptance of her paper “Unveiling paradise: The environmental, economic, and social im-plications behind the idyllic landscape in Jorge Isaacs’ María” for the 57th annual SCOLAS (Southwest Council of Latin American Studies) conference, which will be held between April 6-8, 2023.
Graduate Students Newsletter, January 2023
December 2022
Gabriel das Chagas | Podcast Hosting
Congratulations to Gabriel for being invited to host the Lima Barreto: o negro é a cor mais cortante podcast from the Instituto Moreira Salles in Brazil on November 1st, 2022.
Gabriel das Chagas | Publication
Gabriel's paper, NO AVESSO DA SECA, AS FERIDAS DE UMA LINGUAGEM IMPOSSÍVEL: UMA ANÁLISE COMPARATIVA DE VIDAS SECAS, DE GRACILIANO RAMOS, E O AVESSO DA PELE, DE JEFERSON TENÓRIO was published in the University of California's Santa Barbara Portuguese Studies Magazine.
Gabriel das Chagas | Paper Presentation
Gabriel presented his paper Race and Gender in Brazil: The Colonial Wound in Lima Barreto's Fiction at the University of Texas Gender Symposium on November 28, 2022.
Gabriel das Chagas | Teach-in Organization
Congratulations to Gabriel for his role in organizing the Portuguese Program's teach-in: Black November in Brazil alongside fellow MLL students, Marcia Fanti Negri, Monica Faust, and Euge Stumm and Drs. Devine Guzman and Butterman.
Diona Espinosa | Paper Acceptance
Congratulation to Diona for acceptance of her paper "Issues and Features with the Platform: Performance during Pandemic Times" as part of the panel: New Medina and Digital Cultures in Latin America into the Track: Culture, Power and Political Subjectivities for the LASA2023 Hybrid Congress: América Latina y el Caribe: Pensar, Representar y Luchar por los Derechos taking place May 24-27, 2023, virtually and on-site in Vancouver, Canada.
Marci Fanti Negri | Published Article
Congratulations to Marcia for having her article, "Performance of the land in Barren Lives and Vidas Secas: The poetics of silence in Brazil" (2022) published in a special volume of the Santa Barbara Portuguese Studies Journal.
Eukene Franco Landa | Paper Presentation
Congratulations to Eukene for presenting her paper, "On the identity of early L2 speakers. Are they Basque new speakers?" at the Linguistics Seminar of the University of the Basque Country on November 29, 2022.
Eukene Discussed how often, based on nativeness, researchers and the Basque community tend to assume that early Basque L2 speakers are language learners, instead of nearly-native speakers. They are called "new speakers," a term that fully ignores that they have been bilingual their whole lives. She proposes encouragement of speakers' self-identification, rather than following traditional linguistic ideologies.
Eukene Franco Landa | Session Invitation
Eukene has been invited to an online reflection session called "Euskozenoa" (The era of Basque), as a Basque speaker in the diaspora. It is a project sponsored by Gipuzkoa's government (Basque Country) to encourage Basque youth to reflect on the relationship between identity and language.
Yoán Moreno | Conference Acceptance
Congratulations to Yoán for having his paper, "El diario se mueve: E-Motions as a Creolizing Self-Portrait," (about Leandro Soto, using archives of his from the CHC) accepted to the Southwest Popular/American Culture Association (SWPACA) Conference in Albuquerque, NM from February 22-25, 2023.
Yasamin Rezaei | Panel Presentation
Congratulations to Yasamin for being invited to present "Unveiling: Reclaiming the Body and Urban Spaces in Iran's Ongoing Revolution" for the panel : Rage, Rhythm, Renaissance: Performances of/in the ongoing Iranian's Revolution by Tisch Department of Performance Studies at NYU this past November 2022.
Yasamin Rezaei | Conference Acceptance
Yasamin was also accepted to present, "Poetry of Politics and Pain: A Study of Instapoetry under #MahsaAmini amidst Iran's ongoing revolution" as part of the Poetry and Platform Cultures panel at the NeMLA's 54th Annual Convention at the University of Buffalo in March 2023.
Savannah Saavedra | Paper Acceptance
Congratulations to Savannah for the acceptance of her paper titled, "Las venas abiertas siguen sangrando...un estudio comparativo entre el arte de protesta en Chile y Columbia," as part of the panel: Intervenciones escénicas: teatro y performance into the Track: Art, Music and Performance Studies for the LASA2023 Hybrid Congress: América Latina y el Caribe: Pensar, Representar y Luchar por los Derechos taking place May 24-27, 2023, virtually and on-site Vancouver, Canada.
Graduate Students Newsletter, December 2022
November 2022
Monica Faust | Dissertation Defense
Congratulations to Monica for successfully defending her dissertation with distinction this past Friday, October 28, 2022. The title for her dissertation is Dixie Myopia in Brazil: Confederado Self-fashioning Erasure.
Monica Faust | Job Placement
Congratulations are also in order for Monica for recently starting a full-time position as a Development Officer for the University of Miami.
Eukene Franco-Landa | Publication
Congratulations to Eukene for her first chapter publication in mid-October, "How many is a lot? Analyzing Basque Indefinite Quantifiers," in the book Euskal filologia eta hizkuntzalaritzaren adarrak [Branches of Basque Philology and Linguistics], in Basque. It is a sociolinguistic study about the agreement variation with quantifiers in Basque, like in English (there was many women vs. there were many women).
This is the first research conducted with the corpus Norantz (www.norantz.org), which is the first corpus to compile conversations in Basque with Basque people from the "French" Basque Country. A community often forgotten, due to their lack of officiality and language rights, overall.
Franco Landa, E. (2022). Zenbat dira asko? Euskal zenbatzaile zehaztugabeak aztergai. [How many is a lot? Analyzing Basque indefinite quantifiers] In D. Krajewska, S. Monforte del Valle & E. Zuloaga San Román (arg.), Aziti Bihia. Euskal filologia eta hizkuntzalaritzaren adarrak [Branches of Basque Philology and Linguistics], (33-67. or). Euskal Herriko Unibertsitatea, Argitalpen Zerbitzua.
Yasamin Rezaei | Conference Acceptance
Congratulations to Yasamin for acceptance of her presentation, "Poetry of Pain: A Study of Instapoetry Under #MahsaAmini" for the session "Poetry and Platform Cultures" in NeMLA in Buffalo, NY in 2023.
Yasamin Rezaei | Table Organization
Yasamin also organized a table on campus to raise awareness about Iran's revolution and #MahsaAmini.
MLL Participation at APSA
Graduate students and Dr. Butterman represented MLL at the American Portuguese Studies Association 12th International Conference 2022, "The Genealogical Imagination," hosted Brigham Young University (Provo, UT) from October 6-8, 2022.
Samuel Johnson moderated the panel "21st Century Brazilian Film: Screening Resistance to Systemic Oppressions," which he co-organized with Gabriel das Chagas, Marci Fanti Negri, and former MLL graduate student, Dr. Lidiana de Moraes (Post-Doc at Vanderbilt University).
Gabriel das Chagas presented An Invisible City of Invisible People: Reading Power and Place in Bacurau (2019).
Samuel Johnson presented Screening Indigenous Knowledges and Extractive Threats.
Marci Fanti Negri presented Cinema Novo and the performance of the land as a character-space in Barren Lives (1963) by Nelson Pereira dos Santos.
Dr. Lidiana de Moraes presented Don't touch my hair! Don't touch my Crown & The Politics of Black Women's Hair in Kbela.
Dr. Steven Butterman presented Queer Poetry and Critical Race Theory in Brazil vs. U.S.: Ronaldo V. Wilson, Danez Smith, Angélica Freitas, & Miriam Alves in parallel panel: "Please, Write Me a Poem."
Graduate Students Newsletter, November 2022
October 2023
Mauro Cazzola | Published Translation
Congratulations to Mauro for having his Italian translation, Mio marito, of the best-seller French novel, Mon mari (awarded the Prix du Premier), published this past September.
Gabriel das Chagas Alves Pereira Souza | Magazine Interview
Congratulations to Gabriel for his interview "Meet Gabriel Chagas | Teacher and Translator" with magazine, Shoutout Miami, this past September.
Yasamin Rezaei | Article Publications
Congratulations to Yasamin for having two articles published earlier this summer.
The first is Review of Performing #MeToo: How not to look away edited by Judith D. Rudakoff published in Critical Studies in Media Communication, 39.2 (2022): 1-4.
The second is Data Stories for/from All: Why Data Feminism is for Everyone, A review on Data Feminism by Catherine D'Ignazio and Lauren Klein, Digital Humanities Quarterly, 16.3 (2022).
Yasamin Rezaei | Conference Panels & Papers
Congratulations to Yasamin introducing and co-organizing Data Performance as a panel, a term exploring the performativity of data in the realm of performance studies and data justice. This is a mutual project with colleagues in Performance Studies at NYU and Buffalo University. The panel was presented at CSA (Cultural Studies Associations) conference in Chicago, this past June 2-4, 2022. The panel has also been accepted at the MLA (Modern Languages Association) conference in San Francisco, January 4-8, 2023.
Additionally, her paper "The Embodied Hashtags: #metoo staged," was presented in the Data Performance panel in CSA and accepted in the Data Performance panel in MLA.
Yasamin Rezaei | Interview
Congratulations are also in order for her interview "Yasamin Rezaei talking the Women's Movement in Iran" with Ross Kaminsky on KOA news radio.
Savannah Saavedra | Conference Presentations
Congratulations to Savannah for the acceptance of two of her papers to upcoming conferences this fall. The first, "Demystifying the Magic: Social Critique Through Science and Technology in One Hundred Years of Solitude" has been accepted to the XXXI Congreso Internacional de Literatura y Estudios Hispánicos, which will take place virtually in October 2022.
Her second paper: "Defining Home: Arepas, Immigration, and Magical Realism in Anika Fajardo's Magical Realism for Non-Believers" was accepted to the MALAS (Midwest Association of Latin American Studies) conference: Latin America in the 21st century conference: Foreign influences, which will take place in November 2022.
Graduate Students Newsletter, October 2022
September 2022
Gabriel das Chagas Alves Pereira Souza | Conference Presentation
Congratulations to Gabriel for presenting his paper, “Diante da ciência que mata, tentativas de contornar a dor: Ficção e memória de Lima Barreto como leitor da eugenia” at Conferência Letra e Memória (Federal University of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil) on July 5, 2022.
Gabriel also presented his paper, “Decolonialidade interseccional nos contos de Lima Barreto” at X Seminário Internacional de Literatura e Cultura (Federal University of Sergipe, Brazil) this past August 12, 2022.
Gabriel das Chagas Alves Pereira Souza | Published Paper
Congratulations to Gabriel for having his article, "Aquiles, o contemporâneo calcanhar de Luanda, Lisboa, Paraíso: diante do desabrigo, o desamparo de uma casa que se perdeu." published in Mulemba - Revista de Estudos de Literaturas Africanas de Língua Portuguesa.
Lourdes Schmader | Conference Presentations
Congratulations to Luli for presenting her paper “¿Puede el pueblo Waorani interceder en favor de su tierra y evitar que el capitalismo la destruya?” at the XXII Congreso Anual de la Asociación de Ecuatorianistas organized by the Asociación de Ecuatorianistas and the Universidad Nacional de Educación (UNAE) held in Azogues, Ecuador from July 20-22, 2022.
Luli’s paper “Dina Bellhram y la volatilidad de la palabra en La mujer de helio.” was accepted to the XIV Encuentro sobre Literatura Ecuatoriana y Latinoamericana “Alfonso Carrasco Vintimilla” which will be held at Universidad de Cuenca (Ecuador) Facultad de Filosofía, Letras y Ciencias de la Educación from November 21-25, 2022.
Also, her paper, “Colectivo Las Tesis: Cuerpo, calle y movilidad.” has been accepted for presentation at the Symposium on Gender, History, and Sexuality organized by UT Austin to be held this fall via Zoom.
Alumni News:
Marivi Veliz | Job Offer
Congratulations to Marivi, who has accepted a position as Visiting Assistant Professor in the department of Modern and Classical Languages and Literatures at Wichita State University.
Marivi Véliz is a PhD in Literary, Cultural and Linguistic Stud-ies. She earned her doctorate from the University of Miami (2021) and her B.A. in Art History from Havana University (1999). Her research and writing is focused on connections between the Ameri-cas through Performance and Media Studies from decolonial and participatory methodologies. Currently, she is working on her book project “Healing, Deacceleration and the Digital, Latinx/Latin American Performance Art in 21st Century.”
Graduate Students Newsletter, September 2022.
