Lecturers
Paula Di Dio
Paula Di Dio received her PhD at the University of Wisconsin at Madison in 2009. Her area of specialization is late 19th to 21st century Latin American Literature and Culture with emphasis on Argentinean narrative and theatre. Her research interests also include travel literature, comic books, science fiction literature, and cultural and political theory. She has publications on Argentinean and Cuban literature and is currently working in expanding the scope of her dissertation, entitled “Cosmopolitan Dissidences in the Imagined Community: Argentina (1880-1976)” for its publication, and in co-editing an introductory reader on Hispanic Cultures. During her graduate studies she taught beginners to advanced Spanish courses. She was awarded with a Humanities Exposed Award by the Center for the Humanities at the University of Wisconsin at Madison for two consecutive years for her project entitled “Re-Thinking the Spanish American Short Story”, designed to bridge high school and college level students. She has designed the curriculum for the series “Great Texts in Wisconsin” on One Hundred Years of Solitude, also organized by the Center for the Humanities, and was a member of the Borders and Transcultural Studies Research Circle Steering Committee, where she participated in the organization of several conferences and workshops. She helped in the preparation of graduate and advanced undergraduate courses on late Colonial Literature and on Mexican photography among others, and for three years she was Assistant to the Editor and Technical Director of the journal Letras Femeninas. While in Argentina, Paula worked with the writer Luisa Valenzuela in the translation of essays and the edition of a book.
Julia Garner
Julia Garner received her B.A. in Spanish and French from Bowdoin College and her M.A. in Hispanic Studies from Brown University. She is currently completing her Ph.D. at Brown University with a dissertation entitled “After the Earthquake: Literary Responses to Catastrophe in Mexico City, 1985-2000”. Her research interests include: 20th century Mexican novels, Mexico City’s visual culture and urban art, Latin American cultural studies and film studies, Peruvian narrative, novels of the “fin de siglo” and the 21st century. She has lived in Ecuador and Mexico, and has traveled extensively throughout Latin America.
Margarita Muñoz
Margarita Muñoz Piña, from Mexico, graduated with honors in Mass and Organizational Communication from the I.T.E.S.M. campus Queretaro. Immediately after graduation, she worked for two years at the Continuing Education and International Programs Department, organizing and coordinating workshops, Summer camps for children, Spanish language programs with foreign universities and programs abroad. That experience motivated her to follow graduate courses in Educational Administration at Ohio University and get to know better the university educational system in the USA. After that preparation, she started teaching Spanish language courses at The University of Michigan. Her teaching career continued with beginners and intermediate courses at Vassar College, Marist College and Poughkeepsie Day High School. Since 2002 she has taught for the Spanish Language School of Middlebury College: beginners, high beginners and intermediate grammar, conversation, and composition courses. Margarita completed a Master's degree in Teaching Spanish as a Foreign Language at the Universidad de Salamanca in Spain where she also taught for el Departamento de Cursos Internationales after completing her courses, class observations and practicum. Her master’s thesis is entitled: Propuesta didáctica de enseñaza-aprendizaje de ELE para un programa intensivo y de inmersión lingüística; research project that took a couple of summers of study and one for its implementation at the Spanish School of Middlebury College. completing her thesis and tecahing she taught at Centre College in Danville, Kentucky. Since the Fall of 2008 she joined The University of Virginia in Charlottesville, where she has been teaching Spanish grammar review and composition. Her interest in second language acquisition and applied linguistics continues to inspire her teaching and to further her studies. She has come to the conclusion that the best in her as a teacher is the reflection of her students, her friends, her family and her colleagues.
Luca Prazeres
A native of Rio de Janeiro, Luca Prazeres first became interested in literature as a teenager when he formed the poetry and performance group “Saliva Voadora” (The Flying Saliva). He holds a B.A. in Classics and Comparative Literature from San Diego State University. He is getting his Ph.D. in Portuguese and Brazilian studies at Brown University, where he is writing a dissertation entitled “Performance and the Politics of Urban Space in _Teat(r)o Oficina_”. His thesis explores the use of performance space and the relationship between the theater and local politics in the work of Teatro Oficina, a wild theater company that has been putting on plays since the late 1950s. His areas of interest are colonial poetry, novels and poetry from the 1960s and 70s, countercultural movements during the Brazilian dictatorship, modern Brazilan theater, Brazilian hip hop and funk. He also enjoys setting colonial travel literature to electronic music with his new performance group “Psicopeixe”.
Pamela DeVries Rini
Pamela DeVries Rini holds a B.A. in Secondary Education from Calvin College with a Spanish major and an English minor, an M.A. in Spanish from the University of Michigan, as well as an M.Ed. in Counselor Education from the University of Virginia. She has worked in the field of Education since 1983 with students of all ages as either an instructor of Spanish or as a school counselor. At the University level, Ms. Rini taught elementary and intermediate Spanish classes for three years at the University of Michigan and two years at the University of Virginia, where she simultaneously taught Spanish and finished her coursework toward her advanced degrees. In addition, she spent ten memorable years at Longwood College (now Longwood University), as well as a semester at Hampden-Sydney College. After obtaining her degree in Counselor Education at UVa, she worked for 6 years at Louisa County Middle School as a school counselor. Ms. Rini is especially proud of the Spanish program she later developed for students in grades 3-8 at The Peabody School in Charlottesville. Since moving to Charlottesville in 1987, Ms. Rini has volunteered with community organizations such as SARA (The Sexual Assault Resource Agency), where she worked on the crisis hotline, PACEM (People and Congregations Engaged in Ministry—an organization that helps homeless men living in Charlottesville), and most recently, Virginia Organizing—a grassroots organization seeking social justice.