Lecturers
Maya Barolo-Rizvi
Maya Barolo-Rizvi graduated from Vassar College in 2008, where she taught Italian for four years. Though she majored in politics, Maya also studied several languages; she speaks Arabic, French, Hindi, Spanish and Urdu and is studying Bengali and Persian at UVA. While at Vassar, Maya worked for Brian Ross at the ABC News Investigative Unit. Maya spent the past year as Anne Cornelisen Fellow studying Middle Eastern politics and Islamic philosophy at the University of Alexandria in Egypt. Maya recently won the Maguire Fellowship, which she will use to develop her honors thesis on the institutionalization of democracy in Bangladesh into a book at the Center for Advanced Studies at the University of London. Half Italian and half South Asian, Maya was born in England and has lived and studied in four continents: Africa, Asia, Europe and North America. Maya, a lifelong vegetarian, enjoys reading, knitting and spending time with her dogs and cats.
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.
Elaine Durand
After graduating from Marymount College with a degree in English, Elaine Durand studied at the Dante Alighieri Institute in Rome, Italy. Upon her return in the mid 70’s, she became the first Italian bilingual teacher in a federally-funded initiative in Newton, Massachusetts. This innovative program identified newly-arrived Italian immigrant children at high risk for dropout and failure. It served elementary grades from K-6 as well as the first such bilingual pre-school in the state. Along with her colleagues, Elaine witnessed both increased academic success and greater involvement of the students’ non English-speaking parents with the school. The position was both challenging and rewarding. When her family relocated to the Midwest, Elaine taught Italian at the University of Missouri-Columbia. Several years later found her in central Virginia. Her long- awaited dream of returning to school for an MA in Italian was realized at the University of Virginia in May, 2008. Since then, she has been teaching Italian at UVa. Early in each semester, Elaine likes to become acquainted with her students’ particular strengths and interests which she then tries to relate to the material at hand. For instance, she once had a student who was passionate about opera. This young woman gladly became the class song leader. As the students sang various parts of Italian operas, Elaine extracted grammar illustrations from the lyrics. She believes strongly that this type of connection contributes much to a lively and positive classroom atmosphere. In her free time, Elaine enjoys swimming, gardening, writing and last but not least, playing her accordion!
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.
Paloma Visscher
Paloma Visscher-Gingerich started teaching Spanish at the University of Virginia in 2007. Before coming to UVa she taught Spanish at Harvard University for two and half years, earning two certificates of distinction for her teaching of elementary and intermediate Spanish courses. A native of Peru, Paloma was trained as an anthropologist and came to the United States in 2000 to pursue her graduate studies in human development and education. She holds a Masters in Education from Harvard University and is currently completing her doctoral degree in education from Harvard. She is interested in issues of teaching and learning, especially the intersection between culture, education and human development. Her research focuses on the learning and teaching processes of children and adults at home, and on children’s emotional development from an anthropological and developmental perspective. Most of her research has been conducted with Quechua populations in the southern Peruvian Andes, where she has undertaken extensive ethnographic research. Paloma is a firm believer in the power of a quality education. Her goal as a teacher is to enable students to achieve high academic standards and develop a strong sense of social responsibility as citizens of the world.