Recent News

After more than two years, students returned to the UW León Center. At 9:30 Sunday morning, March 27, still jet-lagged and sleepy-eyed, 34 UW students gathered at the entrance to the University of León’s Language Center. A few minutes later they piled onto buses for the first excursion of the Beginning to Advanced Spanish Program at our León Center. They had arrived in León a scant 24 hours before and gone with their host families to what would be their home for the next 11 weeks. Joining the… Read more
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This has been an extraordinary year for the Department of Spanish and Portuguese Studies.  We have welcomed three new colleagues and said goodbye to another after many decades of service to the department.  We have witnessed the re-start of our study abroad programming after a two-year Covid-related suspension.  We have celebrated as several members of our faculty have been recognized for their contributions in the areas of research, teaching, and service to the larger community. I want to… Read more
Samuel Jaffee, Associate Teaching Professor of Spanish in the Department of Spanish & Portuguese Studies at the University of Washington, was awarded a 2022 Distinguished Teaching Award.  The award is the highest university-wide honor for innovative instruction, curricular development, and mentorship. “It’s a tremendous honor” said Jaffee, who views the award as not just a… Read more
After 32 years as a member of the faculty, María Gillman, founder of the Spanish Heritage Language program, has retired from the Department of Spanish & Portuguese Studies at the University of Washington.  Her retirement was effective at the end of winter quarter. Joining the department in 1990, Gillman noticed that her classes had students who were fluent in Spanish but had no formal education in the language, and in 2000 began teaching SPAN 314 as a course for heritage speakers of Spanish… Read more
Editor’s Note: The Department of Spanish & Portuguese Studies welcomes three new Assistant Professors in the 2021-2022 academic year. This article is the third published in a series of three. Juan Pablo Rodríguez Argente is the new specialist in Medieval Hispanic Studies in the Department of Spanish & Portuguese Studies at the University of Washington. Rodríguez Argente started in the department earlier this academic year. This spring quarter Rodríguez Argente is teaching two… Read more
The American Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies (ASECS) announced they awarded their 2022 Louis A. Gottschalk Prize to Assistant Professor Francisco Robles and his recently-published book Polemics, Literature, and Knowledge in Eighteenth-Century Mexico: A New World for the Republic of Letters. In their announcement, ASECS praises Robles for “providing a sweeping… Read more
In April of last year Associate Dean Brian Reed signed an MOU with the Vicente Huidobro Foundation in Chile to launch a series of anthologies of great Spanish-language poets. The Foundation preserves the legacy of the great Chilean avant-garde poet Vicente Huidobro (1893-1948). Prof. Anthony Geist was asked by the Foundation’s director, Mario Meléndez, to be editor-in-chief of the anthology collection, and he invited Prof. José Francisco Robles to participate in the initiative. The project… Read more
April 7th is Husky Giving Day, the University Washington's annual one-day giving campaign.  Join us in supporting the people, programs and causes you care about most. Together we can change the world. Please support Spanish & Portuguese Studies on April 7th by making your gift at our Husky Giving Day page. By giving to Spanish & Portuguese Studies, you support scholarships,… Read more
Editor’s Note: The Department of Spanish & Portuguese Studies welcomes three new Assistant Professors in the 2021-2022 academic year. We will be profiling each of these faculty members over the course of the year. This article is the second in a series of three. Angélica Amezcua is the new specialist of Spanish Linguistics in the Department of Spanish & Portuguese Studies, as well as the new Director of the Spanish Heritage Language program. Amezcua began teaching in the… Read more
During fall quarter of last year, I took a sabbatical, and my project was the creation of an Open Educational Resource (OER).  OERs are freely accessible, openly licensed text, media, and other digital assets that are useful for teaching, learning, and assessing as well as for research purposes.  Materials and resources contained in an OER are publicly accessible.  My OER is called I’m All Ears and it is a course on Spanish… Read more