Recent News
UW Students explore Spain’s economy from the inside.
In Spain, the most profitable bank is also one of the smallest. There is a department store where you can buy everything from a can of olive oil to a Chanel purse. There is also a mysterious winery that decorates its cellars with expensive paintings and discards its wine when the quality of the harvest doesn’t match their standards.
For three weeks, thirteen UW students visited these and many other Spanish companies as participants of Business and Cultural Dynamics in Spain, an exploration seminar offered by the Department of... Full story
Principal Lecturer María Gillman has had a scholarship named in her honor at Auburn Riverside High School. The Maria Gillman/Bryan Robinson Scholarship will be awarded to native Spanish speakers who have been accepted to a 2-year or 4-year college or university. The scholarship, which is granted on an annual basis, awards between $250 and $500 to the recipient.
Tom Adams, Principal at Curtis High School in University Place, Washington, explained the decision to name the scholarship in honor of María Gillman, and another instructor of his, Bryan Robinson: “Sra Gillman and Bryan Robinson, a... Full story
By Katie King
As Humphrey Bogart said to Claude Rains in the closing scene of Casablanca, “…I think this is the beginning of a beautiful friendship.” The Seattle Latino Film Festival (SLFF) teamed up with the UW Department Spanish and Portuguese Studies (SPS) on October 11, 2018 to offer an on-campus screening of the award-winning Spanish indie film Marisa en los bosques, the story of a young Spanish playwright in Madrid searching for her own identity amid joblessness and personal loss. Writer, director and producer Antonio Morales was on hand to introduce his film to... Full story
On October 8, Universidad de Chile’s professor Grínor Rojo offered a talk entitled “La dictadura y la postdicatdura y la contrarrevolución,” an event organized by the University of Washington Department of Spanish & Portuguese Studies.
In a room full of members of University of Washington’s community, including SPS Department professors and graduate students, Prof. Rojo presented some excerpts from the second volume of his Historia crítica de la literatura chilena, a three-volume literary history he has been working on in recent years with his Universidad de Chile colleague Carol... Full story
SPS PhD Student Vivian Mills, as part of her appointment as the Richard M. Willner Memorial Scholar and a 2017-2018 Graduate Fellow at the Stroum Center for Jewish Studies at University of Washington, published over the summer a post to that organization's blog about fourteenth century Jewish Castilian poet Shem Tov of Carrión. Read the post now on the Center for Jewish Studies... Full story
The University of Washington College of Education offers a bilingual teaching certificate program, starting June 2019. Through the College of Education scholarship program, Project B.E.C.A. (Bilingual Educator Capacity) applicants may also be eligible for a scholarship which pays 50% of participants' tuition.
Required Qualifications:
Undergraduate degree (B.A. or B.S.)
Spanish or Vietnamese fluency (reading, writing and speaking)
Basic skills test (WEST-B, SAT or ACT)
TOFEL score of 92 for those with BA degrees from outside the US
40 Hours of observation in a dual language classroom ... Full story
Two SPS Portuguese students have won both Boren Scholarships and Foreign Language and Area Studies (FLAS) Fellowships. Benjamin Kanter and Sarah Rinehart received the awards, announced The Henry M. Jackson School of International Studies in a release earlier this month.
“Benjamin Kantner, a graduate student who is pursuing a M.A. in International Studies with a focus on political ecology in the Brazilian Amazon, will head to Brazil to further his Portuguese language... Full story
Senior and Spanish Major Kelsey Early has joined Phi Beta Kappa. Of the selection, she said “to me, being selected for Phi Beta Kappa means I have achieved one of my highest academic goals. I know I’m being invited into a community of hard-workers that offer a networking and support system when needed.”
“Language, but specifically Spanish, is so appealing to me because it means I can communicate to an entire population through their language” said Early. “I believe that speaking another language helps you not only in conversations, but in understanding the culture and decision-making... Full story
For two days in May, students at Seattle's Chief Sealth High School are heading to the movies — without leaving their school. The high school will host a Hispanic film festival featuring films from Mexico, Chile, Spain, and Colombia, all selected specifically for a Chief Sealth audience. University of Washington master’s and PhD students in Hispanic Studies spent months planning the event, which includes panel discussions and curriculum materials in addition to film screenings.
The festival is the brainchild of Leigh Mercer, UW associate professor in Spanish and Portuguese... Full story
Meg McFarland, a graduate of the SPS MA program in Hispanic Studies, has made a career out of her education in Spanish, which has led her to a vineyard on the slopes of the Peruvian Andes. Owner and operator of Apu Winery, her company, founded with her husband Fernando Gonzales-Lattini.
McFarland’s career started out in academia with five years at University of Puget Sound, but moved in another direction: “I loved teaching, but my desire to be an entrepreneur was even more compelling, so I decided to leave the university and pursue a career in... Full story