Samuel Jaffee

Samuel Jaffee holds a Ph.D. from the University of California, Irvine, with a dissertation on the crónicas of Guaman Poma de Ayala and Inca Garcilaso de la Vega and the novels of José María Arguedas and Mario Vargas Llosa, for which he studied the Quechua language in Cusco, Peru. While at UC Irvine, he taught all levels of Spanish language and composition, and in the Humanities Core interdisciplinary program for first-year students in writing and research.

At UW, Jaffee has taught the "Interpreting Cultures," "Debating Cultures," and "Literature and Culture" series in the Spanish major and minor, for which he led the design team; courses on Latino sci-fi and speculative fiction, literary journalism, Andean literature and art, digital storytelling, detective fiction and creative writing; and seminars dedicated to novels Pedro Páramo and One Hundred Years of Solitude and Julio Cortázar's short fiction. His literature courses often feature the Pre-Texts protocol of creative readings, in which he is a trained facilitator: students pose questions by applying methodologies from other disciplines that make the material relatable to majors in the arts and STEM fields.

He has directed study abroad programs in León, Spain, and Quito, Ecuador, and received a Global Innovation Fund grant from the UW Office of Global Affairs. Spanish majors twice invited him to be the faculty liaison to the undergraduate Spanish Club. In 2021 he was invited to join the founding faculty team of the Humanities First interdepartmental program for first-year students, and he collaborated with another team-taught humanities course, "World Literature and the Nobel Prize," in which he taught journalism and fiction by Gabriel García Márquez. His work was recognized in 2022 with the UW Distinguished Teaching Award, the annual university-wide honor for innovative instruction, curriculum development, and mentorship.

He presents widely on his research in Andean literary and cultural studies, and leads conference sessions and workshops on pedagogy and literature. He has long been a collaborator with the UW Center for Teaching & Learning, in several ways: as a participant in the Evidence-Based Teaching Program (an interdepartmental faculty research seminar and practicum), a presenter at the annual Teaching and Learning Symposium, a writer for the Teaching Everywhere series, an evaluator for the Excellence in Teaching Award, and a Technology Teaching Fellow.

In his free time, he volunteers at Seattle World School, the city’s dedicated public high school for recent immigrants who are English language learners.