Spanish and Portuguese Faculty

Fräncille Bergquist (email)
Associate Professor of Spanish (Ph.D., Texas Tech). Associate Dean, College of Arts and Science. Historical Romance linguistics.

Marcio Bahia (email)
Senior Lecturer of Portuguese (Ph.D., University of Ottawa, 2010; M.A., University of Ottawa, 2004; B.A., Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais, 2001) Portuguese Language; Film; Memory and Notions of Americanidad.

Susan Berk-Seligson (email)
Associate Professor of Spanish, (PhD, University of Arizona). Sociolinguistics, pragmatics, discourse analysis, language in institutional settings (particularly language and the law), language and gender.

Victoria Burrus (email)
Associate Professor of Spanish (Ph.D., Wisconsin). Medieval Spanish literature.

Lori Catanzaro
Senior Lecturer in Spanish (M.A. University of Florida). Spanish for medical professions and service learning.

Earl E. Fitz (email)
Professor of Portuguese, Spanish, and Comparative Literature (Ph.D., City University of New York). Luso-Brazilian literature, Spanish American literature, Inter-American literature, comparative literature.

Edward H. Friedman (email)
Chancellor’s Professor of Spanish and Comparative Literature (Ph.D. Johns Hopkins). Golden Age Literature, Comparative Literature.

Chalene Helmuth (email)
Senior Lecturer in Spanish; Coordinator of Spanish for True Beginners (Ph.D. University of Kentucky). Contemporary Latin American literature, identity and narrative, U.S. Latina cultural production, incarceration and U.S. immigrant communities.

Mario Higa
Lecturer in Portuguese. Originally from Brazil, Mario is completing his dissertation at the University of Texas on modern Latin American literature.

Todd F. Hughes (email)
Director of the Language Center (Ph.D., Pennsylvania; M.A., University of South Florida). Dr. Hughes has had field research experience in Colombia and Spain. His current regional interests are: Quebec, Latin America.

Cathy L. Jrade (email)
Chancellor’s Professor of Spanish; Chair, Department of Spanish and Portuguese (Ph.D., Brown). Latin American poetry, modernism. Awarded NEH Faculty Fellowship for Delmira Agustini: A Modernista on her Own Terms.

Christina Karageorgou-Bastea (email)
Associate Professor of Spanish (Ph.D., El Colegio de Mexico). Spanish avant-garde, Federico García Lorca, twentieth century Mexican and Latin American poetry and visual arts.

William Luis (email)
Chancellor’s Professor of Spanish (Ph.D., Cornell); Editor Afro-Hispanic Review. Latin American literature and Caribbean studies. The Afro-Hispanic Review is the leading interdisciplinary journal featuring issues of race in Spanish America, Prof. Luis brought it to Vanderbilt University where it will be edited and published.

Paul Miller (email)
Senior Lecturer in Spanish and Portuguese (Ph.D., Emory University). Comparative Literature and interdisciplinary approaches to Latin American Literature (Hispanic, Francophone and Anglophone Caribbean).

Elena Olazagasti-Segovia (email)
Senior Lecturer in Spanish (Ph.D., Universidad de Puerto Rico). Contemporary Latin American literature and film, twentieth century peninsular women novelists, Caribbean and Puerto Rican literature and culture. Service-learning.

Emanuelle Oliveira (email)
Associate Professor of Luso-Brazilian Literature (Ph.D., University of California, Los Angeles). Brazilian literature and cinema and Afro-Brazilian literature.

 Philip D. Rasico (email)
Professor of Spanish (Ph.D., Indiana). Spanish and Romance linguistics. Catalan language and history.

Benigno Trigo (email)
Professor of Spanish and Director of Graduate Studies. (Ph.D., Yale University). Nineteenth-century Spanish American literature; literary theory; modernism, and psychoanalysis.

Andrés Zamora (email)
Associate Professor of Spanish; (Ph.D. University of Southern California). Eighteenth-, nineteenth-, and twentieth-century Spanish literature and Cervantes. Director of Vanderbilt-in-Spain 2009-2010.