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Graduate Students

Bryan Betancur is in his fourth year of graduate studies.  He received a B.A. in Spanish and psychology from Providence College in 2007 and a M.A. in Hispanic Studies from Brown in 2011.  He specializes in early modern Spanish drama and is particularly interested in the sociocultural function of the father-daughter relationship, both on and off stage.

Jamie Billings is in her fourth year of graduate studies. She earned a B.A. in Spanish (summa cum laude) from Eastern Washington University in 2007, an MA in Foreign Languages and Cultures from Washington State University in 2009 and an AM in Hispanic Studies from Brown in 2012. She is interested in twentieth century Peninsular literature, particularly theater, and women writers in Latin America and the United States. 

Rafael Castillo Bejarano previously studied at the University of Malaga, Spain. He is currently a third year Ph.D student. Rafael´s main interest is peninsular literature and culture of the 16th and 17thCentury, with a particular focus on poetry. In addition, he is interested in exploring the influence that literature of the Spanish GoldenAge has on 20th Century Spanish and Latin Americanpoetry.

Teresa Clifton received her B.A. in English and Spanish (summa cum laude) and her B.S. in Linguistics from Tulane University in 2012. She studied at the Universidad Complutense de Madrid in 2011 and wrote her undergraduate honors thesis on genre and the role of the narrator in The Canterbury Tales and the Libro de buen amor. Her interest in medieval literature continues in her first year as a Ph.D. student.

Polina Decker graduated from Yale with a B.A. in Comparative Literature and Spanish in 2005 and received an A.M. in Hispanic Studies from Brown in 2008. Her dissertation, “Borges and the Avant-garde: A Transatlantic Foundational Exchange, 1919-1923,” examines Jorge Luis Borges' early years of literary formation in Europe, seeking to illuminate the crystallization of his aesthetic.

Carmen Granda is a doctoral candidate who specializes in Golden Age literature. She received a B.A. in French and music from Middlebury College in 2005 and a M.A. in Spanish literature from Middlebury College School in Spain in 2008. While at Brown, she completed a second M.A. in literature. She has taught beginner to advanced Spanish to high school students, Brown undergraduates, and adults. 

Álvaro Hernández-Sandoval, B.A., (History and Spanish) University of California: Davis, 2009; A.M. (Hispanic Studies), Brown University, 2012. His field of research is 19th-20th century Latin American literature, with a particular focus on how these literatures explore the existential ramifications of the Latin- American subject. His interests include intellectual history, modern critical theory, and contemporary Hispanic literature.

 Chad Leahy (A.M. Brown University; B.A., Mus.B. Boston University) specializes in Golden Age Spanish Literature, with secondary interests in the Colonial and Medieval periods.  He has articles published or forthcoming in several peer-reviewed journals, including Cervantes, Anuario Lope de Vega, Romance Notes, and Revista de Literatura Medieval.  His dissertation, under the direction of Antonio Carreño, studies representations of Jerusalem in texts of 17th-century Spain. Chad currently teaches as Visiting Instructor of Spanish at Villanova University.

Taylor Leigh. Originally from Atlanta, Georgia (via Richmond, Virginia), Taylor Leigh received a BA in History and Spanish from the University of Georgia in 2006. After briefly pursuing graduate studies in medieval Italian literature at the University of Pennsylvania, he returned to UGA where he was awarded an MA in Spanish (Literature) in 2011. During his time as a master's student, he became interested in the medieval literary traditions of Iberia, eventually writing a thesis on authorial ideology in the vernacular epic masterpiece, Poema de Mio Cid, in which he primarily focused on the historical and political contexts in which it was composed. Since he has been at Brown, he has maintained an interest in medieval traditions while simultaneously developing deeper interests in such diverse areas as Early Modern Spain and nineteenth-century Latin America. He has traveled throughout Europe and South America and has lived and studied in Valencia, Spain and Buenos Aires and Mendoza, Argentina.

Arturo Márquez-Gómez. Psicólogo egresado de la Universidad de Chile, con estudios de Postgrado en Teoría de Género y Sociedad en la Universidad Academia Humanismo Cristiano. Se desempeñó desde el año 2001 como investigador en la Facultad Latinoamericana de Ciencias Sociales (FLACSO) sede Chile. Es coautor del libro "Puertas adentro. Mujeres, vulnerabilidades y riesgo frente al VIH/SIDA" (2006) y coeditor de "Varones: entre lo público y la intimidad" (2004) . Cursó su Maestría en Español en Middlebury College en Vermont y sus áreas de interés abarcan los temas sobre sexualidad, poder e identidad en la novela hispanoamericana.

Kyle James Matthews. BSOF (Spanish and Music, honors, magna cum laude, Indiana University, 2003); A.M. (Hispanic Studies, Brown University, 2008). His research interests include modern Latin American literature, with a particular eye for Mexican narrative and essay from all eras. These interests include the intersection of history and memory in the historiographical enterprise, Jewish Latin American authors, and modern critical theory. His thesis research centers around the New Historical Novel in Mexico, focusing on the ways bodies are deployed to formulate and question conceptions of the nation.

Andrea Nate. B.A., (Spanish and Women’s Studies) The College of New Jersey, 2006; M.A., (Spanish Literature), Middlebury College School in Spain, 2007;A.M. (Hispanic Studies), Brown University, 2012.  In 2004-2005 she studied Spanish Philology at the Universidad Complutense de Madrid with Universidades norteamericanas reunidas. From 2007-2009 she taught at a bilingual elementary school in Madrid as a Cultural Ambassador.  Andrea is now a third-year Ph.D. student; her interests bridge the Middle Ages and the so-called “Golden Age,” encompassing both sides of the Atlantic and the Mediterranean.  She is especially interested in the amorous and chivalric texts of fourteenth and fifteenth-century Castile, their Hispano-Arabic roots, and the redeployment of Petrarchanism and courtly love that occurs over the course of the fifteenth century and culminates in the Hispanic Baroque.  Her research also deals with early modern textual appropriation of medieval literary characters and historical personas.                

Ezio Neyra is a PhD Candidate in Brown's Hispanic Studies Department.  His dissertation deals with the phenomenon of danydism in the Hispanic American fin-de-siecle. Also a fiction writer, Neyra has published three novels, including his most recent work "Tsunami".

María Pizarro Prada. Licenciada en Filología Hispánica en la Universidad de Salamanca (España). Actualmente en proceso de redacción de su tesis doctoral sobre las Obras reunidas del escritor mexicano Alejandro Rossi para la misma universidad. En Brown defiende su tesis el 3 de diciembre de 2012 titulada "La novela policial trasatlántica: una pregunta por la verdad", que explora esta búisqueda y el modo en que se enuncia en novelas de Sergio Ramírez, Ramón Díaz Eterovic, Leonardo Padura, Edgardo Rodríguez Juliá y Manuel Vázquez Montalbán. Está interesada en Literatura Latinoamericana y española de siglo XX, en especial cuento y "formas breves" y novelas de detectives.

Sara Snider

Carolina Tobar, B.A. English writing and French, magna cum laude, English honors, Loyola University New Orleans 2010. Currently in her third year of the Ph.D. program, she is interested in Latin American literature of the 20th and 21st century.

Felipe Valencia, B.A. (Universidad Complutense de Madrid ’06), A.M. (Brown University '10), studies Spanish Golden Age literature, lyrical poetry and theories of the lyric, Renaissance literary theory, melancholy, tragedy, and the pastoral. His dissertation examines the philosophical implications and formal repercussions of melancholy in Spanish poetry at the turn of the seventeenth century.

Apanchanit Viranuvat, B.A. Chulalongkorn University, Bangkok, Thailand, 2006; M.A. Universidad Complutense de Madrid, Spain, 2009). In 2007-2011 she was a holder of Agencia Española de Cooperación Internacional para el Desarrollo fellowship. She is now in her second year of the Ph.D. program; her interests include contemporary Latin American and Spanish literature, censorship in dictatorship, cinema and television.

Charlotte Whittle

Carlos Yushimito del Valle (BA, Universidad de San Marcos, 2002; MA, Villanova University, 2010). He is interested in Modern and Contemporary Latin American Literature, with special emphasis on 20th and 21st Century Andean Region and Southern Cone Poetry and Narrative. His research also include Latin America Modern Cultural History, Japanese Diaspora in South America and Narrative Poetics. He is also a widely published author of short stories, some of them translated into English, French and Portuguese. His last collection, “Lecciones para un niño que llega tarde”, was published in Barcelona, in 2011.