• My field of specialization is the representation of the perception of the natural world in literature, and the ideas of the relationship between the human and non-human worlds underlying those representations. My corpus is  Latin American literature, particularly texts that reflect on the relationship of  modernization to nature.  My approach to these texts is illuminated by, and dialogue with, current debates on  issues such as:  (1) the post-structuralist  idea of  "environmental complexity" as a paradigm for creating transdisciplinary knowledge, (2) sustainable development and alternative paths towards modernization, (3) the limits or excesses of the thesis of the social construction of nature, (4) the cultural critique to environmentalism as a cultural phenomenom, and (5) cognitive poetics, and the ecology of perception and emotion.

• An "ecological" approach to Latin American literature is a new field even for the burgeoning field of environmental history in Latin America. The critique of modernization by means of a reflection of nature has been, in fact, neglected in literary and cultural studies by the ideologies of mainstream development and dependency theory. Or "nature" in Latin American literature has received the attention of postmodernist criticism merely as a cultural construct or a rhetorical device for "naturalizing" social relationships, particularly reactionary ones. On the other hand, a comparatist approach between nature writing in the Americas, and with other colonial and postcolonial experiences, is necessary not only for drawing theoretical implications, or because of the globalization of ecological concerns, but because Modern and Postmodern literatures are themselves cultural phenomena of international scope.

• "Nature," "ecology," "environment," and "the sustainibility of  life" in an interdisciplinary context: cognitive studies, comparative literature, biocultural studies, critical theory, cultural theory, ecocriticism, ecofeminism, environmental history, political ecology, post-structuralism, and liberation theology.

• Environment and modernization in the literature of Latin America:
• Latin American literature and the debate on sustainable development.
• Ideas of nature and the environmental history of Latin America.
• The Romance of the Jungle.
• The Spanish American Regional Novel.
• Nature and travel writing.
• Ecology and Post-Avant-garde Latin American poetry.
• Global environmentalism in contemporary Hispanic literature.
• The political ecology of representations of Amazonia.
• Environmentalist movement in Latin American and Spain.

• Literacy, orality and hypermedia.

• 1999-2000. Instructional Technology Initiative Grant, awarded by the University Vice President for Academic Affairs, Project in collaboration with Prof. Mary Lee Bretz, and the Rutgers University New Brunswick Libraries: "Learning Links: Reading, Writing, Information, the Web, and the World."

 

 

The Department of Spanish and Portuguese in collaboration with the Scholarly Communications Center (SCC)’s Center for Electronic Texts in the Humanities (CETH) of the New Brunswick Libraries developed web-based course materials including electronic texts and multimedia resources for five multi-section 200 and 300 level Spanish courses. Using WebCT and multimedia self-guided instructional materials with hyperlinks to various levels of linguistic and cultural information, students in Spanish Conversation and Composition (940:203), Main Currents in Hispanic Literature (940:215), and Hispanic Literature: Introduction to Literary Concepts (940:216) developed their reading skills in Spanish and expand their knowledge of Hispanic culture and literature while also familiarizing themselves with the Web, HTML/XML, the location, creation and qualitative analysis of websites, and the use of Power Point. SCC/CETH librarians assisted instructors and graduate students with construction of hyperlink access to vocabulary exercises, grammatical explanations, reading strategies, literary practices, historical and cultural contextualization and relevant websites. Students in the multi-section 300-level writing courses, Advanced Grammar and Composition (940:325) and Advanced Language Workshop (940:326), created websites as writing assignments, providing concrete cultural and historical information in Spanish that is relevant to the readings in the 200-level courses. Students in all five courses gave presentations using Power Point and demonstrated the indices of relevant web pages created or discovered on their own. Graduate students were involved in the preparation of the multimedia materials and in teaching the web-based courses, preparing them as professionals in new modes of instruction.
 

• 1999. Rutgers Dialogues Grant, awarded by the University Vice President for Undergraduate Education, Project in collaboration with Prof. Mary Lee Bretz: "Learning Links: Reading, Writing, the Web, and the World."

 
• 1996-97. CCACC Fellowship, granted by the Center for the Critical Analysis of Contemporary Culture. Rutgers University (September 1996-May 1997).

 
• 1996-97. CASE Curriculum Development Award, granted by the Rutgers Citizenship and Service Education program. Rutgers University (September 1996-May 1997).

 
• 1993-94. University Research Grant, granted by the University's Research Council. Rutgers University (July 1, 1993-May 1, 1994).

 
• 1993-94. Minority Faculty Development Award, granted by the Office of the Provost. Rutgers University (July 1, 1993-June 30, 1994).

Book

• La oralidad escrita. Sobre la reivindicación y re-inscripción del discurso oral. Lima, Perú: Pontificia Universidad Católica del Perú, 1997.

Articles in Refereed Journals

• " ‘Nuevos descubrimientos del gran río de las Amazonas’: La ‘novela de la selva’ y la crítica al imaginario de la Amazonía." Estudios. Revista de investigaciones literarias y culturales 16 (julio-diciembre 2000). Universidad Simón Bolívar. Special Issue on "Miradas peregrinas, escrituras errantes. Viaje, cultura e identidad en America Latina." Coord. Gina Saraceni. 129-40.

• "The Politics of Cultural Criticism and Sustainable Development in Amazonia: A Reading from the Spanish American Romance of the Jungle." Hispanic Journal Vol. 19, #2 (Fall 1998), Special Issue on "Ecology and Latin American and Caribbean Literatures." Eds. Patrick Murphy, and Roberto Forns-Broggi. 281-94.

• "De retorno a lo natural: La serpiente de oro, la 'novela de la selva' y la crítica ecológica." Hispania. Journal of the American Association of Teachers of Spanish and Portuguese. Vol. 81, #2 (May 1998): 299-308.

• " Historia secreta de una novela de Vargas Llosa o La casa verde y el viaje de 'retorno a lo natural' en la 'novela de la selva' hispanoamericana." Monographic Review/Revista Monográfica. Hispanic Travel Literature. XII (1996). 379-92.

• "La tradición oral y el cuento fantástico en ‘La cruz del diablo’ de G. A. Bécquer." Mester 19.2 (Fall 1990): 47-62.

• "Lo ‘real maravilloso’ como categoría literaria." Lexis 12.1 (1988): 1-41.

Articles in Books or Monographs

• "Amazonia Always Re-Discovered.” Natural Places, Unnatural Ideas? Representations of Latin American Nature in Tourism, Tropical Fields Studies, and Conservation. Eds. Hope Hollocher, and Ben Heller. Kluwer Press. Accepted Spring 2002.

• "Jungle Fever: Primitivism in Environmentalism, Rómulo Gallegos's Canaima, and the Romance of the Jungle." Primitivism and Identity in Latin America: Essays on Art, Literature, and Culture. Eds. Erik Camayd-Freixas, and José Eduardo González. Tucson: U of Arizona P, 2000. 157-72.

 
• "Encuentros y desencuentros: citación e inscripción del discurso oral en la novela testimonial." Encuentros con el Otro: textos e intertextos. Eds. Julio Noriega, Eleodoro Febres, Jo Anne Engelbert. Upper Montclair: Montclair SU, 1994. 117-27.

• " ‘Nosotros, que nos queremos tanto, debemos separarnos’: escritura y oralidad en La última mudanza de Felipe Carrillo." Los mundos de Alfredo Bryce Echenique (textos críticos). Eds. César Ferreira and Ismael Márquez. Lima: Fondo Editorial de la Pontificia Universidad Católica, 1994. 261-80.

Articles in Selected Proceedings

• "El hablador de Mario Vargas Llosa y la imagen de la Amazonía en el Perú contemporáneo." LA CHISPA ‘93: Selected Proceedings. Ed. Gilbert Paolini. New Orleans: Tulane University, 1993. 134-40.

• "Beyond the Andes: An Introduction to the Rewriting of the Amazon in Contemporary Peruvian Fiction." The Image of Nature in Literature, the Media, and Society: Selected Papers of the 1993 Conference of the Society for the Interdisciplinary Study of Social Imagery. Eds. Will Wright and Steven Kaplan. Pueblo: SISSI & U of Southern Colorado, 1993. 350-55.

Articles in Non-Refereed Journals

• "Hacia la constitución de un mundo maravilloso en Pedro Páramo." Dactylus 8 (Otoño 1987): 55-5

Electronic Publications (not-refereed)

• "La oralidad escrita", <http://www.rci.rutgers.edu/~jmarcone/oe_intro.htm. Posted permanently on June 5, 1996. Cited in the following indexes: The Media History Project Connections Pages: Oral and Scribal Culture, <http://www.mediahistory.com/oral.html, and at Media and Communication Studies Site: The Written and Spoken Word Section, <http://www.aber.ac.uk/~dgc/word05.html.

Reviews

• Review of Los muros invisibles. Lima y la modernidad en la novela del s. XX, by Peter Elmore. Revista de estudios hispánicos 29.1 (Jan. 1995): 174-75.

• Review of The Radical Self. Metamorphosis to Animal Form in Modern Latin American Narrative, by Nancy Gray Díaz. Revista de estudios hispánicos 28.1 (Jan. 1994): 119-21.

• "Ecología del desengaño: naturaleza, crítica y literatura en Hispanoamérica 1900-1950. (Hacia una re-lectura de la “novela de la tierra”)." Mid-America Conference on Hispanic Literatures. University of Colorado, Boulder. October 2-4, 2003.

 
• "Amazonía, literatura y medioambientalismo en el Perú: El fracaso de Sangama." XXIV International Congress of the Latin American Studies Association. Adam's Mark Hotel, Dallas. March 27-29, 2003.

• "Amazonia Always Re-Discovered: Entangling Cultural Critique, Environmental History, and Political Ecology." Empty Fields: Wilderness, Environmentalism, and Cultural Studies, Panel organized by Jorge Marcone. Hispanic Cultural Studies: The State of the Art. Arizona Journal of Hispanic Cultural Studies. Westward Look Resort, Tucson, Arizona. September 18-21, 2002. Forthcoming.

• "La aventura equinoccial: los viajes iniciáticos a la selva del escritor latinoamericano." Latin American Studies Association XXII International Congress. Miami, Florida, March 16-18, 2000.

• "Romances of the Jungle: Lost Worlds and Last Frontiers." American Comparative Literature Association Conference. Yale University. New Haven, Connecticutt, February 25-27, 2000.

• "Out of the Forest, into the Maze: Environmentalism and Human Rights in Amazonia," Invited speaker for a panel on Human Rights in Latin America at Drew University, New Jersey, September 29, 1999.

• "Restoration of the Green Hell: The Spanish American Romance of the Jungle as Environmental Writing." The Third Biennial ASLE (The Association for the Study of Literature and the Environment) Conference: "What to Make of a Diminished Thing." Western Michigan University. Kalamazoo, Michigan, 2-5 June 1999.

• "Teaching Comparative Americas: A Roundtable Discussion," Conference: "Comparative Americas: The Atlantic and the Colonial World, 1500-1800," Rutgers University, New Brunswick, NJ, April 10, 1999.

• " 'Nada se gasta ni se muere': Poesía y ecología en Whitman y Neruda." Invited speaker for the Symposium "Whitman en el Sur." Universidad de Chile. Santiago de Chile, Chile, March 23, 1999.

• "Genero, naturaleza y modernizacion: ‘Hombres sencillos, pacientes y rudos’ en la novela de la selva hispanoamericana." Ninth International Conference of the Asociacion de Literatura Femenina Hispanica. Arizona State University. Tempe, Arizona, September 17-19, 1998.

• "The Modern and Postmodern ‘Discoveries’ of Orality: The Vindication and Re-inscription of Oral Discourse in Critical Theory." Conference: "The Histories of Theory." Centre for the Study of Theory and Criticism. University of Western Ontario, Canada, April 16-19, 1998.

• "Recovering the Lost Paradise from the Green Hell: The Romance of the Jungle and the Search for Sustainable Development." CALACS XXVIII International Congress. Canadian Association of Latin American and Caribbean Studies. "Latin America: Moving Beyond Neo-liberalism." Simon Fraser University. Burnaby, British Columbia, Canada, March 19-22, 1998.

• "The Politics of Cultural Criticism and Sustainable Development in Amazonia: A Reading from the Spanish American Romance of the Jungle." Invited speaker for the Symposium entitled "Latin American Cultural Studies in the 1990’s." Department of Spanish and Portuguese and the Latin American Studies Program. Temple University. Philadelphia, PA. March 18, 1998.

• "Representations of Amazonia." Dialogue with the Brazilian novelist Milton Hatoum, and Prof. Pedro Maligo. Council of Latin American Studies. Yale University. New Haven, CT, October 28, 1997.

• "La serpiente de oro de Ciro Alegría, la 'novela de la selva' hispanoamericana y los discursos de la Amazonía." Latin American Studies Association XX International Congress. Guadalajara, Mexico, April 17-19, 1997.

• "The Modernity of Wilderness: Man and Nature in Horacio Quiroga's Selva." Center for the Critical Analysis of Contemporary Culture. Rutgers University. New Brunswick, New Jersey, February 12, 1997.

• "Nuevos descubrimientos del gran Río de las Amazonas en la narrativa hispanoamericana del s. XX." Modern Language Association Annual Meeting. Washington, D.C., December 27-30, 1996.

• "The Interdisciplinarity of Post-Colonial Studies: A Round-Table Discussion." The Interdisciplinary Post-Colonial Studies Group. Rutgers University. New Brunswick, November 4, 1996.

• "The 'Amazon Republic' and the Exploration of the Valley of the Amazon by W. L. Herndon and L. Gibbon." American Association of Teachers of Spanish and Portuguese Annual Meeting. Orlando, August 7-11, 1996.

• "Historia secreta de una novela: La casa verde y la novela de la selva hispanoamericana." Latin American Studies Association XIX International Congress. Washington, D.C., September 28-30, 1995.

• " ‘El sentimiento de la catarata’: la selva de los modernistas y la modernidad de la selva en Horacio Quiroga." 11th Annual Mid-America Conference on Hispanic Literature. University of Kansas, Lawrence, September 8-10, 1994.

• "Los pasos perdidos de la imagen de la Amazonía en La vorágine." American Association of Teachers of Spanish and Portuguese Annual Meeting. Philadelphia, August 7-11, 1994.

• "De París a la selva: Horacio Quiroga y la apertura de una frontera en la literatura hispanoamericana del s. XX." Middle Atlantic Council of Latin American Studies Fifteenth Annual Meeting. Kean College of New Jersey, Union, April 8-9, 1994.

• "Beyond the Andes: An Introduction to the Rewriting of the Amazon in Contemporary Peruvian Fiction". Conference of the Society for the Interdisciplinary Study of Social Imagery. University of Southern Colorado, Colorado Springs, March 11-13, 1993.

• "El hablador de Mario Vargas Llosa y la imagen de la Amazonía en el Perú contemporáneo". Louisiana Conference in Hispanic Literature. New Orleans, February 25-27, 1993.

• "La institución literaria y el Perú de los ochenta: la narrativa peruana en debate." Latin American Studies Association XVII International Congress. Los Angeles, September 24-27, 1992.

• "Imaginación de la selva en la narrativa de Vargas Llosa." Symposium of the Novel of the Americas Project. U of Colorado at Boulder, September 20-25, 1992.

• "La oralidad como poética en la narrativa hispanoamericana: el caso de Alfredo Bryce Echenique." The 45th Annual Kentucky Foreign Language Conference. University of Kentucky, Lexington, April 23-25, 1992.

• "Oralidad y escritura en Canto de sirena de Gregorio Martínez." First New Mexico Conference on Hispanic Culture and Society. The University of New Mexico, Albuquerque, February 13-15, 1992.

• "La oralidad escrita y poscrita en El hablador de M. Vargas Llosa." The 44th Annual Kentucky Foreign Language Conference. University of Kentucky, Lexington, April 25-27, 1991.

• "Heteroglossia in Luis Rafael Sánchez’s La guaracha del Macho Camacho." Society, Literature, and Culture in the Caribbean. Institute of Latin America Studies and the Department of Spanish and Portuguese, U of Texas at Austin, April 27-28, 1990.

• "El valor de la oralidad en Grande Sertão: Veredas y La guaracha del Macho Camacho." II Colloquium on Hispanic and Luso-Brazilian Literatures and Romance Linguistics. Department of Spanish and Portuguese and the College of Liberal Arts, U of Texas at Austin, October 13-14, 1989.

• "Realismo mágico y lo real maravilloso: los problemas de una imagen de América Latina." The Ninth Annual Student Conference on Latin America. Institute of Latin American Studies, U of Texas at Austin, February 24-25, 1989.

Book

• Tentative title:     "El mal de la selva. Retorno a lo natural y ecología del desengaño." (Book-length project). [Jungle Fever: The Return to Nature and the Ecology of Disillusionment].

This project focuses on the Spanish American Romance of the Jungle of the 1900s-1950s, which includes some essential texts in this literary tradition.  The project has evolved from a critique of the discourses of Nature underlying cultural representations of the Amazon in Latin American literature to a variety of objectives. First, I moved from merely deconstructing representations of nature within the texts to understanding these fictions as part of a larger attempt to represent and criticize the political ecology of the modernization process of the Amazon that started in the 1880s with the Rubber Boom. Secondly, I have found that these fictions were in fact a radical reflection on a topic ever present in Latin American fiction and poetry during the first half of the 20th century: the consequences of modernization (urbanization, industrialization, and centralism) for the environment (rural or urban), and to that extent for the very future of modernity in the continent. The need for imagining alternative forms of development has been present  in Latin American literature since the first insertion of this region into the World economy in late 19th century. And the failure of such alternatives in the selva or jungle has always been explored in the Romance of the Jungle. Last, but not the least, this failure in the selva of modernization, or even its adaptations to the environment, troubling as it may be for the modern environmentalist, powerfully re-introduces the issue of nature’s Otherness in a way familiar to every scholar in the field of literature-and-environment studies struggling to overcome the current paradigm that assumes that textual representations of nature are simply cultural constructions imposed on the environment. Is it possible to recover an understanding of literature as part of an interaction with the environment but without falling into any form of past naturalism, organic theories of culture and nature, or environmental determinisms?

• " 'Ecocide' and Unearthing: Mexican and Mexican-American Environmental Literatures." Teaching North American Environmental Literature. Second and revised edition. Eds. Mark Long, Fred Waage and Laird Christensen. MLA Publications. Invited contribution.
 
Nature, environment and a sense of place in contemporary Mexican and Chicano and/or Mexican-American literatures.  Comparison between both literatures on the basis of their grounding in landscape (urban or rural), the environmental degradation of cities, the role of traditional values and myths, and the burden of nostalgia and melancholia. Contrast with the Mexican literary and intellectual tradition from the perspective of the question of nature in modernization.
 
• "Peruanidad y Amazonía en Víctor Andrés Belaúnde y Raúl Porras Barrenechea." Latin American Studies Association Congress. Las Vegas, Nevada. October 7-9, 2004. Submitted for acceptance.
 
In 1961, Raul Porras Barrenechea, a leading historian at the time, published El Perú y la Amazonía and Presencia del Perú en la Amazonía. In both books, Porras Barrenechea reworks a previous thesis by Víctor Andrés Belaúnde, elaborated early in the 20th century, in which the Peruvian Amazon is thought as a Frontier with the potential for strengthening or building national identity. Belaúnde, in turn, was influenced by Frederick Jackson Turner's "The Significance of the Frontier in American History" (1893). Porras Barrenechea influence has extended, since then, from governmental development policies of the 1960s and 1970s to the fiction of Mario Vargas Llosa, one of the leading Latin American novelists. Porras's vision, however, has been contested by local intellectuals from the Amazonian provinces of Peru.
 
• "Cosmos and Empire, or Subversive Science? Humboldt's View of Nature and the Expansion of Capitalism." Conference "Alexander von Humboldt: From the Americas to the Cosmos." Bildner Center/Graduate Center of CUNY. October 14-16, 2004. Submitted for acceptance.
 
Since her Imperial Eyes (1992), Mary Louise Pratt’s reading of Humboldt’s view of nature and South America has become a model for postcolonial critique of European travel writing in the Americas. Pratt understands Humboldt’s reinvention of South America as an ambitious writing plan associated with North European economic ambitions in the region. South America, charges Pratt, didn’t have to be reinvented as primal nature, and when South Americans come alive in Humboldt’s texts, the argument goes, they do in immediate service of the Europeans. Her analysis of Humboldt and the expansion of European capitalism is at odds with current understandings of the construction and production of nature under capitalism. For starters, Donald Worster (Nature's Economy, 1977) found a prominent place for Humboldt in the history of ecological ideas precisely in what he called a “subversive science” against the accepted notion of what science ought to do, the values and institutions of expansionary capitalism, and the bias against nature in Western religion. Has Pratt actually failed to link Humboldt’s view of nature to capitalist cultural construction and social production of nature? Or has Pratt instead revealed the complexity of the cultural mediations that drive and legitimate capitalist appropriation of nature?

Department of Spanish and Portuguese

    Courses developed

• 16:940:598. Seminar in Hispanic Literature, Spring 2004. "Empty Fields: Writing Nature in the Americas." (Cross-listed with 16:195:519. Topics in Comparative Literature and Other Fields).
• 16:940:551. Contemporary Spanish American Novel I, Fall 2002. "Modernization, Primitivism, and Nature: Environment and the Spanish American Novel of 1920s-1950s."
• 16:940:633. Seminar: Novel of the Twentieth Century, Spring 2001. "Romances of the Jungle: Lost Worlds and Last Frontiers." (Cross-listed with 16:195:519. Topics in Comparative Literature and Other Fields).
• 16:940:651. Topics in Spanish American Novel: "La 'novela de la selva' hispanoamericana y los discursos de la Amazonia," Spring 1997, Summer 1995, Spring 1994.

• 16:940:551. Contemporary Spanish American Novel I, Spring 2000.
• 16:940:506. Culture and Civilization of Latin America. Summer 2002.
• 16:940:501.Methodology of Teaching and Research, Fall 1998, Fall 1997.
• 16:940:552. Contemporary Spanish American Novel II, Fall 1994.

    Courses developed

• 01:940:489. Topics in Hispanic LIterature and Culture: "Nature, Society, and Writing in Latin America." Fall 2003.
• 01:940:491. Topics in Hispanic Literature and Culture: "Ecologismo, cultura y literatura en America Latina," Fall 1998.
• 01:940:491. Topics in Hispanic Literature and Culture: "Imagen de la Amazonía en la narrativa hispanoamericana del s. XX." Summer 1995.
• 01:940:491. Topics in Hispanic Literature and Culture: "La oralidad escrita: Lo oral como texto de la literatura hispanoamericana contemporánea." Spring 1993.
• 01:940:326. Advanced Language Workshop: "Learning Links: Reading, Writing, Information, the Web, and the World". Spring 1999.
• 01:940:326. Advanced Language Workshop: "Political Violence in Latin America," Fall 1997 (CASE course), Fall 1995, Spring 1992.

• 01:940:404. Civilization of Spanish America. Spring 2003.
• 01:940:326. Advanced Language Workshop, Fall 2003, Spring 2003.
• 01:940:448. Spanish American Novel II, Spring 1996, Spring 1992.
• 01:940:333, 334. Literature and Culture of Spanish America, Spring 1996, Fall 1995, Fall 1994, Summer 1994, Spring 1994, Fall 1992, Summer 1992.
• 01:940:313. Advanced Spanish Conversation and Contemporary Issues, Fall 1991.
• 01:940:215. Main Currents in Hispanic Literatures, Summer 1999, Summer 1996, Fall 1992, Fall 1991, Spring 2001, Spring 2004.

Graduate Program in Comparative Literatures

• 16:195:519. Topics in Comparative Literature and Other Fields:  "Empty Fields: Writing Nature in the Americas." Spring 2004.
• 16:195:519. Topics in Comparative Literature and Other Fields: "Romances of the Jungle: Lost Worlds and Last Frontiers," Spring 2001.

Graduate Council of Languages and Literatures

• 16:617:510. Introduction to Literary Theory, Spring 1998.

Latin American Studies Program

• 01:590:402. Seminar on Latin American Studies: "Introduction to the Political Ecology of Sustainable Development in Amazonia," Spring 1998.

Rutgers College

• 12:090:275. Honors Seminar: "Romances of the Jungle: Lost Worlds and Lost Frontiers," Fall 1999.
• 12:090:271. Honors Seminar: "The Invention of Amazonia in Travel Writings from the 16th through the 19th Centuries," Fall 1996.
• 12:090:279. Honors Seminar: "Amazonia in Latin American Culture: Sacred Grove or Last Frontier?," Fall 1993.

    Courses developed (in progress)

• "America's Nature, and Nature in the Americas." (Cross-listed with Comparative Literature).
• "Unearthing: Melancholia and the Redemption of Life in Recent Nobel Prize Literature." (Cross-listed with Comparative Literature).
• "The 'Ecology' of Ideas of Nature." (Cross-listed with Comparative Literature).

Department of Spanish and Portuguese

• Leandro Delgado, Director of Doctoral Dissertation Committee. "Anarquismo en la literatura del Rio de la Plata: 1900-1930."
• Anita Figueroa, Director of Doctoral Dissertation Committee. "The Role of the Intellectual in the Construction of the State as a Narrative Project: The Literary Movement of 1842, and the Meetings of Latin American Writers at the Universidad de Concepcion (1958-1962)."
• Gustavo Arango.Member of Doctoral Dissertation Committee.

• Scott DeVries, Director of Doctoral Dissertation Committee. "I Can't Believe It Is not Nature: Literature and Ecology in Recent Spanish American Fiction." Fall 2003.
• Boris Muñoz, Director of Doctoral Dissertation Committee, "Los imaginarios del presente en la crónica latinoamericana contemporánea." Spring 2003.
• Christian Gundermann, Director of Doctoral Dissertation Committee. "Melancolia y resistencia en el cine y la literatura argentinos de la post-dictadura." Spring 2002.

• Iraida Casique. Member of Doctoral Dissertation Committee, Summer 2003.
• Marta Sierra, Member of Doctoral Dissertation Committee, "Las fisuras de la productividad: La literatura de vanguardia en Argentina."
• Jannine Montauban, Member of Doctoral Dissertation Committee, "Reproducción, genealogía y sexualidad en el género picaresco."
• Margarita Sánchez, Member of Doctoral Dissertation Committee, "Ser Inmune Desde Adentro: SIDA, escritura y resistencia en las Américas."

• Leandro Delgado, Master's Thesis Director, "El Pendulo: Ciencia, ciencia-ficcion y dictadura en Argentina," 2000-01.
• Aura Muñoz, Master's Thesis Director, "Oralidad y escritura en Tres tristes tigres de Guillermo Cabrera Infante," 1995-99.
• Gustavo Arango, Master's Thesis Committee Member, Fall 2000.
• Margot Revera, Masters in Translation Thesis Committee Member, "Breve antología de cuentos de Barry Holstun Lopez."

• John Goldfuss, Departmental Honors Thesis Director, "La Condamine: Enemigo de la sinceridad," 1998-99.
• Verónika Zavaleta, Departmental Honors Thesis Director, "La selva de Mario Vargas Llosa: Aproximaciones a la imagen de la Amazonía peruana," 1996-97.

Latin American Studies Program

• John Ocker, Honors Thesis Director, "La evangelización de Yucatán. Mirando el pasado y examinando el presente cinco siglos después de la conquista," 1997-98.

Graduate Program in Comparative Literature

• Patricia Ferrer-Medina, Director of Doctoral Dissertation Committee, “The Natural Other in Early Modern Travel Narrative in the Caribbean.”

• Jennifer French, Director of Doctoral Dissertation Committee, "The Invisible Empire: Neo-Colonialism and the Spanish American Regionalist Writers." Spring 2001.
• Norma Jackson, Member of Doctoral Dissertation Committee, "The Heroic Voice in Black-Slave Narratives and Its Reconstruction of the Black Slave Community: Talking About, To, and Through Whiteness." Spring 1999-Spring 2001.

• Atreyee Pukhan, Member of Master's Examination Committee on Special Topic, Fall 2003.
• Patricia Ferrer-Medina, Member of Master's Examination Committee on Literary Movement or Period, Fall 2003.
• Atreyee Pukhan, Member of Master's Examination Committee on Genre, Spring 2003.
• Sara Szeglowski, Member of Master's Examination Committee on Critical Theory, Spring 2000.
• Norma Jackson, Member of Doctoral Examination Committee on Special Topic.
• Jennifer French, Member of Doctoral Examination Committee on Special Topic, Spring 1999.
• Rebecca McCourtney, Member of Master's Examination Committee on Critical Theory, Fall 1998.
• Jennifer French, Member of Master's Examination Committee on Critical Theory, Fall 1997.

Rutgers College

• Kurt MacMillan, Henry Rutgers Scholar Project, Honors Thesis Co-Director with Prof. Mark Wasserman, History. "La palabra tiene que desmenuzar el mundo: Negotiating 'Otherness,' 'Modernity,' and Cultural Identity in the Works of Mario Vargas Llosa, and Jose Maria Arguedas. 2000-2001.
• Kara Cohen, Henry Rutgers Scholar Project, Honors Thesis Director. 1999-2000.
• Stefan Antonowicz , Henry Rutgers Scholar Project, Honors Thesis Co-director with Prof. Tom Stephens, "What's Your Sign?: An Exploration into the Zodiac Pages of the Paris Codex," 1996-97.

Africana Studies

• Melanie N. John, The Scholars Project in Africana Studies, Committee Member, "La tierra en confusion: Afro-Invisibility in Mexico," May 2000.

Department of Spanish and Portuguese

• Undergraduate Director, 1997-2003.
• Graduate Director, Spring 2001.
• Curriculum Committtee, Fall 1998-Fall 2000, Spring 2002-present.
• Director, Rutgers in Spain Study Abroad Program, Summer 2000,  2001, 2003, 2004.
• By-Laws Committee, 2001-2002.
• Chair, Ad-hoc Committee for Responding to the External Review of the Translation Program, Spring 2002.
• Peer Evaluation Committee, 1998-99, 2000-2001, 2001-2002. (elected position)
• Membership Review Committee, 2001-02. (elected position)
• Student-Faculty Liaison Committee, 1993-94, Spring 2002.
• Search Committee 2001-2002, 1999-2000, 1998-99, 1992-93 . (elected position)
• Graduate Examination Committe, 1997-Spring 2000.
• Departmental Co-bibliographer, 1997-98.
• Liaison with the Rutgers University Language Institute, 1997-98.
• Honors Committee (Convenor), 1996-Fall 2000, Spring 2002.
• Creator of the Spanish and Portuguese WWW Site.
• Academic Adviser, 1992-present.
• Course of Study Committee, 1991-92 (New Major), 1993-98.
• New content-based course for 01:940:326 or the Advanced Language Workshop, 1993.
• Faculty Adviser to Demarest Hall, 1991-98.
• Faculty Adviser to "Latin Images" Section, 1995-96.
• Hispanic Activities Committee, 1995-96.
• Organizing Committee for the Graduate Distinguished Lecturer Series Conference, 1993-94.
• Organizing Committee for "La Jornada," Coloquio de Estudiantes Graduados sobre Literaturas Hispánicas, 1993-96.
• Supervisor for 01:940:203, Spring 1994.
• Ad-hoc Committee for reviewing 01:940:333 and 01:940:334 reading lists, 1992-93.
• Budget Committee, 1992-93.

University

Athletic Academic Oversight Committee, 2003-04.

Graduate School, New Brunswick, Humanities Area Committee, 2003-04.

Center for the Critical Analysis of Contemporary Culture (CCACC), Advisory Committee, 2000-present.

Faculty of Arts and Sciences, Transliterature Project, Advisory Committee, 2001-present.

University Senate, 2000-01.

Faculty of Arts and Sciences, Curriculum Committee, 2000-2002.

Faculty of Arts and Sciences, Study Abroad Committee, 2002-04, 1999-2000, 2003-04.

Faculty of Arts and Sciences, Foreign Languages and Literatures Advisory Council, 1998-99.

Faculty of Arts and Sciences, Curriculum Committee, 1997-98.

Center for Latino Arts and Culture, Advisory Committee, 1997-present.

Center for Latino Arts and Culture, Search Committee for an Assistant Director, Summer 1997.

Alexander Library, Search Committee for a Latin American Librarian, 1996-97. Office of Judicial Affairs, Member of the Rutgers University Judicial Board, 1995-97. Office of University Undergraduate Admissions: Member of the Speakers Bureau, 1991-98.

Rutgers College

• General Honors Program Executive Council, 1995-present.
• General Honors Program Admissions Committee, 1994-97.
• Judicial Committee, 1995-96.

Douglass College

• Student Academic Affairs Committee, 1995-98.

Latin American Studies Program

• Academic Director, 1997-99.
• Academic Adviser for the Latin American Studies Program, 1995-2003.
• Organizing Committee for the Conference "Trade, Financial Contagion, and Economic Development in Latin America," held at Rutgers University, November 13^, 1998.
• Creator and Webmaster of the Latin American Studies WWW Site.
• Moderator for the Panel "New Strategies and Technologies: The Future of Journalism"."Dialogue of the Americas" Conference. Latin American Studies Program. Rutgers University, New Brunswick, November 7-8, 1996.
• Latin American Studies Program: Curriculum Committee (New Major and Minor). 1995-96

Profession

• Reader for Bucknell University Press, 2002-03.
• External reader for the promotion review to Associate Professor of Prof. Cynthia Vich, Fordham University, October 2001.
• Manuscript evaluation of  "Mad Land, My Land: Identity in Mario Vargas Llosa's La casa verde," for Revista Canadiense de Estudios Hispanicos, Summer 2001.
• Manuscript evaluation of "Nostalgia and Indigenista Narratives in Nineteenth-Century Peru" for the Arizona Journal of Hispanic Cultural Studies, Summer 2001.
• Editor for the departmental electronic journal Arachne@Rutgers: Journal of Iberian and Latin American Literary and Cultural Studies.
• Editorial Board Member for Amazonian Literary Review, published by the Center for Amazonian Literatures and Culture. Smith College.
• External reader for the promotion review to Associate Professor of Prof. Irma Muñoz, Lehman College, City University of New York, September 2000.
• External reader for the promotion review to Associate Professor of Prof. César Ferreira, Department of Modern Languages, Literatures, and Linguistics, The University of Oklahoma, September 1999.
• Writing Workshop of the Asociación Estudiantil Dominicana. Rutgers University, New Brunswick, April 22, 1994.
• Co-organizer of the Conference "Latin America in the 21st Century: Political Violence, Human Rights, and Redemocratization in the Andean Region," held at Rutgers University, November 18, 1992.
• "Problemas de la enseñanza de literatura en el aula." Workshop for the teachers of Spanish at the "Manuel A. Ramírez Barinaga" High School. Lima, Peru, June 17, 1992.

Community

• Steering Committee for the New Jersey Latino Leadership Conference, 1997-98.
• "En soledad pero bien acompañada. La literatura peruana a fines del s. XX". Lecture for the Grupo Latinoamericano de Mujeres de Princeton. November 19, 1997. Princeton Junction, New Jersey.