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Faculty and Staff

Department chair

Irma López

Chair and Professor
Ph.D., University of Kansas

irma.lopez@wmich.edu
409 Sprau Tower
(269) 387-3014

Office hours:

MTWRF 8 a.m. - 5 p.m.
And by appointment

Professor López has authored two books, Historia, escritura e identidad: La novelística de María Luisa Puga, and Confluencias y demarcaciones: la novela mexicana, 1998-2008. She also has published articles and papers on the work of Rosario Ferré, Carlos Fuentes, Mayra Montero, Elena Poniatowska, Sara Sefchovich, and others. Professor López is the faculty director of the study abroad program in Querétaro, Mexico.

Administrative staff

Colleen Sante

Administrative Assistant
colleen.sante@wmich.edu
420 Sprau Tower
(269) 387-3023

Office hours:

MTWRF 8 a.m. - 5 p.m.

Jennifer Morrow

Office Associate
jennifer.l.morrow@wmich.edu
410 Sprau Tower
(269) 387-3001

Office hours:

MTWRF 1 - 5 p.m.

Faculty

Michael Braun

Master Faculty Specialist
M.A., Western Michigan University

michael.braun@wmich.edu
418 Sprau Tower
(269) 387-3009

Office hours:

By appointment until fall semester

Professor Braun joined the Spanish faculty full time in Fall 2004, after teaching Spanish methodology at Western on a part-time basis for four years. A specialist in Spanish pedagogy, he also has a recognized interest in Spanish poet Gustavo Adolfo Bécquer. With certification for secondary education, Professor Braun taught all five levels of Spanish for twelve years at Portage Northern High School, as well as implemented the International Baccalaureate curriculum there.

Robert Felkel

Professor and Undergraduate Advisor
Ph.D., Michigan State University

felkel@wmich.edu
516 Sprau Tower
(269) 387-3024

Office hours:

By appointment until fall semester

Professor Felkel specializes in medieval and Spanish Golden Age Literature, with a concentration on Don Quijote by Miguel de Cervantes. A member of the Cervantes Society of America, he has published a number of articles on the Quijote in journals such as Anuario de Letras and Anales Cervantinos, and he has produced an English translation of José Antonio Maravall's Utopía y contrautopía en el Quijote. Professor Felkel has also published articles on aspects of contemporary Spanish culture and he is currently working on a study of homiletics in the Quijote, as well as a book-length manuscript he provisionally plans to title A Tour of Don Quijote. Professor Felkel serves the department as a Spanish undergraduate advisor.

Hedy Habra

Instructor
Ph.D., Western Michigan University

hedy.habra@wmich.edu
815 Sprau Tower
(269) 387-3105

Office hours:

By appointment until fall semester

Dr. Habra specializes in Spanish American Literature, with an emphasis on the Peruvian writer, Mario Vargas Llosa, on whose novels she wrote her doctoral dissertation. Her articles on Vargas Llosa's fiction and on numerous Spanish and Latin American authors have appeared in Revista de Estudios Hispánicos, Latin American Literary Review, Chasqui, Inti, Explicación de Textos Literarios, Alba de América, Hispanófila and elsewhere. She is the author of a book of literary criticism, Mundos alternos y artísticos en Vargas Llosa (Iberoamericana / Vervuert, 2012), a collection of short fiction, Flying Carpets (March Street Press, 2012) and a poetry collection Tea in Heliopolis (Press 53, 2013).

Carolyn Harris

Carolyn Harris

Professor and Undergraduate Advisor
Ph.D., University of Iowa

carolyn.harris@wmich.edu
514 Sprau Tower
(269) 387-3017

Office hours:

By appointment until fall semester

Professor Harris is a specialist in contemporary peninsular literature and women's studies. Her research focuses on twentieth-century and current Spanish theater with an emphasis on women writers. She has written on the works of Antonio Gala, Antonio Buero Vallejo, Concha Romero, Carmen Resino, Paloma Pedrero, Itziar Pascual and others. She has published a monograph, El teatro de Antonio Gala, as well as many articles and book reviews. She is currently a member of the editorial board for Estreno: Cuadernos del Teatro Español Contemporáneo. Professor Harris serves the department as a Spanish undergraduate advisor.

Antonio Isea

Professor
Ph.D., University of Colorado

antonio.isea@wmich.edu
512 Sprau Tower
(269) 387-3041

Summer I office hours:

TR 4 - 4:50 p.m.
E-Learning chat: MTR 11 - noon
And by appointment

Professor Isea specializes in Literary Theory, Spanish American cultural studies, twenty-first century Spanish American literature, and postcolonial novelistic discourse in the Spanish-Caribbean. His first book, Historiografía y ficción en la narrativa de Denzil Romero, is the first major study of the work of that important Venezuelan author, and it covers topics such as race and nation-building in Venezuela. His second book, Figuraciones del hinterland: notas sobre Maracaibo o un breve estudio del Monte y Culebra en Venezuela (2008), consists of eight essays that interpret the cultural, social and economic map of the city of Maracaibo, Venezuela's oil Mecca. The book explores notions of modernity and cultural liminality in Venezuela, one of the largest oil producing countries in the world.

Michael Millar

Associate Professor
Ph.D, University of Michigan

michael.millar@wmich.edu
415 Sprau Tower
(269) 387-3026

Office hours:

MTWR 11 - 12 p.m.
And by appointment

Professor Millar is a specialist in Central American cultures. He has published several articles on the literatures of Guatemala, El Salvador, Costa Rica and the Central American diaspora in the United States. His book, Spaces of Representation (Peter Lang, 2005), examines the role of literary, political and historical discourse in the struggle for social justice in Guatemala. His current research investigates the relationship between current social conditions of the region and an emergent dystopian tendency in contemporary Central American literature. Professor Millar is a study abroad advisor.

Patricia Montilla

Associate Professor, Director of Graduate Studies
Ph.D., University of Chicago

patricia.montilla@wmich.edu
511 Sprau Tower
(269) 387-3040

Office hours:

MTWR 11 - 12 p.m.
And by appointment

Professor Montilla specializes in Spanish American poetry and U.S. Latino literature and culture. She has published articles on the works of Oliverio Girondo, Matías Montes Huidobro, Judith Ortiz Cofer, Carlota Caulfield, Mariano Brull, and Eugenio Florit. She authored a book, Parody and the Poetics of Subversion in Oliverio Girondo, as well as a panoramic study on contemporary Puerto Rican literature of the United States for a companion to U.S. Latino letters. Currently, Professor Montilla is editing a three volume work on Latinos and American popular culture that will be published by Praeger. Professor Montilla serves the department as the Director of Graduate Studies and Graduate Advisor in Spanish.

Holly Nibert

Associate Professor
Ph.D., University of Illinois

holly.nibert@wmich.edu
509 Sprau Tower
(269) 387-3012

Office hours:

By appointment until fall semester

Professor Nibert is a specialist in Spanish linguistics with particular interests in phonology and phonetics, dialectology, second language acquisition, and second language teaching methodology. She has published various articles on Spanish intonation, including its description with autosegmentalmetrical theory and its acquisition by second language learners. She is co-author of the 5th edition of ¡Arriba!, Prentice Hall's best selling beginning Spanish language textbook. She is director of the first-year Spanish language program and trains the new teaching assistants in the department.

Natalio Ohanna

Assistant Professor
Ph.D., McGill University

natalio.ohanna@wmich.edu
515 Sprau Tower
(269) 387-3018

Office hours:

By appointment until fall semester

Professor Ohanna specializes in Spanish Golden Age and Colonial Spanish-American literatures. His research covers the intellectual history of the Early Modern period, with a focus on the cultural triangle of Europe, Africa and the Americas in struggle and exchange, the Western discursive configuration of the East and the New World, Spanish Humanism in the time of the Counter-Reformation, and the social and political meanings of cross-cultural narratives of travel, shipwreck and captivity. Dr. Ohanna has published in professional journals such as Anales Cervantinos, Hispanic Journal, Cervantes: Bulletin of the Cervantes Society of America, Bulletin of Hispanic Studies, and Hispanic Review. He has a forthcoming book entitled Cautiverio y convivencia en la edad de Cervantes.

Pablo Pastrana-Pérez

Associate Professor
Ph.D., University of Wisconsin

pablo.pastrana@wmich.edu
Personal Website
415 Sprau Tower
(269) 387-2955

Office hours:

By appointment until fall semester

Professor Pastrana is a specialist in Spanish medieval literature and historical linguistics. His papers and publications to date have focused on fifteenth and sixteenth-century texts, particularly the short chivalric narratives. Currently, he is finishing a collaborative research project that began between professor Pastrana and the late Catherine Julien (History). The project involves a scholarly edition of 61 documents pertaining to Alvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca's exploration of the South-American interior between 1540 and 1544. The project has been funded by the National Endowment for the Humanities. He is a member of the Medieval Institute Board and serves as the faculty director of the study abroad program in Santander, Spain. Prof. Pastrana-Pérez will be on sabbatical leave during the 2012-13 academic year.

Mariola Pérez de la Cruz

Master Faculty Specialist
Ph.D., Universidad de Alcalá

mariola.perez@wmich.edu
512 Sprau Tower
(269) 387-3015

Office hours:

By appointment until fall semester

Professor Pérez de la Cruz specializes in Spanish philology and twentieth-century Spanish literature. Her research focuses on post-war Spanish novel and theater, which she studies from a sociohistorical perspective. She authored a book: "Carlos Muñiz: Lola espejo oscuro." This book is an edition of an unpublished play censored under the Franco dictatorship. Professor Pérez de la Cruz coordinates the intermediate-level Spanish language program and serves the department as community outreach coordinator. She also serves at the faculty director of the study abroad program in Burgos, Spain.

Mercedes Tasende

Professor
Ph.D., University of Colorado

mercedes.tasende@wmich.edu
409 Sprau Tower
(269) 387-3003

Office hours:

By appointment until fall semester

Professor Tasende is a specialist in early twentieth-century Spanish literature. She has authored a book on the work of Valle-Inclán, Palimpsesto y subversión. Un estudio intertextual del El ruedo ibérico, as well as papers and articles on Pardo Bazán, Unamuno, Gómez de la Serna and Manuel Rivas. She is currently conducting research on Unamuno and Spanish Civil War literature.

Benjamín Torres

Professor
Ph.D., University of Pennsylvania

benjamin.torres@wmich.edu
514 Sprau Tower
(269) 387-3028

Office hours:

By appointment until fall semester

Professor Torres is a specialist in Spanish American literature, particularly in Caribbean narrative. He has authored three books (Gabriel García Márquez o la alquimia del incesto, Literatura e ideología and Para llegar a la Isla Verde de Edgardo Rodríguez Julía), as well as many articles, papers, and book reviews. He has a strong interest in Caribbean popular culture and in U.S. Latino literature, as evidenced by both his teaching and publications. Professor Torres has edited four works by Edgardo Rodríguez Julía: Elogio de la fonda (Playor, 2001), Mapa de una pasión literaria (EDUPR, 2003), Musarañas de domingo (EDUPR, 2005), La renuncia del héroe Baltasar (FCE, 2006). Professor Torres serves the department as a Spanish undergraduate advisor.

Robert Vann

Professor and Undergraduate Advisor
Ph.D., University of Texas-Austin

robert.vann@wmich.edu
R. Vann Website
515 Sprau Tower
(269) 387-3042

Office hours:

TR 8 - 8:50 a.m., 11:45 - 1:30 p.m.
And by appointment

Professor Vann is a specialist in Spanish sociolinguistics and pragmatics, with an emphasis on Spanish language, culture, and society in Catalonia. He has published over two dozen refereed articles concerning ways of speaking, linguistic identities, and linguistic ideologies in Barcelona, the social, cultural, and linguistic effects of language contact and bilingualism in Catalonia, and the linguistic documentation and digital preservation of spoken language data in Catalan Spanish. Dr. Vann's recent book, Materials for the sociolinguistic description and corpus-based study of Spanish in Barcelona: Toward a documentation of colloquial Spanish in naturally occurring groups (2009), includes a critical introduction that recognizes the legitimacy of the Spanish spoken in Catalonia and contains the first published transcripts of a spoken language corpus of colloquial conversations in Spanish among individuals from naturally occurring social groups in Barcelona. The monograph provides a resource for the study of the unique characteristics of Catalan Spanish.