Teaching style
I enjoy having the opportunity to do interdisciplinary research and teaching at Iowa. I normally focus on close reading of literary texts in class, as I think the experience and enjoyment of reading is a crucial component of a liberal arts education. Occasionally, I use films and documentaries to highlight a historical context. Helping students see how history and fiction interact is central to my teaching style.

Mentoring
Most of my mentoring has been done with graduate students in Spanish and Portuguese and, in past years, in the Program in Comparative Literature. However, I have directed a number of undergraduate students in their honors theses in Spanish and Portuguese and international studies, and I enjoy this kind of mentoring immensely. Students come up with really creative topics. Last semester, one student wrote an honors thesis for the Cuban American Literature and Culture class. Her topic was feminist history retold in Cristina García’s Dreaming in Cuban. It was an essay studying the lives of four generations of Cuban women who were split apart by the revolution and its aftermath.

Other students have also been interested in gender issues. As part of her summer study-abroad experience, another student wrote on the change of gender roles for contemporary Chilean women. These papers, I feel, are not merely academic exercises, but inroads into the students’ own sense of worth as women as well as paths outward to their future lives.

Advice to students
My advice to incoming students is to take advantage of the opportunities offered by the many interdisciplinary programs and courses of study at Iowa, particularly the international studies major and similar programs. I would encourage students to use their undergraduate education to open up to new ideas and views of the world and to gain insight into other areas of the world beyond U.S. borders.