Newswise — About 14 percent of the people in the United States are of Hispanic or Latin origin, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. In fact, Spanish has become the nation's unofficial second language, with some 30 million Americans speaking it either in addition to or instead of English at home.
To serve this rapidly growing segment of the U.S. population, thousands of Spanish-language media outlets have emerged in recent years. Accordingly, Florida State University, as one of the state's flagship institutions of higher learning, has identified a number of its faculty members who are both fluent in Spanish and available to share their expertise with Spanish media. Please retain this listing and feel free to contact them for comment as needed.
ACCOUNTING
"¢ Jessen Law Hobson, Assistant Professor. His research interests include financial accounting and audit issues and behavioral finance/economics.
ANTHROPOLOGY
"¢ Lance Gravlee, Assistant Professor. His research interests include medical anthropology; biocultural anthropology; ethnicity; racism; cultural dimensions of stress and health; social epidemiology; qualitative and quantitative research methods and design; Puerto Rico and the United States.
"¢ Mary Pohl, Professor. Her research interests include Mesoamerican archaeology and early agriculture, the rise of civilization, and early writing in the New World.
"¢ Michael Uzendoski, Assistant Professor. His research interests include social and symbolic anthropology; the anthropology of religion, kinship, anthropology and history; economic anthropology, ethnopoetics and anthropological linguistics. The ethnographic areas he concentrates on are Ecuador, the Amazon, the Andes and Latin America.
ART HISTORY
"¢ Tatiana Flores, Assistant Professor. Her research interests include the historiography of Latin American art and modern and contemporary art of the Americas, particularly the historical avant-garde movements of the 1920s; postwar abstraction in Latin American art; and the interrelationship between art movements in Europe, the United States and Latin America. She is working on a book manuscript, "Estridentismo: A Paradigm of Mexican Avant-Garde Culture" (working title), and has curated numerous exhibitions of the work of emerging and established artists from Latin America, including "Into Union: Cecilia Vicuña and César Paternosto" and "Rubens Gerchman: Four Decades."
CHEMISTRY AND BIOCHEMISTRY
"¢ Andre Striegel, Assistant Professor. His research focuses on chemical and physical processes for analyzing natural and synthetic polymers with a wide variety of technical and commercial applications.
COMMUNICATION
"¢ Felipe Korzenny, Professor and Director of the FSU Center for Hispanic Marketing Communication. His research interests include Hispanic marketing communication, intercultural communication, consumer insights for positioning, cultural archetypes, and international-development communication. (See the July 12, 2006, BusinessWeek article at http://businessweek.com/smallbiz/content/jul2006/sb20060712_923491.htm?chan=top+news_top+news.)
"¢ John Mayo, Professor and Dean of the College of Communication. His research interests include development communication, which focuses on efforts to use communications processes and media to bring social and economic improvements, generally in developing countries; the spread of new ideas and technology through cultures; distance learning; and comparative systems.
EDUCATION
"¢ Deborah Hasson, Assistant Professor of Middle and Secondary Education. Her research interests include native-language maintenance in second-generation bilinguals; family literacy for immigrant populations; issues related to preservice teacher education and English-language learners; and bilinguals and cultural identity.
ENGINEERING
"¢ Cesar Luongo, Professor of Mechanical Engineering. His research interests are in the broad area of applied superconductivity. Over the span of 20-plus years in industry and academia, his research has covered a wide spectrum of problems: from fundamental aspects of stability and quench in superconductors to the analysis, design and testing of superconducting magnets and components. More recently, he has researched ultra-compact superconducting electric motors for propulsion. Some of his research activities also have ventured into the modeling and simulation of advanced energy systems, particularly those involving fuel cells and energy storage devices.
"¢ Juan C. Ordonez, Assistant Professor of Mechanical Engineering. His research interests include thermodynamic optimization,integrative energy-systems design, fuel cells, the cooling of electronics, power-plant optimization, heat-exchanger architecture, environmental control systems of aircraft, porous media, and thermal modeling of power systems.
FILM AND CULTURE
"¢ Maricarmen Martinez, Associate in Humanities. Her research focuses on modern culture, with a special emphasis on the Spanish-speaking world. She teaches courses on multicultural film; modern cultures; culture and imperialism; Latin American cinema and Hispanic issues; and Hispanics in the United States. In addition, she is director of FSU's Latin American and Caribbean Studies Program.
GEOGRAPHY
"¢ Dan Klooster, Assistant Professor. His research interests include human-environment relations, land-use change, conservation and development, deforestation, Mexico and Latin America. His current research topics are forestry, the evolution of local institutions governing human-environment interactions, social aspects of land-use change in highlands, and adaptive environmental management.
"¢ Barney Warf, Professor and Chairman of the Department of Geography. His research interests include the political economy of regional development, producer services, telecommunications, military spending, international trade, social theory and philosophy. His current research topics are telecommunications and global financial services, U.S. commercial bank failures, the savings and loan crisis, the geography of the Internet, and military-base closures.
"¢ Morton Winsberg, Emeritus Professor. His research interests include racial and ethnic residential segregation, with a special emphasis on Hispanics in Florida and the United States; and agriculture in Latin America, with an emphasis on Argentina and Chile.
HISTORY
"¢ Rodney Anderson, Professor. His research interests include the history of Latin America and Mexico. He has written two books: "Outcasts in Their Own Lands: Mexican Industrial Workers, 1906-1911" (Northern Illinois University Press, 1976) and "Guadalajara a la consumación de la Independencia: Estudio de su población según los padrones de 1821-1822" (Unidad Editorial, 1983). In 1988, he received the James Alexander Robertson Memorial Prize for his article "Race and Social Stratification: A Comparison of Working-Class Spaniards, Indians, and Castas in Guadalajara, Mexico in 1821" (Hispanic American Historical Review, May 1988). With the support of a sizable grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities, he currently is analyzing the Guadalajara censuses of 1821 and 1822.
"¢ Matt Childs, Assistant Professor of History. His research interests are Latin American and Caribbean social and cultural history, with a particular emphasis on slavery and race relations.
"¢ Max Paul Friedman, Associate Professor of History. His research interests include 20th-century U.S. foreign relations, with an emphasis on Western Europe and Latin America.
"¢ Robinson Herrera, Associate Professor of History. His research interests include the colonial and the modern periods of Latin American history, as well as issues of gender, sexuality, state formation and immigration. His first book, "Natives, Europeans, and Africans in Sixteenth-Century Santiago de Guatemala" (University of Texas Press, December 2003), is a social, cultural and economic history of Central America's colonial capital. His second book, tentatively titled "The Traveling Head: Social Deviancy and Challenges to the Ethnic State" (in progress), analyzes issues of deviant sexuality, social memory, and the manipulation of historical events by the state in modern Guatemala.
"¢ Claudia Mineo, Assistant Professor of History. Her research interests include 16th- and 17th-century Spain, particularly focusing on questions of political theory and practice.
HUMAN RIGHTS
"¢ Terry Coonan, Professor of Law and Executive Director of the Center for the Advancement of Human Rights. He did grass-roots human-rights work in Chile and Central America in the 1980s and later served with the U.N. Human Rights Commission, the U.N. High Commission for Refugees, and the U.S. Justice Department. He has litigated human rights and asylum cases for a number of years, and currently teaches courses in the College of Criminology; the College of Law; and the College of Motion Picture, Television & Recording Arts at FSU. He also heads up the center's statewide work on human trafficking.
INFORMATION STUDIES
"¢ Maria Teresa Chavez-Hernandez, Associate Professor of International and Comparative Information Services and Management of Information Collections. Her research interests include Spanish-language subject headings, Hispanic reference sources, and collection development for Hispanic populations. Recent articles and publications she has written include "Spanish-Language Subject Headings: Its Impact on Information Access; The Case of Hialeah Public Libraries" ; a chapter in "Spanish and Latin American Subject Headings" ; and "Issues and Challenges Facing Library Education in Central America" (with Susan Freiband). Among numerous professional organizations, she is a member of REFORMA, the National Association to Promote Library Services to Latinos and the Spanish Speaking.
LATIN AMERICAN AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES
"¢ Matt Atlee, Instructor, FSU-Panama Campus (Central America). He spent two-and-a-half years working in rural development in the countryside of Panama, organizing communities into agricultural communes and reforestation projects. His areas of research interest are the anthropology of development and the political economy of the state in development.
"¢ Adolfo Leyva, Lecturer, FSU-Panama Campus (Central America). He has written numerous articles and is the author, editor and co-editor of various books on Cuba and Cuban-Americans. His other research interests include Mexican history and politics, the international relations of Latin America, and the history of political ideas in Latin America.
"¢ Ignacio Messana, Resident Program Director, FSU-Valencia Campus (Spain). His areas of expertise include the language and culture of Spain, education, study-abroad programs and business.
LAW
"¢ Fernando Tesón, Tobias Simon Eminent Scholar and Professor of Law. Known for his scholarship relating political philosophy to international law (in particular his defense of humanitarian intervention), and his work on political rhetoric, Tesón is the author of "Humanitarian Intervention: An Inquiry into Law and Morality" (Third Edition fully revised and updated, Transnational Publishers 2005); "Rational Choice and Democratic Deliberation" (Cambridge University Press, 2006) (with Guido Pincione); "A Philosophy of International Law" (Westview Press 1998); and many articles in law, philosophy and international-relations journals and collections of essays.
LITERATURE
"¢ Santa Arias, Associate Professor of Modern Languages and Linguistics. Her research interests include colonial Latin American literature, Caribbean (especially Puerto Rican) literature and culture, rhetoric, and textual representations of history and spirituality in Latin America. She is the author of "Retórica, historia y polémica: Bartolomé de las Casas y la tradición intelectual renacentista" (2001) and co-editor of "Mapping Colonial Spanish America: Places and Commonplaces of Identity, Culture and Experience" (2002).
"¢ Roberto Fernández, Professor of Modern Languages and Linguistics. His research interests include Caribbean literature and Hispanic literature of the United States. He is a novelist who has been described as a "Cuban William Burroughs" for the fantastic and surreal qualities of much of his fiction. He is the author of "La vida es un special" (1982), "La montaña rusa" (1985), "Raining Backwards" (1988) and "Holy Radishes" (1995). The collision of languages and temperaments that is characteristic of the immigrant experience makes for the intriguing plot twists and inevitable humor that careen through Fernández's work.
"¢ Juan Carlos Galeano, Associate Professor of Modern Languages and Linguistics. His interests include Latin American poetry, translations of North American poetry, and Amazonian culture. He is a critic, translator and poet. His published works include "Amazonia" (poetry, 2003), "Los muertos y los vivos" (translation of selected poems by Sharon Olds, 2001), "El pollo sin cabeza" (translation of selected poems by Charles Simic, 1999), "Polen y escopetas" (criticism on Colombian poetry of violence, 1997), and "Baraja inicial" (poetry, 1986). He is currently working on a book of poetry, translating the work of contemporary North American poets and researching Amazonian folklore.
"¢ José Gomáriz, Associate Professor of Modern Languages and Linguistics. His research interests include modern Spanish American literature, modernism, Cuban literature and culture, José MartÃ, intellectual history, and the African diaspora in the Americas. His latest publications include "Colonialismo e independencia cultural. La narración del artista e intelectual hispanoamericano del siglo XIX" ("Colonialism and Cultural Independence: Narrating the Artist and the Intellectual in Nineteenth Century Spanish America" ) (Verbum,2005), "El discurso esclavista de la ilustración cubana: Francisco de Arango y Parreño" (Cuban Studies, 2004) "José MartÃ" ("Modern Spanish American Poets" , 290; Dictionary of Literary Biography, 2004), and "José Martà en las entrañas de la modernidad" (Casa de las Américas, 2003). He is currently at work on a book on José Martà and a book about the African diaspora in Cuba and the Caribbean.
"¢ Delia Poey, Associate Professor, Modern Languages and Linguistics. Her research interests include U.S. Hispanic literature and Latin American literature. She is the author of "Latino American Literature in the Classroom: The Politics of Transformation" (2002) and editor of three collections of creative writings by Hispanic authors.
"¢ Virgil Suarez, Professor of English. He specializes in creative writing (fiction and poetry) and Hispanic (especially Cuban-American) literature. He is the author of more than 15 books of prose and fiction. He received an award for Best American Poetry in 2004. His latest book, "90 Miles," a collection of selected and new poems, was published by the University of Pittsburgh in 2005.
MEDICINE
"¢ Elena Reyes, Professor, Medical Humanities and Social Sciences. Her research interests include medicine and behavior and cross-cultural medicine.MUSIC
"¢ Dale Olsen, Distinguished Research Professor of Ethnomusicology and Director of the Center for Music of the Americas. He has done fieldwork in South America since 1966, funded by the Peace Corps, the National Endowment for the Humanities, Fulbright and many other organizations. He has written for more than 100 publications about music in South America (musical instruments, Japanese immigrant societies, archaeomusicology, multicultural music education, indigenous cultures), including five books: "Music of the Warao of Venezuela: Song People of the Rain Forest" ; "Music of El Dorado: The Ethnomusicology of Ancient South American Cultures" ; "Garland Encyclopedia of World Music, Vol. 2: South America, Central America, Mexico, and the Caribbean" ; "The Garland Handbook of Latin American Music" ; and "The Chrysanthemum and the Song: Music, Memory, and Identity in the South American Japanese Diaspora."
PHYSICS
"¢ Luis Balicas, Associate Scholar/Scientist, National High Magnetic Field Laboratory. He is a member of the laboratory's Condensed Matter Experimental Group, which researches various aspects of condensed matter physics, including the interplay between magnetism and superconductivity such as quantum criticality or magnetic field-induced superconductivity. In addition, he studies metamagnetism and Mott localization in multi-band systems, magnetic-phases resulting from geometrical frustration, and the complex Kondo physics of heavy fermions. In synthesis, he studies the electronic, magnetic, thermal and structural properties of novel-transition metal oxides (including high-temperature superconductors), rare-earth or actinide-based intermetallics, and organic compounds.
"¢ Jorge Piekarewicz, Professor. His research interests include nuclear astrophysics as in the behavior of nuclear matter under extreme conditions of density, such as those found in the interior of neutron stars.
POLITICAL SCIENCE
"¢ Jeffrey Staton, Assistant Professor. His research interests include democratic institutions, judicial politics, judicial reform and Mexico.
URBAN AND REGIONAL PLANNING
"¢ Ivonne Audirac, Associate Professor. Her research interests include growth management, planning and development in Latin America, and social aspects of urban design and urban form. Her current research focuses on the effectiveness of neotraditional design and rural applications of sustainable development. She is the editor of the book "Rural Sustainable Development in America" (John Wiley, 1997).
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