Strategies Towards Teaching Hispanic Language and Cultural Studies Inclusively at CMU

10:30am-12pm

Presenter: Dr. Felipe Gómez

Session Type: Panel Discussion

Topic: Education through the Lifespan

Description

Given that Latinx and Hispanic studies have traditionally been dominated by male
perspectives, and tend to reinforce cultural inequalities and hegemonies, this panel is founded on
the conviction that we can contribute toward strategic solutions to these problems of
underrepresentation. The panel covers strategies and resources created in the context of CMU’s
Provost Inclusive Teaching Fellowships for a course for 1st year students in Modern Languages
that introduces them to cultural studies through the genre of children’s books among other
resources, and another course designed for 4th year students which employs a digital archive of
Latin American comics at its curricular base. What motivates us to present this panel is an
interest in exploring opportunities to enhance the diversity of voices, genres, or perspectives
represented in the course materials. As faculty members who identify as part of minority groups,
we believe it is our role to help students feel included and ready to thrive. We believe education
can be an equalizer and it is also within our role to help students with a wide variety of abilities,
cultures, experiences, personalities, and skills, learn and grow to use their difference as an asset
to become diverse thinkers and problem-solvers.

Facilitators

Dr. Felipe Gómez

Teaching Professor of Hispanic Studies

Modern Languages, Carnegie Mellon University

fgomez@andrew.cmu.edu

Felipe Gómez is Teaching Professor of Hispanic Studies in the Modern Languages Department
at Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh. Gómez’s area of expertise is 20th-21st century Latin
American cultural studies, focusing on the analysis of countercultural expressions within
literature, film, popular music, and comics and graphic novels. He has co-edited critical volumes
examining literary production by writers Andrés Caicedo and Evelio Rosero, and has authored
dozens of articles and chapters on recent and contemporary Latin American literature, films, and
comics. His current research project examines resilience and endurance in Spanish-language
apocalyptic comics, analyzing community responses and survival strategies employed by their
protagonists. Gómez is a 2020 recipient of a Teaching Innovation Award at Carnegie Mellon.
His Latin American Comics Archive (LACA), which originated from a 2016 Dietrich/Mellon
seed grant, was nominated for a Dean's Educational Innovation Fellowship Award at CMU, and
was recently awarded a Provost’s Inclusive Teaching Fellowship for 2020-2021.

Dr. José Estrada

Dr. José Estrada’s research is focused on Early Modern Spanish literature, particularly theater,
and the emerging transatlantic society as a result of the encounter between Europe and the
Americas. A significant amount of his studies revolve around Juan Ruiz de Alarcón. He
interprets his theater as a form of self-fashioning. His birth and upbringing in New Spain in
addition to his travels to Spain place his theater at a privileged position in transatlantic studies.
Within the early modern period Dr. Estrada also studies the cultural and linguistic exchange
between cultures in Colonial Mexico. He currently studies don Bartolomé de Alva Ixtlilxóchitl’s
Nahuatl translations of Spanish Baroque theater in the early 1640s. Hence, his research not only
analyzes the role that the American continent played in debates and developments of the Early
Modern period but also how space and place are used to build identities through performance
and language in an emerging global society.