Spanish and Portuguese
I earned my doctorate at the University of Michigan (Ann Arbor) in 1993. Within the field of Hispanism, I focus on contemporary Latin American narrative and Andean authors. These interests blend in my book on the Peruvian writer Mario Vargas Llosa, The Story of the Storyteller (1995). My scholarly articles appear in the journals Hispamérica, Hispanic Journal, and Comparative Literature Studies as well as in the volumes Vargas Llosa and Latin American Politics and Critical Insights: Mario Vargas Llosa.
As a lecturer at Penn since 1999, I teach courses on a variety of topics including: the Boom; narratives of la selva; coming-of-age stories; and representations of cities in Latin American literature. I also coordinate the sequence of medical Spanish courses and Advanced Spanish II (1200), a course devoted to writers and writing. In addition to teaching, I enjoy promoting urban forestry and dancing tango.