Latin American and Latinx Studies Minor

Faculty

Director and General Advisor

Dr. Tia Malkin-Fontecchio 
Assistant Professor 
Languages and Cultures
TMalkin-Fontecchio@wcupa.edu

 

 

Contributing Faculty

Faculty Name	Faculty Bio
Emily Aguiló-Pérez English Main Hall 116 610-436-1609 EAguilo-Perez@wcupa.edu	Dr. Emily R. Aguiló-Pérez is an Assistant Professor of English at West Chester University, focusing on youth literatures and cultures, especially Latinx.  Her work has appeared in The Looking Glass: New Perspectives on Children’s Literature, Oxford Bibliographies in Childhood Studies, Jeunesse: Young People, Texts, Cultures, and the edited collection The Marketing of Children’s Toys: Critical Perspectives on Children’s Consumer Culture (Palgrave, 2021), among others. She has served on youth media award committees, including the 2022 Newbery Award. Her book, An American Icon in Puerto Rico: Barbie, Girlhood, and Colonialism at Play (Berghahn, 2022), examines the ways through which women and girls construct their own identities in relation to femininity, body image, race, and nationalism through Barbie play.
Jason Bartles Languages and Cultures Mitchell Hall, Room 132 610-436-0065 JBartles@wcupa.edu Website	Dr. Jason A. Bartles is an Associate Professor of Spanish in the Department of Languages and Cultures. He received his Ph.D. in Latin American Literatures and Cultures from the University of Maryland, College Park. His research, informed by gender and sexuality studies, explores the ways in which political, ethical, and aesthetic discourses are inscribed in the fiction and essays of non-canonical Latin American and U.S. Latina/o writers. In particular, he focuses on texts that circulated in the cultural markets of the 1960s and 1970s to offer a more nuanced understanding of cultural production in the era beyond the discourses surrounding the Boom, magical realism, and the politically committed intellectual.
Michele Belliveau Social Work 114 W. Rosedale Ave, Room 201 610-436-3469 MBelliveau@wcupa.edu Website	Professor Belliveau's background is in social work with individuals, families, and groups in diverse, community-based mental health settings. Her interests include the experiences of Latino immigrant families with the U.S. social welfare system, policy practice, and the development of students' bilingual and bicultural social work competence.
Marcos Campillo-Fenoll Languages and Cultures Mitchell Hall, Room 129 610-436-2700 MCampillo@wcupa.edu Website	Dr. Marcos Campillo-Fenoll, Associate Professor of Spanish, has been a faculty member at West Chester University since 2009, teaching undergraduate and graduate courses in Spanish language and Spanish American culture and literature. He was the Director of LALS Fall 2014-Fall 2017 His research focuses on the nineteenth-century literature and cultural production of the Southern Cone area in South America (Argentina, Chile, Uruguay). Dr. Campillo has also led summer study abroad programs in Rosario, Argentina, in 2012 and 2014.
Cristóbal Cardemil-Krause Languages and Cultures Mitchell Hall, Room 136 610-436-2372 CCardemil-Krause@wcupa.edu Website	Research interests include General Literature in Spanish; General Literatures from Brazil; Cultures of Latin America; Indigenous and Regionalista Literatures of Latin America; Literature from the Southern Cone; and Space, Violence, and Post-Colonial Theory.
Miguel Ceballos Sociology Old Library, Room 04 610-436-2308 MCeballos@wcupa.edu
Megan Corbin Languages and Cultures Mitchell Hall, Room 131 610-738-0440 MCorbin@wcupa.edu Website	Professor Corbin joined WCU in 2014 after receiving her doctorate from the University of Minnesota. Her primary areas of research center around the post-dictatorship periods of Latin America, most specifically on Southern Cone Latin America, and examine the ways in which individuals, groups, and society are working to fill gaps in historical memory through literary and artistic practices. She is an Associate Editor for the publication Hispanic Issues and Hispanic Issues On Line.
Daniela Johannes Languages and Cultures Mitchell Hall, Room 134 610-436-3327 DJohannes@wcupa.edu Website	Johannes Salvo earned her Ph.D. in border studies and M.A. in Hispanic studies, both from the University of Arizona, and a B.A in literature and linguistics from Universidad Católica de Chile. Her current research involves representations of the U.S.-Mexico border, sovereign technologies for securitization and its contestations. Her work relates to theories of affect, actor network, nature-cultures, biopolitics and necropolitics. Her most recent paper, "Border Architectures: Nature, Technology and Humanness in the Sonoran Desert" was published inInternational Political Sociology Journal. Johannes Salvo speaks Spanish, Portuguese and English. She volunteers for non-profit organizations that support migrants and other minority populations.  She is Co-chair of the WCU Multicultural Faculty Commission and of the Greater Philadelphia Latin American Studies Consortium-GPLASC.
Valerian Desousa Sociology Old Library, Room 03B 610-436-2989 VDesousa@wcupa.edu	Valerian DeSousa grew up and was educated in Bombay (now Mumbai) India. He is deeply invested in working with researchers and students across the world on issues of globalization and development. He recently took a group of students to Mumbai and Pune in India to work on projects in the slums and with rescued street children, an experience that students found profoundly educational and life changing. He seeks to train students to be thoughtful intellectuals, cosmopolitan in the best sense of the word, and to work across cultures without being ethnocentric. He is now involved in two long term research projects. He is looking at the way the World's Fairs of the nineteenth and early twentieth century used artifacts and visual material to represent empire and its colonies. He is also doing field work on call centre work in India within the framework of theories of globalization. For the LALS program, he teaches SOC 341: Social Stratification (An analysis of inequalities in wealth, power, and prestige in contemporary societies).
Marc Jacoby Applied Music Swope Music Building, Room 224 610-738-0539 MJacoby@wcupa.edu	Dr. Marc Jacoby is an Associate Professor of Music at West Chester University of Pennsylvania where he serves as Jazz Studies Coordinator and teaches in the Applied Music and Music Education programs. He currently directs the Criterions Big Band and Latin Jazz Ensemble. Before joining the faculty at WCU, Dr. Jacoby was on the faculty of the VanderCook College of Music in Chicago, IL. While in Chicago, he played with many of the regions salsa and Latin-jazz groups including the Grammy nominated Orquesta 911 mambo big band. He also co-founded the Orquesta Dos Claves, a Latin-jazz big band and workshop for Chicago area youth. The ensemble performed at the Chicago Jazz Festival, Illinois Music Educator's Association Conference, Hot House's Jazz en Clave Festival, Chicago Historical Society, Harold Washington Cultural Center, and school jazz festivals around the region.
Tia Malkin-Fonteccio History Main Hall, Room 519 610-436-2168 TMalkin-Fontecchio@wcupa.edu	Dr. Tia Malkin-Fontecchio joined WCU in 2006. She received her Ph.D. in Modern Latin American history from Brown University in 2003 and a B.A. in Latin American Studies and Latin American Languages and Literatures from the University of California at Berkeley in 1994. Her research focuses on popular education movements in Brazil during the 1950s and 1960s. She teaches Modern and Colonial Latin American history, as well as Mexican and Latin American Women’s History here at WCUPA. Dr. Malkin will be leading a study abroad trip to Cuba in the spring of 2024.
Iliana Pagán-Teitelbaum Languages and Cultures Mitchell Hall, Room 127 610-436-3216 IPagan@wcupa.edu Website	Dr. Iliana Pagán-Teitelbaum is an Associate Professor of Latin American Film in the Department of Languages and Cultures at West Chester University of Pennsylvania. She is from Puerto Rico and obtained a PhD in Romance Languages and Literatures at Harvard University. Dr. Pagán was a Mellon Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of Pennsylvania. Her research focuses equity and violence in Latin American culture. She chairs the Innovation in Diversity & Inclusion Grants Council at WCU. Her film Twin Tongues/Lenguas gemelas is about multilingualism and identity in the Latinx community of Philadelphia. Her book Invisible Violence: Narratives of Exclusion in Latin America engages in an interdisciplinary dialogue about the cultural representation of violence. Dr. Pagán directs WCU's Global Hispanic Film Festival during Hispanic Heritage Month. Her course ESP 309/SPA 322 Latin America on Film counts for the LALS Minor.
Yury Polsky Political Science Ruby Jones Hall, Room G1C 610-436-3300 YPolsky@wcupa.edu	Dr. Polsky, a Professor of Political Science, completed his Ph.D. at the University of Michigan. A native of the USSR, Dr. Polsky has taught subjects dealing with the government and politics of the Soviet Union as well as international relations. He has chaired panels at international conferences, delivered scholarly papers throughout the United States, and written extensively on various subjects including life in Eastern Europe after WWII and politics in the Middle East. His most recent book is, Russia during the Period of Radical Change, 1992-2002.
Yanira Rodriguez English Main Hall 101 610-436-1673 YRodriguez@wcupa.edu
Megan Saltzman Languages and Cultures Mitchell Hall, Room 226 610-436-0078 MSaltzman@wcupa.edu	Prof. Saltzman earned her PhD from the University of Michigan in 2008. At WCU she generally teaches Spanish language and Peninsular culture courses from a transatlantic and interdisciplinary focus. Her research centers on how urban space creates ideas and practices regarding social identity, history, and political potential. She is working on a book about contemporary Barcelona titled Public Everyday Space.
Ana Sánchez Languages and Cultures Mitchell Hall, Room 122 610-436-0185 ASanchez@wcupa.edu
Israel Sanz-Sánchez Languages and Cultures Mitchell Hall, Room 126 610-436-3584 ISanz-Sanchez@wcupa.edu Website	Professor Sanz-Sánchez joined WCU in 2009. His area of concentration is the history of Spanish in the United States, the development of dialectal diversity in Latin America, and historical sociolinguistics. His current research focuses on the Spanish of New Mexico and northern Mexico, phonological and morphological change in Latin American Spanish during the colonial period, and the linguistic and historical approaches to the Hispanic archival heritage of the US Southwest. At West Chester, Professor Sanz-Sánchez has taught and developed courses in Spanish as a second language, Spanish phonetics, the history of the Spanish language, Spanish in the United States, and linguistic discrimination.
Linda Stevenson Political Science Ruby Jones Hall, Room 106 610-436-3162 LStevenson@wcupa.edu	Dr. Linda Stevenson joined the International Relations team of the Political Science department West Chester University in 2002. Her primary areas of teaching and research specialization are in comparative politics and international relations, with a focus in the region of Latin America, on topics related to democracy, equality, development and gender politics. Much of her work has focused on Mexican politics, and more recently in gender equity policies in Chile. In light of the growing Latino and immigrant population in the U.S., her work has shifted to teaching, research, and service about and with Latinos and immigrants in Pennsylvania, and the United States in general. Her Latino Politics course and the related conferences she has organized at WCU focus social and policy issues of the Mexican migrant population in southern Chester County and Puerto Ricans in Philadelphia. She was the Director of WCU's Latin American and Latino/a Studies program until 2014.
Heather Wholey Anthropology Main Hall, Room 113 610-436-2169 HWholey@wcupa.edu	Dr. Heather Wholey is an archaeologist with a specialization in the prehistory of the Eastern Woodlands, and teaches a course on the Archaeology of Central America. Prior to coming to WCU, she was a research associate for El Proyecto Arqueológico del Area Kaqchiquel and has worked with material heritage from the archaeological sites of Santa Rosa, Chitak Tzak and Tapexco, in the Valley of Antigua, Guatemala. Her course addresses topics such as environmental carrying capacity and overpopulation, geopolitics and central place, social stratification, and issues related to the destruction preservation and of archaeological sites and cultural heritage. Her interests are in modeling the population ecology of Archaic Period (ca. 10,000-3,000 years ago) hunter-gatherers; environmental archaeology and the application of earth sciences to archaeological problems, and; the integration of geography, place and landscape into archaeological interpretation. She enjoys working with students in the classroom, field and lab and regularly provide opportunity for guided student research. Students can gain sound methodological training through her summer archaeological field school and through her archaeological lab methods class. Experiences gained in these classes expose students to real world archaeological problems and research, while hopefully cultivating a sense of stewardship and a profound respect for our collective cultural heritage.