Department News
Professor Rajiv Rao Awarded Vilas Distinguished Achievement Professorship
Professor Rajiv Rao has been awarded an appointment as a Vilas Distinguished Achievement Professor. This coveted professorship recognizes “UW–Madison faculty members whose distinguished scholarship has advanced the confines of knowledge, and whose excellence also includes …
Congratulations to Jamie de Moya-Cotter – Fall 2024 Pedagogical Innovation Winner!
Please join the Department of Spanish & Portuguese in congratulating Jamie de Moya-Cotter, winner of the 2024 Pedagogical Innovation Contest! Contestants submitted a detailed proposal involving the incorporation of artificial intelligence into an existing lower-division …
Congratulations to Letícia Barbosa – UW-Madison Doctoral Nominee for the 2025 MAGS Excellence in Teaching Award
Please join the Department of Spanish & Portuguese in congratulating Letícia Barbosa on being selected as the University of Wisconsin-Madison doctoral nominee for the 2025 Midwestern Association of Graduate Schools (MAGS) Excellence in Teaching Award. …
Keira Hook Wins Spring 2025 Language Institute Generative AI and Language Education Instructional Innovation Award
Congratulations to Keria Hook, winner of a 2025 Language Institute Generative AI and Language Education Instructional Innovation Award! She will put this award toward using generative AI for an instructional activity in which Spanish 102 …
Congratulations to Professor Paola Hernández, incoming Editor of Latin American Theatre Review
The Department of Spanish & Portuguese would like to congratulate Professor Paola Hernández, who has been selected as the incoming Editor of Latin American Theatre Review (LATR), one of the most prestigious journals in the …
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La mesa de conversación
The Department of Spanish and Portugues organizes an informal Spanish language conversation table for all Spanish speakers, native and non-native, which will be held Tuesdays during the academic semester from 5 PM to 7PM in the Sett (second floor) of the Union South. Find us on the UW Events Calendar!
Spanish & Portuguese Newsletter
The Department of Spanish & Portuguese Statement on Diversity, Inclusion, and Anti-Racism
The Department of Spanish & Portuguese is invested in being a truly diverse and inclusive community in which individuals of any gender, race, ethnicity, disability status, religious affiliation, sexual orientation, cultural upbringing, language variety, and socioeconomic standing can flourish equally. We believe that diversity and inclusion are fundamental characteristics of a rich academic community. We aim at fostering the exploration and expression of differing ideas, beliefs, and perspectives, especially those of the most vulnerable members of society. In fulfilling our mission to advance diversity, we seek to recruit, hire, retain, reward, and promote people from different backgrounds to increase the number, visibility, and well-being of underrepresented people.
As modern notions of race have their roots in Iberian history and processes of colonization, the Department of Spanish & Portuguese is particularly committed to studying and confronting all forms of racism and its attendant ideologies, such as ableism, misogyny, xenophobia, homophobia, transphobia, islamophobia, and anti-Semitism. We learn from and celebrate the political struggles of Black, Latinx, Indigenous, and other racialized peoples across Spanish- and Portuguese-speaking countries, including the United States. Through the study of languages and literatures, we find inspiration in diverse ways of imagining and creating a better world, while remaining vigilant to the aestheticization of violence and the many forms of duplicity with which inequity has been reproduced to this day. Racism and other forms of bigotry are still part of our institutions, methods, and ways of thinking. Our department is committed to continue the process of bringing our research and teaching in more just and enriching directions. As educators working on Ho-Chunk lands and experiencing the effects of imperial expansion, we strive to dismantle the legacies of settler colonialism and racial capitalism, to revise our curriculum, and to incorporate new pedagogies, epistemologies, and languages.