People

Nieves Romero-Díaz's main area of research is gender and race in Early Modern Spain. She has authored and edited/co-edited 4 books and more than 30 articles, reviews, and book chapters. Making historical and critical connections between the past and the present, her courses include Black Spain, Spain and Islam, and Gender Violence in Spain. She has received numerous (inter)national grants and awards and has presented her research at conferences, invited lectures, and symposiums in England, France, Germany, Mexico, Portugal, Spain and the US.

Dimaris Barrios-Beltrán is a Visiting Language Instructor in Spanish. Her research focuses on First and Second Language Acquisition, Spanish Heritage speakers, Syntax-Semantics Interface, Communication Disorders, Specific Language Impairment, and Autism. She teaches Spanish language courses at a variety of levels.  Her dissertation is on The acquisition of argument structure and functional categories by monolingual Spanish children with Specific Language Impairment.

Esther Castro Cuenca is a Senior Lecturer and the language program director of the Department of Spanish, Latina/o, and Latin American Studies. Her research focuses on second language acquisition, cognitive linguistics, and interfaces between psycholinguistics and language learning/teaching. She teaches various levels of Spanish language as well as courses on linguistics, translation, and second language acquisition and pedagogy.

Flávia Cunha is a Language Instructor at the department of Spanish, Latina/o, and Latin American Studies. Her main research interests are second language acquisition, applied linguistics, and bilingualism, with a focus or heritage speakers of Portuguese and Spanish and on the relationship between cultural identity and heritage speakers’ level of proficiency in their minority language.

Elena García Frazier is a Language Instructor at Mount Holyoke College. Her current research interests include Sociocultural Theory of Mind, The role of Instruction in Spanish Second and Heritage Language Learning and Development, Second Language Teaching Methodology and Pedagogy, Spanish Modality, Heritage Speaker Identity Formation and Spanish Sociolinguistics (languages in contact).

Lowell Gudmundson focuses on coffee, Central America, and Afro-Latin America.  His students have earned graduate and professional degrees in the U.S., Latin America, and Europe.  They have turned their own research interests, as diverse as history, immigration, ethnomusicology, health care, and food studies, into career paths in politics, publishing, medicine, public health, urban planning or ecotourism.  Gudmundson maintains close ties and joint research projects with Costa Rica’s public universities where he began his career.

David Hernández is Assistant Professor of Latina/o Studies at Mount Holyoke College. His research focuses on immigration enforcement, in particular, the U.S. detention regime. He is completing a book manuscript on this institution, titled "Undue Process: Immigrant Detention and Lesser Citizenship," and he is also the co-editor of Critical Ethnic Studies: A Reader (Duke University Press 2016). His work has appeared journals such as Border-Lines, Harvard Journal of Hispanic Policy, Journal of Race and Policy, Latina/o Studies, and NACLA: Report on the Americas.

Antonio Illescas is Language Instructor in Spanish. His area of interest is Applied Linguistics, with an emphasis on Intercultural Acquisition, Study Abroad, Stereotypes and Linguistic Tourism. His research focuses on the acquisition of intercultural competence and on how culture is included in the syllabus and in L2 textbooks.

Dorothy E. Mosby is the author of Place, Language, and Identity in Afro-Costa Rican Literature (University of Missouri Press, 2003), which explores contemporary black writing from Costa Rica. Mosby has taught Afra-Hispanic Literature: Black Women's Writing from the Spanish-Speaking World (a January Term intensive, taught in English); Introduction to Latin American Literature I; and Colonial and Nineteenth-Century Latin American Literature.

Vanessa Rosa is an assistant professor of Latina/o Studies. Her research interests include the study of race and ethnicity, citizenship and national identities, and social stratification in cities. Rosa is currently completing a book manuscript titled "Between Gentrification and Revitalization: Rethinking Urban Diversity, Participation, and Surveillance".

Debra Morrissey is the Academic Department Coordinator for the Spanish, Latina/o and Latin American Studies Department and the Romance Languages and Cultures Program.  She is in charge of the daily operations of the departments, organizes department events, monitors department budgets, puts together course schedules, and prepares on-line catalog copy.