Faculty Emeriti

I graduated from the University of Puerto Rico in May 1973. After my Bachelor of Arts Degree, I went to New York University in Madrid where I completed a Master of Arts Degree in Spanish Philology. In 1975, I came to the University of Wisconsin-Madison to complete my PH.D. in Latin American Theater. My teaching and scholarship focus on Twentieth and Twenty-first century Latin American Drama with emphasis on Caribbean drama.

I have been teaching graduate and undergraduate courses at Marquette since 1982. It has been a wonderful experience. Regularly I teach Literature for the Bilingual Student, Grammar for the Bilingual Student, Introduction to Hispanic Literature and Composition and Conversation in Spanish. Occasionally I teach Modern Spanish Drama and Spanish-American Literature 2. At the graduate level, I teach a seminar in Spanish–American Drama: Twentieth and Twentieth-first Century.

In 1990, my book La Obra Teatral de Virgilio Piñera y el Teatro del Absurdo en Hispanoamérica was published by Editorial Pliegos; Madrid, Spain. I have also written a series of articles about Caribbean drama and short story like: “Proceso transformacional del personaje del Amo en Concierto Barroco,” Revista Iberoamericana; No. 154; Enero-Marzo pp.161-170 and "Hacia una teorización del absurdo en el teatro de Myrna Casas," Revista Iberoamericana; No. 162-163; pp. 169-176.

Born in Colombia, South America, I attended an all boy boarding school until I graduated. I was then given a scholarship to attend the Universidad Pedagógica and Tecnológica in Colombia where I studied linguistics, languages (Greek, Latin, French, English, etc), literature and humanities in general. After graduation, I received a scholarship from the Fondo Universitario to attend the Andrés Bello Seminar of the prestigious Instituto Caro y Cuervo in Bogotá where I received my first Master’s degree in linguistics and teaching. After a very brief teaching experience at the University level (Universidad de los Andes and Universidad Javeriana), I was given a Fulbright Travel Scholarship to attend the University of Rochester in New York. I transferred to the University of Illinois in Champaign-Urbana where I finished my second Master’s degree. I continued on for the Ph.D. with a teaching assistantship while working under the direction of the well-known critic, Dr. Luis Leal, my thesis advisor. I started my teaching career in Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island first as an instructor and then as an assistant professor. I was offered a full time position at Marquette University where I have been ever since, except for nine non-consecutive years when I served as resident director of the Marquette in Madrid program.

As for scholarly activities outside of Marquette, I have always been involved with Sigma Delta Pi, the National Collegiate Hispanic Honor Society as advisor to our chapter, later as a regional vice president and then as National President since 1999 to the present day. I am the first Hispanic president of this organization that started in 1919 at the University of Berkley in California. I am proud of our chapter here at Marquette because it has been consistently ranked as a chapter of honor and merit nationally mainly due to our service to the community. I have also been recently asked to serve in three permanent committees of ANLE, the North American Academy of the Spanish Language based in New York City as a correspondent and contributor. I read papers at national and international conferences in my field at least twice a year and I enjoy meeting other colleagues and learning about recent developments in the field of Spanish.

I deeply enjoy teaching, advising as well as doing research. My favorite time period of literature is the 20th century both in Spain and Latin America in all genres, particularly the novel, the short story and poetry. I have always enjoyed interdisciplinary fields and recently I had the opportunity to teach a Senior Experience seminar on the representation of the dictator in Hispanic literature as part of the general subject of chaos and complexity. Nothing could be more chaotic than a dictatorship! I have also studied other subgenres such as the detective story, the nouvelle, literature of the fantastic, including magical realism, in authors such as García Márquez whose works I have studied extensively throughout my career. Recently, I was invited to teach a graduate seminar in the famous Summer School of Middlebury College in Vermont.

In addition and because of my interest in interdisciplinary matters of all sorts, I became involved with developing the Spanish for the Professions Major as it applied to the business and economic world. Therefore, I have been also teaching courses in international business Spanish.

I was born in Cuba and grew up in Denver, Colorado, learning English at school at a very young age, and further developing my Spanish skills at home with my extended family. I attended Colorado State University in Fort Collins for my B.A. degree. The desire to study in Spain resulted in my discovery of Wisconsin and Marquette University. As a sophomore at CSU, I attended Marquette’s Study Center at the Universidad Complutense de Madrid. My year-long experience in Spain inspired me to continue my studies in Spanish and Spanish–American literature. After completing my B.A. in Spanish and teaching certification at the secondary level, I decided to continue on to graduate school at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, where I served as a teaching assistant in Spanish, completing the M.A. in 1978, and the Ph.D. in 1987.

During my graduate studies, I became involved in study abroad and directed summer and academic programs to both Spain and Mexico through the Experiment in International Living and the School for International Training. While working on my dissertation, I received a lecturer position at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. The stars aligned and just as I was applying for positions, and hoping to find a more tropical climate, I was offered a position at Marquette, where I have taught a variety of Spanish language, culture and literature courses since 1985.

I am a professor of Spanish and Spanish American literature and culture. I did my undergraduate studies at Scarritt College, Peabody College and Vanderbilt University. My graduate studies were done at Michigan State University where I received my Ph.D.

I published a bilingual book, Chance: From Turkey with Love/Chance: de Turquía con amor (2021) with Mission Point Press. 

I have contributed a number of essential works to the field of Black literature research, including: An Essential Anthology of Afroamerican Poetry, Madrid: Ediciones Alcalá, 1976; Critical Approaches to Afro-Cuban Literature: Interpretive Essays, Miami: Ediciones Universal, 1994; Black Presence: Cuban Theater of the Diaspora, Madrid: Betania, 1999; Feminine Voices in Contemporary Afro-Cuban Poetry, Philadelphia: La Gota de Agua, 2006. This last book examines the artistic expression of six female Afro-Cuban poets who built their artistic expression on the rich and multifaceted racial and cultural base that characterizes the island of Cuba, an integral part of that Caribbean scenery that the author and critic Antonio Benítez Rojo would define in terms of rhythm and polyrhythm, the mixing of races, cultures and people. I have assembled in this book the work of female authors currently residing in Cuba together with others in exile in order to underline the unifying force of negritude as carried out by these women authors, within the rich mosaic that is Cuban culture.

 

 Robert Jamison completed his Ph.D. in German at the University of Washington and taught 19th and early 20th-century German literature and culture. 

 Born in Champagne, France, I studied philosophy at the University of Nancy [Master Degree in Philosophy] and taught Philosophy in several lycées in France from 1962-1976, and French and Philosophy in Morocco from 1968 to 1970. From 1976 to 1982, after having gotten a master degree in career and psychology advising, I worked as a "conseiller d'orientation scolaire et professionnel" [career advisor], in various locations in France, and then became director of the CIO of Savigny-sur-Orge, south of Paris. My academic career took me to the United States where I obtained a Ph.D. in French literature in 1986 from Indiana University, specializing in Nineteenth and Seventeen century French, Orientalist and spiritual Literature. I completed my Ph.D. at Indiana University. 

I am the author of a number of articles dealing with the relationship between Art, Orientalism, Philosophy, Spirituality and Literature. I have published or edited 3 books:

• Étude sur l'orientalisme d'Eugène Fromentin dans ses "Récits Algériens" (Peter Lang Pub Inc, 1989)
• L'Âme indienne (The Indian Soul), Charles Eastman, translation in collaboration with Patrick Laude, Paris: Dervy-Livres (Magnard), 1992, 120 p.
• For God's Greater Glory: Gems of Jesuit Spirituality (World Wisdom, 2006)
• And I worked, the last ten years, on the revision of French to English translations of the writings of a Swiss philosopher, artist and poet of the XXth century (about 20 books and many letters).

 

John Pustejovsky is a graduate of Marquette University, and earned a PhD in German literature at The University of Texas in Austin. A faculty member at Marquette since 1982, he has distinguished himself as a teacher. He was awarded the University's John P Raynor Award for Teaching Excellence in 2004; in 2007 his course on the Modern German Short Story was named by the Educational Testing Service to its list of 25 best world language courses in the U.S. He was co-founder of the College's first-year seminar Introduction to Inquiry, and has given workshops on it at Boston College, Georgetown, and Northwestern University. In 2012 he was named Wisconsin's Distinguished German Educator, and the following year was awarded the Jesuit Honor Society's Lifetime Service Recognition. 

 Teaching French language and literature and promoting French culture has been my life-long vocation. I enjoyed teaching and advising students at all levels, from elementary French to advanced grammar and literature. Over the years, I  developed innovative courses to introduce students to practical and cultural topics such as Business French and African-Francophone Cinema. I introduced service learning to my French courses in the early 1980s.

In particular, I focused on sharing my enthusiasm for French medieval language and literature with students and with the community as Coordinator of Marquette’s Medieval Studies interdisciplinary minor. In addition to developing numerous courses on topics such as medieval women authors, medieval marriage, the medieval city, and Joan of Arc, I organized symposia on “The Cathedral and the Medieval Community,” “Arthur and the Arts,” and “Jewish-Christian Encounter in the Middle Ages: The Psalms.” For more than twenty years, I was an active member of the Fifteenth-Century Society, organizing sessions which the society and its journal, Fifteenth-Century Studies, sponsor at the annual International Congress on Medieval Studies at Western Michigan University.

I have published a translation of Book IV of that work (The Trial of Womankind; McFarland, 2005); my translation of Book V, dealing with the Immaculate Conception of Mary, is currently under consideration at a major academic press.

I have also just completed a translation of Le Franc’s shorter work, La Complainte du livre du Champion des Dames a maistre Martin Le Franc son acteur. I am now preparing a critical commentary to accompany this first English version of the text.

 

 My interest in the structure of the Spanish language was directed, during Graduate School, to the history of linguistic analysis and ideas, particularly the contribution of the great Venezuelan humanist Andrés Bello (1781-1865), whose 1847 Spanish Grammar is still the most respected, original, and provocative ever written. Bello’s participation in the cultural panorama of Chile, especially during the 1840’s, inspired me to look at the work of Domingo Faustino Sarmiento (Argentina: 1811-1888), at the time an exile in Santiago. From that point I became especially interested in the history of pedagogy, linguistic and other, in Chile, Argentina, and Uruguay.

I greatly enjoy teaching classes in Spanish language and linguistics. The challenge is encouraging adults to make “strange noises” in public; but as soon as those noises convey meaning they cease being “strange” and, as Walter Kaulfers wrote many years ago, turn a monolingual “wall” into a bilingual “gate.”

My work in the history of language teaching led to my consideration of linguistic unity and fragmentation in Latin America, and the role of the Academies and linguistic purism, especially in Argentina. I have also worked with the linguistic and language teaching ideas of the Catalán Mariano Cubí y Soler (1801-1875), the Chilean Eduardo de la Barra (1839-1900), and the German linguists Federico Hanssen (1857-1919) and Rodolfo Lenz (1863-1938), who were brought to Chile in the late 19th century to staff the newly-founded Instituto Pedagógico.

More recently, I have investigated the history of language teaching in the United States, focusing on the (inappropriately maligned, in my view) Army Specialized Training Program of the 1940’s. I am now working on the linguistic ideas of William E. Bull (1909-1972) and their contribution to the language descriptions found in many textbooks. And, as a devotee of the many “polemics” which surround language (and its teaching) in Latin America and elsewhere, I have been looking at the controversy surrounding the early years of the Instituto de Filología in Buenos Aires (founded in 1923). The importation of Spanish linguists for that institution provoked considerable hostility among the local scholars, much as Hanssen and Lenz had done in Chile a generation earlier.

When not doing the above, I enjoy cooking (although not so much as eating), team sports (observational adequacy), and the American art form (not so) popularly known as “jazz.”