Link to Bio and Publications

Caribbean Literature and Culture; U.S. Latino Literature and Culture

Link to Bio and Books

Nick Dee earned a PhD in Classical Philology from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in 2016. As an instructor at BGSU, he teaches several Classical Civilization courses, as well as the Classical languages of Greek and Latin. His research interests include ancient historiography, Latin poetry, and ancient slavery studies. He is currently writing several entries for the forthcoming Tacitus Encyclopedia (Wiley-Blackwell Press), the first comprehensive reference work in English to be published on the Roman historian. Additionally, one might encounter Nick attending concerts, becoming a better gluten-free cook, playing tennis, and incessantly brewing tea. 

Cynthia Ducar (PH.D. Second Language Acquisition and Teaching, University of Arizona) has been teaching Spanish at BGSU for over a decade. She teaches graduate and undergraduate courses in Applied Linguistics, Hispanic Sociolinguistics and Heritage Language Pedagogy. She has published articles and presented in national and international conferences on sociolinguistic concerns in the heritage language classroom, as well as issues related to the role of attitude and motivation in the Spanish heritage language context. Her works have been published in Foreign Language Annals, The Heritage Language Journal as well as in the Beaudrie & Fairclough’s edited volume titled Spanish as a Heritage Language in the US: State of the Science. She, along with Sara Beaudrie & Kim Potowski, co-authored Heritage Language Teaching: Research & Practice, published by McGraw Hill. When not engaged in scholarly activities, she enjoys spending time with her family and traveling.

Carles Ferrando Valero holds a B.A. in Humanities (Pompeu Fabra University), an M.A. in Cultural Studies (University of Barcelona), an M.A. in Hispanic Literatures (University of Illinois), and a Ph.D. in Spanish and Spanish-American Literatures (University of Colorado). His research focuses on modern Iberian literature and visual culture, and his scholarly interests include transnational modernism, intellectual history, new media and technology, and the dialectics between politics and cultural production. His articles have appeared in peer-reviewed journals such as Journal of Spanish Cultural Studies, Hispanic Review and Modernism/modernity. He is currently at work on a book manuscript on literature and large technological systems in modern Spain. Read some of his work at bgsu.academia.edu/CarlesFerrandoValero

Dr. Kristie Foell has taught at BGSU since 1995, serving as on-site director of the Academic Year in Salzburg, Director of International Studies, and founding director of the Global Village residential program. She has published on Elias Canetti (feminist and holocaust studies) and co-edited two volumes on post-unification German culture. Recent teaching and scholarship have focused on the encounter between Islam and the West, including Turkish-German cinema. She previously taught at Vassar and Gustavus Adolphus, received two Fulbright fellowships (Vienna and Berlin), and holds degrees from UC Berkeley (PhD) and Yale (BA). She also speaks French, Italian, and some Arabic.

Dr. Valeria Grinberg Pla is a literary, cultural and film critic from Buenos Aires, Argentina, who like many other Latinxs has moved to the United States. Since 2006 she is a Professor of Spanish at BGSU. She teaches classes that reflect her research interests on violence representation in Latin America, literature and film, on the appropriation and transformation of crime fiction and noir aesthetics in Latin America and the Caribbean, on literary and film strategies to think about war and dictatorship trauma in Central America, Argentina, Chile and Uruguay, and on the Panafrican, transnational literary movements of the Afro-Caribbean populations of Central America. She has also developed a service-learning class to learn not just about, but rather from and with the Latino/a/x community in the area.

Beatrice Guenther received her B.A. from the University of Toronto and her PhD in Comparative Literature from Princeton University. She taught French and German at the College of William and Mary (Virginia) from 1990-2005 and has been teaching courses in French, Canadian Studies, and International Studies since joining the faculty at BGSU in 2005. She has been directing the Program in International Studies since 2015. Her research interests are in 19^th-century narrative, and she is working on a book on women’s education as cultural capital from the French Revolution until the eve of the 3e République. Having grown up in Japan, Germany, and Canada, she continues to teach courses on the issue of global migration and its impact on human rights.

Curriculum Vitae

Christina Guenther received her BA & MA from the University of Toronto and her PhD in German Studies from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Her teaching and research focus on contemporary German and Austrian culture, trauma and memory studies, gender and the Holocaust, and migration studies. She regularly teaches courses in language, culture, film, literature, and translation, and often directs the German Drama Workshop. She is an affiliated member of the Peace Studies Program, International Studies Program, & Women’s Studies at BGSU.

Ivett Rita Guntersdorfer (Ph.D.) received her doctoral degree from the University of California in Los Angeles (UCLA). She holds an M.A. in Intercultural Communication, Transnational German Studies and Psychology from the Ludwig-Maximilans University, Munich Germany (LMU). Dr. Guntersdorfer taught a wide variety of courses in Intercultural and Trans-cultural communication, Transcultural German Studies, DIE, and Language Acquisition in the past 20 years at the Miami University in Oxford OH, the University of Munich, at UCLA, and at the University of Salzburg. She was awarded twice for her excellence of teaching and has more than forty publications. Before coming to BGSU, Dr. Guntersdorfer created several new educational programs, founded different certificates for students, and led the Institute for Intercultural Communication at the LMU-Munich in Germany. As the director for the Academic Year Abroad Program in Salzburg (AYA), her responsibilities are both administrative and educational focusing on students´ success abroad. In her position as the director of AYA, Dr. Guntersdorfer´s main objective is to strengthen the program by finding new pathways and partnerships, and by making study abroad more accessible for students. Her current research is on virtual exchange education, intercultural competence, and empathy, - her upcoming book is exploring the meaning of empathy in higher education.

“Study abroad is no doubt an experience of a lifetime, but its more than that, it is a magical transformation! It gives people a special inner power – to see with other people´s eyes. While leaving the comfort zone, meeting other people with a different mindset, people grow personally, professionally, and academically in ways they may not have ever imagined. There is no better leadership school and no better preparation for any kind of profession. – Aka study abroad is giving yourself a chance to become a creator, a mover and shaker of our society.” (Dr. Guntersdorfer)

Susana Juarez, resident director for the Bowling Green State University study abroad program in Spain

Susana Juarez (Guadalajara, Spain, 1968) received a bachelor’s degree in English Philology by the University of Alcala (Spain) in 1993. She received a MA degree in Spanish by Bowling Green State University in 1996; and she received her Doctorate in English Philology by the University of Alcala in 1997. She taught at the University of Alcala and at The Institute of North American Studies in Alcala prior to teaching for BGSU.  She joined the faculty at BGSU as the resident director for their Study Abroad Program in Spain in 2000. She continues in this post up to present. In addition to her administrative duties, she teaches four courses every semester. Her main objective is helping students stretch, both academically and personally, while studying abroad. When not engaged in scholar activities, she loves animals; specifically, she does volunteer work with abandoned dogs and cats in a local animal shelter.

Curriculum Vitae
Dr. Landgraf studied philosophy and literature at the Universities of Zurich, at U of Illinois, Chicago, and The Johns Hopkins University. His research and publications focus on aesthetics, literature, and philosophy in the age of Goethe, on Nietzsche, critical improvisation studies, and theories of posthumanism. 

Recent books include:  Improvisation as Art. Conceptual Challenges, Historical Perspectives (2011), the anthology Posthumanism in the Age of Humanism: Mind, Matter, and the Life Sciences After Kant, coedited with Gabriel Trop and Leif Wetherby (2018), and an anthology coedited with Elliott Schreiber with the title Play in the Age of Goethe: Theories, Narratives, and Practices of Play around 1800 (2020).
See also:  Improvisation, Posthumanism, and Agency in Art (Gerhard Richter Painting) and Improvisation in the Arts and everyday life.

Recent Courses: 
GERM 2150: German Culture and Civilization
GERM 2160: Contemporary Germany
HNRS 2020: Great Ideas -- Humanism and its Detractors
Phil & GERM 4800: Marx, Nietzsche, Freud
GERM 6800: Posthumanism after Kant
ACS 6920: Philosophies of Technology

Ryoko Okamura received her Ph.D. in History from Oklahoma State University. Her research interests include cultural history in modern Japan and its relations with East Asia, focusing on gender, immigration, and memory studies.  Currently, she is working on a co-authored manuscript examining the roles and impacts of ryōsai kenbo ideal among Japanese women through transnational and transcultural perspectives.  She teaches all levels of Japanese and offers courses in culture, literature, film, and history.  She is a member of Asian Studies Advisory Committee as well as Migration Research Cluster in Institute for the Study of Culture & Society at BGSU.

Second Language Acquisition; Interlanguage Pragmatics; Discourse Analysis; Foreign Language Teacher Education

Philip S. Peek is interested in the stories we tell ourselves, those we tell each other, and how we interpret those told to us. He believes in many truths and many fictions and is amazed by how the false and true interact with each other. He is fascinated by creativity, translation, and the process of creating a dialogue between different cultures and time periods.  He has published a textual commentary on book five of Herodotos’ Histories (U of O Press, 2018). The commentary teaches students how to read ancient Greek and to interpret stories. He also has published in METAMORPHOSES three translations, the Alexis poem by Meleagros of Gadara (2019 Fall), Anakreon’s Thracian Filly poem (Spring 2020), and Meleagros’ poem, To A Bee (Spring 2020). He enjoys researching, teaching, translating, and writing about all things ancient Greek. When not at work, he may be found outside golfing, hiking, meditating, and enjoying the sounds of the multi-verse.

Learn ancient Greek, interpret myth, history, movies, and narratives of all types, engage with the past and present in meaningful ways: https://www.theancientandmodernworld.com/.

Seneca, Latin Drama and Epic, Ancient Science, Mythology

James M. Pfundstein is a Lecturer in Classics. He’s been teaching full-time at BGSU since 1997. He received his Ph.D. in Classics (Latin and Greek) from the University of Minnesota in August 2000. His research interests are in Seneca’s dramatic poetry and ancient astronomy in poetry (especially but not exclusively Seneca’s). He teaches a mix of courses in Latin and classical civilization (with a little Greek tossed in for variety sometimes). He also writes fantasy under the “pseudoplume or nom de nym” of James Enge (e.g. Blood of Ambrose, nominated for the World Fantasy Award and the Prix Imaginales). You can reach him via his university email (jmpfund@bgsu.edu), on Facebook (james.enge), or on Twitter (@jamesenge).

Timothy Pogačar received a Ph.D. in Slavic Languages and Literatures from the University of Kansas and undergraduate degrees in Russian and Spanish from Georgetown University. He has translated widely from Russian and Slovene, completing eight Slovene-English book-length translations since 2013. His current research topics include sound symbolism in translation and the history of translation in the émigré press in the U.S. Pogačar has edited the scholarly journal Slovene Studies since 1986. He teaches all levels of Russian language, courses on Russian culture and post-communist Russia, and has most recently directed the BGSU Summer Russia program at Moscow State University in 2013, 2014, and 2017. His favorite novels are the Czech Osudy dobrého vojáka Švejka za světové války (The Adventures of the Good Soldier Švejk), Russian Мастер и Маргарита (The Master and Margarita), Slovene Visoška kronika (The Visoko Chronicle), and Spanish La cabeza de la hydra (The Hydra Head).

Publication List

Contemporary Latin American and Caribbean Literature, Film, and Cultural/Critical Theory, Trans-Atlantic Studies

Amy Robinson has been teaching at BGSU since 2003 after earning a Ph.D. from the University of Minnesota. Her research focuses on Mexican literature and culture from the nineteenth century to the present with a special focus on outlaws, revolutionaries, recalcitrant women, and other types of rebellious characters. She enjoys teaching novels, films and plays in upper-level courses, and she is always appreciative of her students’ enthusiasm for favorites like Juan Rulfo’s Pedro Páramo and any work about Mexico’s legendary social bandit known as Chucho el Roto. A participant in the NEH-funded Black Swamp Learning Community (2018-19) that brings together interdisciplinary approaches to reflect on local and global sustainability issues, her interests also include analyzing social struggle with regards to environmental (in)justice. 

Spanish Language and Culture, Study Abroad and Intercultural Learning

19th-century French Literature, French Cinema, Language Studies

Jennifer Wolter received her Ph.D. with a specialization in 19th-century French literature at The Ohio State University in 2003. She also earned a French M.A. from Middlebury College, a B.A. in French and English from Ohio Wesleyan University, and studied abroad in Paris for 3 semesters. She has published articles on Émile Zola, Guy de Maupassant, the Médan Group, and film adaptations of French novels. Dr. Wolter has been teaching at BGSU since 2012 and served as director of La Maison Française from 2012-2018. She enjoys promoting French in the local community and leads a weekly conversation group in Perrysburg.    

Dr. Min Yang received her M.A. in comparative literature from the University of Colorado Boulder and Ph.D. in comparative literature from the University of Alberta. Her research examines the special ways China has dealt with the advent of modernity in the 20^th and 21^st centuries. She studies in particular how Chinese identities, both national and individual, have been formed, impacted, transformed, and reformed in this time period which includes the crisis of partial colonization, the socialism of the Marxist-Leninist-Maoist experiment, and the current socialist-free marketization and globalization of China. Within this broad umbrella, she focusses on experiences of individual and collective trauma, environmental disasters, and the tensions between Chinese individuals and dominant ideologies in China as reflected in literature and film. Following current trends in these fields, Dr. Yang's research is interdisciplinary, approaching literature and film studies with psychological and sociological methodologies developed by contemporary trauma studies. She has numerous publications.

Francophone, Anglophone African, Caribbean, Women's, and Cultural Studies