Hispanic Studies at William & Mary

Undergraduate Research Opportunities in Hispanic Studies

The Hispanic Studies curriculum is designed to help students formulate compelling research questions and engage in independent academic work at an advanced level. Students are urged to pursue issues of particular interest beyond the classroom environment by designing research projects that develop intellectually sophisticated, in-depth analyses within our field of scholarly inquiry. We encourage students beginning in their freshman year to become familiar with local and national funding resources available through scholarships.

Our program offers numerous opportunities for students to conduct independent research. W&M faculty-led summer study abroad programs in Cadiz, Spain and Morelia, Mexico each include a research project component. All participants design and complete a project while on-site under the guidance of the accompanying faculty member. (Monroe Scholar students may choose to use their Monroe Project funds for these Hispanic Studies summer study abroad research projects).

All Hispanic Studies majors complete a senior seminar project as part of the Fall semester Senior Research Seminar (HS 493). Often this project grows out of ideas first explored doing work to complete the required practicum in Hispanic Studies; the Senior Project may also have its genesis in an experience of field work, an internship, a service-learning activity, or a study abroad program. Topics for Fall 2003 included:
--Chicano murals in Chicago neighborhoods
--figures of revolution in the popular Cuban press of 1959
--the cinematic mythification of Eva Peron
--prostitution and power in Celestina
--the short stories of Subcomandante Marcos in Chiapas
--children's testimony on the Spanish Civil War
--Remedios Varo and a new feminist surrealism in painting
--images of Latin American poverty used by U.S.-based charities
--the Andean market as social theater: forms of female power and performance
--bilingual textbooks in Bolivia
--representations of Hispanic and African-American relationships in fiction and cinema
--the murdered women of Ciudad Juarez as film documentary
--tourism literature in the US about Cuba
--selling eco-tourism in Costa Rica
--architecture as cultural memory in Andalucia
--the Conquest myths in Spain and Latin America
--music, politics, and the Cuban singer Silvio Rodriguez
--the discourse of power in Pinochet's Chile
--turn-of-the-20th-century Anglo travel literature and the creation of "exotic Spain"

Rising seniors who are eligible may apply for Modern Languages & Literatures' Honors and write an Honors Thesis in Hispanic Studies during both semesters of the senior year, earning six credits as HS 495-496, and Honors, High Honors, or Highest Honors on their diploma. Eligible students should familiarize themselves with the Honors calendar and guidelines, which are available through the Charles Center's website. Hispanic Studies majors who are currently writing a 2003-2004 Honors Thesis are: Kate Juergens, Liz Shooltz, and Jamie Snyder.

Our faculty strongly believe in the value of faculty-student collaboration in research. Recent international endeavors of interest include the work done by our majors Sarah South ('03) and John Cipperly ('03), under the supervision of Professor Silvia Tandeciarz. Funded by a 2002 Reves Center grant, the Borgenicht Foundation for Identity & Transformation Grant, these students and the faculty member traveled for two weeks to Chile and Argentina, conducting research on the sites of commemoration and memory of the 'dirty wars' of the 1980s. Subsequently, South and Cipperly presented the results of their research at a W&M forum sponsored by the Department of Modern Languages & Literatures.

Practicum

I. Definition and Philosophy

The practicum in Hispanic Studies was established to ensure that students majoring in Hispanic Studies would have, before graduating, a mentored field research experience in Hispanic culture. The practicum is defined as an experience beyond the William and Mary classroom clearly linked to the Hispanic Studies curriculum; while it may be tied to a service learning opportunity or study abroad, it is always a mentored and scholarly endeavor.

The practicum is consistent with the College's mission "to provide a challenging undergraduate program with a liberal arts and sciences curriculum that encourages creativity, independent thought, and intellectual depth, breadth, and curiosity; to … prepare students for intellectual, professional, and public leadership; to instill in its students an appreciation for the human condition, a concern for the public well-being, and a life-long commitment to learning; and to use the scholarship and skills of its faculty and students to further human knowledge and understanding, and to address specific problems confronting the Commonwealth of Virginia, the nation, and the world."

The objectives of the practicum are to help students:

a. Become aware of issues impacting the Hispanic communities with which they come into contact.
b. Develop stronger connections with Hispanic communities, both locally and abroad.
c. Apply their in-class learning to real-world situations.
d. Develop frameworks for engaging real-world issues affecting Hispanic cultures.
e. Perfect their fluency in Spanish language and culture by applying their knowledge through relevant first-hand experiences with Hispanic culture.
f. Identify a meaningful set of experiences from which to draw on for their research projects in the capstone seminar.

To date, students have fulfilled the practicum through service learning on the Eastern Shore of Virginia; courses that require a minimum of 20 contact hours with Hispanics in the community and a research project associated with that experience; and supervised research projects conducted abroad (Cadiz, Morelia, Chile, Argentina).

II. Putting the Practicum into Practice: Recent Cases in the Hispanic Studies Program

Faculty-mentored research projects conducted abroad:

1. Hispanic Studies faculty members have been successful in obtaining grant funding in order to support undergraduate research abroad, in conjunction with the professor's own scholarly investigation. Ann Marie Stock and Leigh Ann Wright ('99) traveled to Mexico City to conduct archival research on the topic of Mexican cinema. With the support of a Borgenicht research grant, Sarah South ('03) and John Cipperly ('03) accompanied Silvia Tandeciarz on a two-week trip to Chile and Argentina in 2001 to pursue the study of commemorative sites of memory erected for the victims of those nations' "dirty wars"; this year, Regina Root, Sara Gilmer ('05) and Sarah Smith ('05) will investigate issues related to educational systems in Argentina.


2. The Hispanic Studies summer abroad programs in Morelia, Mexico and Cadiz, Spain require that each student conduct a research project under the supervision of the Resident Director.

Service-learning projects at home and abroad:

3. Jonathan Arries developed W&M's four-week residential summer program on the Eastern Shore of Virginia in 1998. Students work as medical translators in several different clinics that serve the Hispanic migrant workers on the Eastern Shore. (Participating students who opt to enroll in the Eastern Shore Translation Practicum course also prepare a written project based on their work and the list of required readings). Professor Arries has included students (and will do so again this summer) as interpreters for a U.S. based medical mission in Honduras.


4. Professor Arries has also established a network of community contacts with local agencies in Williamsburg that serve a Spanish-speaking community, placing students as volunteers with these organizations.


5. Through their own initiatives, students have participated in ongoing W&M service programs in Latin America.

Course-related 'practicum' experiences:

6. In courses like Professor Arries' "Translation" and "Phonetics"; Buck's "Gender Issues" seminar, and Tandeciarz's "Life on the Hyphen," students may engage in experiential learning through contact with the local Hispanic community.

In all of the cases listed in the above sections, students disseminate their findings through a research paper, creative project or formal presentation.

 

Service-Learning on the Eastern Shore of Virginia

Hispanic Studies 483 is a three-credit summer course for advanced and intermediate-advanced students with very good fluency in Spanish. The basis for credit is completion of a research paper on the textual representation of farmworker culture; the four weeks of medical interpretation in residence is a required internship in which students meet the needs of farmworkers at health clinics on the Eastern Shore of Virginia. Credit is earned for research only; the primary goal of the service-learning internship is to meet the needs of the farmworkers and the clinics that serve them; a secondary goal is to enable students to deepen their understanding of their research topic. The course is listed in Summer Session II, but the actual dates differ from the regular Summer Session II schedule. There are two available sessions for 2004: June 27th through July 23rd or else July 25th through August 20th.

In addition to summer school tuition there are other expenses associated with HS 483: a lab fee; rent at the VIMS dormitory in Wachapreague, Virginia ($50 per week for four weeks; however this expense is offset by a $200 stipend from the clinics, a $10 per diem for twenty days); groceries; gas (students need to have access to a car because they rotate between four clinics that are quite dispersed; car-pooling is sometimes an option, but gas will be an expense); and tolls (if students opt to leave the peninsula on weekends, for example). The VIMS dorm has kitchen and laundry facilities; computers are available in a classroom across the street from the dorm. Interested students must complete an application form (available in the rotofile outside Washington Hall 210) submit it to Professor Arries by March 15. Applicants will be contacted by Professor Arries for an interview in Spanish. Some images and additional information are available at http://faculty.wm.edu/jfarri/ and also at http://www.vims.edu/esl/


Click here to fill the Practicum online application form