Faculty Research in Modern Languages and Literatures

Malgorzata Oleszkiewicz-Peralba

Ph.D., New York University. Latin American literary and cultural studies; Afro-Latin American studies; Mexican-American studies; gender studies; popular culture; religion and ritual. Dr. Oleszkiewicz-Peralba is an Associate Professor in the Department of Modern Languages and Literatures. She teaches Spanish language, literature and culture. Her book The Black Madonna: Identity, Resistance and Transformation in Mexico, Aztlán, Poland and Brazil is currently under review at the University of New Mexico Press. Other publications include Teatro popular peruano: del precolombino al siglo XX (Warsaw University and the Austrian Institute of Latin America, 1995).

Francisco A. Marcos-Marín, Professor

Ph.D., Complutense University of Madrid; Hispanic Linguistics, Romance philology, Old Spanish, description and typology; Comparative medieval Romance and Arabic Literature; Applied Linguistics, computers and textual analysis.

Prof. Marcos-Marín is a Corresponding Member of the Academia Norteamericana de la Lengua Española and the Academia Argentina de Letras, and a recipient of the Humboldt Research Award.

He teaches General Linguistics, Spanish Linguistics and History of Spanish. His recent publications include Gramática Española, co-authored with F. Javier Satorre Grau y María Luisa Viejo Sánchez, (Madrid: Síntesis, 1998, 2. ed. 1999), Guía de gramática de la lengua española, co-authored with Paloma España Ramírez (Madrid, Espasa, 2001), Los retos del español (2005 forthcoming). He is the director of the electronic publication ADMYTE: Archivo Digital de Manuscritos y Textos Españoles, ADMYTE-WEB (www.admyte.com), 2005.

MaryEllen Garcia, Associate Professor

Ph.D., Georgetown University; Spanish of the Southwest, Spanish linguistics, sociolinguistics, discourse analysis, Chicano English, Spanish grammar for Heritage Speakers.

Dr. Garcia teaches advanced courses in the Spanish language and linguistics and is the Graduate Advisor of Record for the MA Program in Spanish. Her numerous publications examine the linguistic repertoire of Mexican Americans, including their English, their Spanish, and their bilingual language use in everyday urban settings. Recent research on the argot of the Mexican American Pachuco reveals the influence of the caló of the Spanish gypsies on their speech. Her expertise in the area of Southwest Spanish has resulted in various media appearances and interviews, including Univisión, The San Antonio Express-News, and the New York Times.

Marita Nummikoski

Ph.D., University of Texas at Austin. Russian language, literature, and culture; foreign language acquisition, applied linguistics; methods of foreign language teaching; technology.

Dr. Nummikoski is the Chair of the Department of Modern Languages and Literatures. She teaches all levels of Russian language, literature and culture. Her recent publications include Troika: Introduction to Russian Language, Life and Culture (John Wiley and Sons, 1996) and News from Russia, co-authored with Andrei Bogomolov (Yale University Press, 2005).

Christopher J. Wickham, Associate Professor

Ph.D. University of Wisconsin – Madison. German language, literature, and culture. Contemporary German regional culture (especially Bavaria), German and Austrian cinema, and the poet scientist Adelbert von Chamisso. 

Dr. Wickham has published a monograph on the phonology of the Bavarian dialect of Diendorf (near Nabburg, Oberpfalz) and a study of German culture from 1958 to 1985, Constructing Heimat in Postwar Germany: Longing and Belonging. He has coedited a book on German cinema and its relationship to history and a collection of essays on German literature and culture since the Enlightenment. Among his twenty-two articles are studies of the films of Werner Herzog, Herbert Achternbusch, Axel Corti, Peter Turrini, and Edgar Reitz, analyses of the literature of Emerenz Meier, Chamisso, Fitzgerald Kusz, and Felix Hoerburger, an account of the portrayal of Native Americans by German painters, and theoretical discussions of the relationship of literature to dialect, of dialect to language instruction, and of the place of dialect poetry in the literature curriculum. He has authored encyclopedia articles on Chamisso and Munich as a literary city. Christopher Wickham's current work focuses on German singer-songwriters and the scientific and literary writings of Chamisso. He is on the editorial board of the German Studies journal Monatshefte für deutschsprachige Literatur und Kultur.

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