Laura Branciforte (Italy-Spain)

With a doctorate in humanities from the University of Carlos III in Madrid, her thesis is in contemporary history: The International Red Rescue and its Intervention in Spain (1923-1939) She has obtained fellowships from the University of Catania through the  “Comitato pari Opportunità” to carry out research on the role of women in the Italian university (1998-1999) as well as international stays with an exchange program first with the University of Salamanca and then with DeMontfort University of Leicester (United Kingdom). She has obtained a fellowship from the “Ministero dell’Educazione, dell’Università e della Ricerca for the completion of a masters in “European Cultural Planning” (1999-2002), whose final thesis, An Overview of Cultural Relations Between Italy and Mexico, has been carried out in Mexico D.F. during a yearlong stay where she worked for the Italian Embassy in the Italian Cultural Institute of Mexico D.F. in the area of cultural programming within the institute. Amongst her publications it is worth noting those in Gender Studies, History and Cultural Studies. She is currently Assistant Professor in the Humanities Department: History, Geography and Art. She belongs to the Kóre Group of Gender Studies.  

 

Rosalía Cornejo-Parriego (Canada-Spain)

Director of Graduate Studies and Associate Professor in the Department of Modern Languages of the University of Ottawa in Canada. She has a PhD in Spanish from Pennsylvania State University. Her areas of expertise are contemporary Spanish literature, literary theory, gender and cultural studies and contemporary Latin American literature. Amongst her published books it’s worth noting:  Amongst Women: The Politics of Friendship and Desire in Contemporary Spanish Narrative (2007); Colonial Memory and Immigration: Negritude in post-Franco Spain. Editing and Introduction by Rosalía Cornejo-Parriego. Prologue by Juan Goytisolo (2007). And The Postmondern Writing of Power (1993).

 

Gisela Kosak (Venezuela)

A Bachelor of Arts in Humanities in the Central University of Venezuela, Masters in Latin American Literature and a PhD in Humanities from the University of Simon Bolivar. A professor at the School of Humanities and of the Masters in Literary Studies in the University of Central Venezuela, she has been noted as an investigator and narrator with her books Rebellion in the Hispanic Caribbean: Cities and Stories Beyond the Boom and Postmodernity (1993); The Imaginary Catastrophe: Culture, Knowledge, Technology, Institutions (1998), essay with which se obtained the Municipal Award for Literary Research; and her collection, Sins of the Capitol and Other Stories (1997) for which she was awarded the Biannual of Narrative Aramas Alfonzo. Also, her novel, Beats of Caracas was finalist for the Miguel Otero Silva Prize.

 

Melanie Pérez Ortiz (Puerto Rico)

She has a PhD in Latin American and Puerto Rican Literatures from Stanford University in California. She has published a book about current Puerto Rican literature titled Discovered Words (Callejón, 2008). She is working on two projects, one of essays about Puerto Rican literature from 1980 until today, titled The Revolution of Appetites and another about the public sphere in 19th century Puerto Rico, titled Motives for Escape. From September to December 2009 she will be a Fellow at the Faculty Resource Network of NYU. She specializes in intellectual history with a focus on gender issues and cultural studies. In addition, she has a radio program titled In Its Ink, where, along with the Puerto Rican writer Mayra Santos Febres, she analyzes literature and its treatment of themes pertaining to everyday life.

 

María Teresa Vera-Rojas (Venezuela-Spain)

A PhD in Latin American Literatures and Cultures from the University of Houston in Texas, she has specialized in gender and women studies at the Institut Interuniversitari d’Estudis de Dones i Gènere at the University of  Barcelona. As an academic assistant she has coordinated the graduate program in literature at the University Simón Bolívar in Venezuela. In the University of Houston she worked as an assistant professor in Spanish and as an assistant researcher in the project, “Recovering the U.S. Hispanic Literary Heritage”. Currently she is on a research fellowship at the Centre Dona i Literatura at the University of Barcelona.

 

Fernando Broncano Rodríguez (Spain)

Lecturer of Logic and the Philosophy of Science in the University of Carlos III in Madrid. A PhD in Philosophy (University of Salamanca). A professor of Logic and Philosophy of Science at the University of Salamanca until the academic year 1999-2000. His general field of work is the notion of rationality in its theoretical, epistemological and practical aspects. In the epistemological aspects he has worked on the problems of rationality in science, in its cognitive aspects and in the rationality of scientific communities. From here he has converged on more general problems of philosophy of the mind (limited rationality, collective rationality, rationality and emotions). In terms of practical rationality he has focused on the philosophy of technique: skills, plans, capability of collective design, etc. Currently, he is working on the importance of the meta-representational capacities in various fields of culture and science.

 

Antonio Gómez Ramos (Spain)

Director of Graduate Studies in Humanities from the University of Carlos III in Madrid, and a PhD in Philosphy from the University Autonoma of Madrid, he has worked on contemporary hermeneutic philosophy and the theory of translation. Between the Lines, Madrid ,Visor, 2000. He has worked on the relationship between hermeneutics and deconstruction, editing the volume Dialogue and Reconstruction, Madrid, UAM, 1998. He has translated and edited Hans-Georg Gadamer’s Aesthetics and Hermeneutics, Madrid, Istmo, 2000; Fredric Jameson’s The Seeds of Time, Madrid, Trotta, 2001; and Koselleck’s history/History, Madrid, Trotta, 2004, amongst others. Recently, he has been working on the philosophy of history, Reclamation of the Centurion, Madrid, Akal, 2003. In addition to this, and with baggage of contemporary philosophy and conceptual history, he is working on a project of a philosophy of the memory as a political elaboration of the historical experience in the public space.

 

Eugenio Suárez-Galbán Guerra(New York-Spain)

A PhD in Romanic Languages and Literatures from New York University (1967) and in Literature from the University of Leiden (2005). He has been a professor in various universities, in addition to speaking at conferences and seminars in European and American Universities. As a critic, he has published a book about Torres Villarroel, a critical anthology of the Golden Century, two collective books on literary criticism, eighty articles of literary criticism and some 50 annotations, some of them in English in the New York Times Book Review. In addition he has published Ballad of the Beautiful War, a novel that was given the Sésamo Prize in 1982; the short story book, Like a Sad Wind (1986); The Colts of Barbaric Atilas (2002) which includes two short novels and a series of stories that are intertwined, and the novel When We had a Dream in Each Braid (2007). He has received the Medal from the Puerto Rican Institute of Culture. Currently, he is preparing a book about the presence of Spain in North American literature for the Rodopi Editorial.