The Department of Spanish and Portuguese is pleased to welcome back two of its most distinguished Ph.D.s for a Colloquium and Panel Discussion. Professors Susan Larson, Associate Professor of Spanish at the University of Kentucky and Ben Fraser, recently promoted to Associate Professor at the College of Charleston will return to take part in a symposium entitled "Hispanists and Interdisciplinary Research."

The colloquium is Wednesday, April 3 from 3:30-5:15 p.m. in the Santa Cruz Room of the Student Union. Professor Larson will speak on “The Spatial Politics of Spanish Cultural Studies” and Professor Fraser’s will talk on "Urban Cultural Studies: A Visit to Biutiful Barcelona."

A panel discussion on doing interdisciplinary research will follow the talks. The panelists will include JP Jones, Dean College of Social and Behavioral Sciences, and Malcolm Alan Compitello, Head Department of Spanish and Portuguese. The colloquium is free and open to the public.

In addition to their participation in the colloquium the two visiting scholars will engage students in several classes about the how they undertake their research on the borders of the Humanities and Social Sciences and about preparing for the transition from being a graduate student to a faculty member.

Susan Larson is Director of Graduate Studies in the Department of Hispanic Studies at the University of Kentucky. She has published Constructing and Resisting Modernity: Madrid 1900-1936 (2011),Visualizing Spanish Modernity (2006), two critical editions of the novels of Carmen de Burgos and a number of articles on Spanish twentieth-century architecture, urbanism, film and the historical avant-garde. She was Managing Editor of the Arizona Journal of Hispanic Cultural Studiesfor more than ten years and is currently the Associate Editor of theRomance Quarterly.

Benjamin Fraser teaches at the College of Charleston, the Managing Editor of the Arizona Journal of Hispanic Cultural Studies and the Founder and Executive Editor of the Journal of Urban Cultural Studies(Intellect Ltd.). He has authored the monographs Encounters with Bergson(ism) in Spain (U North Carolina P, NCSRLL #295, 2010), Henri Lefebvre and the Spanish Urban Experience (Bucknell UP, 2011),Understanding Juan Benet (U South Carolina P, 2013) and Disability Studies and Spanish Culture (Liverpool UP, 2013); he has served as editor, co-editor and translator of the volumes Trains, Culture and Mobility (Lexington Books, 2012), Trains, Literature and Culture(Lexington Books, 2012), La urbanización decimonónica de Madrid(Stockcero, 2011) and Deaf History and Culture in Spain (Gallaudet UP, 2009); and he has also published over four dozen articles relating to Hispanic Literature and Cultural Studies more broadly considered.