By Karin Dienst, Office of Communications
Princeton University junior Nathan Poland has been awarded a 2019 Truman Scholarship, which provides up to $30,000 toward graduate school and the opportunity to participate in professional development programs to prepare for careers in public service.
Alumni from the Class of 2018 share stories of friendship, best memories, and opportunities they pursued as Spanish and Portuguese (SPO) concentrators.
Twelve undergraduates enrolled in SPA 204 recently travelled to Ecuador over spring break on a medical mission in partnership with Conestoga Eye. This trip provided them with the opportunity to be exposed to global health policies and health care through hands-on work in Riobamba. Conestoga Eye has worked in clinics in Riobamba since 2012 implementing the work of FIBUSPAM/ PACH (Fundación Internacional Buen Samaritano Paul Martel/Partners for Andean Community Health).
By Jamie Saxon, Office of Communications
Senior Jordan Salama’s earliest connection to Colombia came through the piano in his living room in Pelham, New York — 2,500 miles away from the country that would fire his imagination during his time at Princeton.
When Salama was 6 years old, his piano teacher, Sandra Muñoz, a native of Colombia, would play “these rambling, loud, energetic salsas and arabesque music during the breaks between scales and whatever piece I was painstakingly attempting to play. And our piano would come to life,” Salama said.
By Monserrat Bores
On March 7, several undergraduate and graduate students gathered at the Center for Jewish Life (CJL) to practice Spanish during the first Spanish Table at this location.
This event, hosted by members of J-Lats, is part of the Spanish Tables coordinated by the Department of Spanish and Portuguese. J-Lats is a student organization that, according to Abraham Waserstein and Diego Ayala-McCormick, has the purpose of exploring the intersectionality of Judaism and Latinidad in the US.
Each year, ReachOut awards one fellowship for a domestic project and one for an international project. The latter can be performed anywhere in the world, including the United States. The international fellowship is funded through a donation by a Class of 1956 alumnus. Two ReachOut fellows are currently in the field, working in Trenton, New Jersey, and Mexico City.
Salama will use his fellowship to produce a bilingual online video series for children and parents across the Americas, in association with Sesame Workshop.
Eighty-nine-year-old Simón Villanueva lay a thread of shiny silver wire across the width of his decaying wooden workbench. He cut the strand into six pieces of equal length, and used pincers to twirl them into tiny, tightly-wound bulbs no larger than small beads before carefully wedging each of them into the frame of a six-petal flower.
A leading voice in Latin American studies, Rossana Reguillo has given us a new vocabulary for understanding the ultra-contemporary forms of violence that shape not only her native Mexico, but which have come to condition global politics and visual culture in the twenty-first century.
By Mariana Bono
On Monday, February 25th, SPA207 students visited the Rare Books and Special Collections, where Fernando Acosta-Rodríguez, librarian for Latin American Studies, Latino Studies, and Iberian Peninsular Studies, guided us through an exploration of the Augusto Monterroso Papers and other archival sources in connection with our class readings.
SPO Concentrator Peter Schmidt '20 was recently named a 2019 Arthur Liman Fellow in Public Interest Law selected by The Princeton University Program in Law and Public Affairs (LAPA). In total, LAPA named five undergraduates as fellows following a competitive application based upon their demonstrated commitment to public service through past and current activities.
