News

Derek Allen, PhD Candidate in Hispanic Languages & Literatures with emphasys in Luso-Brazilian Studies, received The Center for African Studies' Andrew and Mary Thompson Rocca Fellowship.

The endowment supports student scholars at the advanced graduate level concentrating in African Studies. Derek’s dissertation researches literature and film from Mozambique, Angola, Portugal, and Brazil. His project focuses on novels and films of war and independence struggles and the many aesthetic and political collaborations that came to exist between writers and filmmakers.

Alejandro Múnera, PhD Candidate in Hispanic Languages & Literatures, was awarded the 2025 Philip Brett LGBT Studies Fellowship! 

The Philip Brett LGBT Fund is an endowment established in 2009 by members and friends of the UC Berkeley campus community to support graduate students working in LGBT Studies. It provides a monetary award to a UC Berkeley graduate student, regardless of sexual orientation or gender identity, conducting research related to lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and/or queer studies in any field or discipline.

On Thursday, April 3, 2025, the Iberian Studies Working Group at UC Berkeley screenedOlas de recuerdo (Memories of Salt), a 30-minute documentary directed by Naomi García Pasmanick in B-4 Dwinelle (Berkeley Language Center).

During the first week of January 2025, I was invited to research at the Rafael Soriano Foundation in Miami, Florida. The daughter of Rafael Soriano, and director of the Rafael Soriano Foundation, Hortensia Soriano welcomed me to the foundation and organized my stay next-door at the original Soriano household and studio in Miami.

UC Berkeley Librarian and Curator Liladhar Pendse, in collaboration with Spanish & Portuguese Graduate Students and Faculty, put together a new exhibit: "From Cartonera to Cordel”, displaying a collection of handmade chapbooks from Argentina, Brazil, and Cuba. This is a must-see exhibit, for its vibrance and variety in subject matter, format, and materials. The exhibit will be open to the public at Doe Library’s Bernice Layne Brown Gallery through August. 

Yareli Lopez, a UC Berkeley student and staff writer for The Daily Californian, published a piece in which she discusses "losing" and "reconnecting with" the Spanish language spoken in her household as she embarked on her academic journey at UC Berkeley. Lopez highlights the significance of taking Spanish language classes as a heritage speaker, the exposure to a community of Spanish speakers, and the space created in the classroom for self-knowledge and affirmation as a bilingual student. Read the full piece here: