News

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:

April 2, 2025

Noon - 1 p.m. at The Townsend Center for the Humanities
Geballe Room, 220 Stephens Hall, Berkeley, CA 94720

Translating Oral Traditions

March 17, 5 - 7 p.m.

Spanish & Portuguese Library - 5125 Dwinelle Hall

This event is a public conversation on the topic of oral traditions and translation between translator Katrina Dodson (Visiting Professor, Spanish and Portuguese) and anthropologist and fiction author Pedro Cesarino ( Spanish and Portuguese’s 2025 Brazilian Writer-in-Resident). It is moderated by Natalia Brizuela and organized by Nathaniel Wolfson.

Emerita Prof. Francine Masiello's debut novel The Tomb of the Divers (2024) will be presented at Libreria Pino (1501 Grant Avenue, San Francisco 94133) on Wednesday, February 19, from 6-8:30 pm.

The department of Spanish and Portuguese is thrilled to welcome anthropologist and fiction author Pedro Cesarino as part of its long-standing writer-in-residence program. Over the past two decades, the department has hosted acclaimed Brazilian writers and artists, among them, Milton Hatoum, Nuno Ramos, Cidinha da Silva, Ricardo Aleixo and Itamar Vieira Jr. Professor Cesarino will join our department from March 7 to 21, during which he'll give a public talk, visit classes, hold office hours, and work on his own writing.