Graduate Students

Anahit Manoukian

Anahit Manoukian is a Ph.D. candidate in the Department of Spanish and Portuguese with a Designated Emphasis in Renaissance and Early Modern Studies. Her research and teaching bridge the early modern and modern periods, with a particular emphasis on the long eighteenth century, identity and belonging, nation-building, imperial and intellectual history, transatlantic and comparative studies, and geopolitics.

Her dissertation “From Subjects to Citizens: The Construction of Civic Identity in Spain” traces the emergence of civic consciousness in...

Derek Allen

Derek Allen is a Ph.D. Candidate in Luso-Brazilian Literature and Culture with a Designated Emphasis in Film. His courses taught at UC Berkeley include: “Introduction to Portugal, Brazil, and other Portuguese-Speaking Cultures,” “Reading and Composition: Postcolonial Identities in Luso-African Literature and Film”, and “Intensive Portuguese for Spanish Speakers.” He is the recipient of the 2025 Outstanding Graduate Student Instructor Award.

He received his M.A. in Portuguese from Indiana University, where he was also an Associate Instructor of Spanish and Portuguese language...

Emiliano Arizmendi-Castilla

I’m a Ph.D. student in Hispanic Languages and Literatures. My aim at UC Berkeley is to study and develop the concept of Movement, with its many understandings, as it applies to heterogeneous experiences within Southern California through poetry, literature, and history. Through extracurricular work, I seek to increase access to higher education for marginalized communities. I graduated from Crafton Hills College with an AA in Economics. After community college, I transferred to the University of Redlands. There, I completed a BA in Spanish and Political Science.

My research interests...

Lydia Millhon

Lydia Millhon is a PhD student in Hispanic Languages and Literatures at UC Berkeley with a designated emphasis in New Media. She completed her M.A. in Latin American Studies from the Center for Latin American Studies at Georgetown University and received her B.A. with Honors in Spanish at Wake Forest University. Interested in poetry and visual arts from mid-twentieth-century Cuba and Brazil, Lydia studies concrete art as a vehicle for transnational discourses of modernity, race, identity, and cultural production.

Ben Papadopoulos

I am a sixth-year Ph.D. candidate and Graduate Student Instructor in the Department of Spanish and Portuguese. I am a sociolinguist with additional training in critical sociology. I graduated from UC Berkeley in 2018 with B.A.s in Linguistics and Spanish. My current research investigates features of gender in different languages in order to understand the connection between language and human identity. I am relatedly pursuing a Designated Emphasis in Gender and Women’s Studies. You may view the public-facing extension of my research, the Gender in Language Project...

Karol Alzate

PhD Candidate 5115 Dwinelle Hall karol_alzatelondono@berkeley.edu Office Hours: M 12-1 pm, W 9:30-11 am

Miroslava Guzmán Pérez

My name is Miroslava Guzmán Pérez. I am a third year PhD student in the department of Spanish and Portuguese. I obtained my Master of Arts in Hispanic Languages and Literatures here at Cal in May 2021. I had previously completed a triple major in Spanish, French, and Comparative Literature at the University of California, Irvine in 2018. My research lies broadly in Colonial Mexico and Nahuatl. More specifically I am interested in the process of translation from oral stories and traditions into Spanish as well as pictographs into standard western signs.

Luis Amaya Madrid

Luis Amaya Madrid is a PhD student in the Department of Spanish and Portuguese. He received his BA in Psychology and Linguistics from the University of Arizona and his MA in Latin American and Caribbean Studies from the University of Guelph. He is interested in Latin American literature, Indigenous studies, and digital humanities.

Benito López Romero

Graduate Student 5116 Dwinelle Hall bmlopezr@berkeley.edu Office Hours: T, Th 9-10 am

Gabriela C. "Gabi" Rodríguez Lebrón

Gabriela C. “Gabi” Rodríguez Lebrón is a PhD student in the Hispanic Languages and Literatures program. She holds a B.A. from Colgate University, where she studied Spanish Literature and History. She completed two theses, one on nature in Garcilaso de la Vega’s poetry (High Honors) and another on texts written by Medieval female mystics (Honors). Her research interests include, but are not limited to Garcilaso de la Vega, Renaissance lyric (specifically bucolic poetry across traditions), the literary representations of nature, the Early Modern period, the history of ideas, mythology...