People

Jhonni Carr

Dr. Jhonni Carr holds a PhD in Hispanic Linguistics from the University of California, Los Angeles. She teaches in the Department of Spanish and Portuguese at the University of California, Berkeley. Specializing in Spanish Sociolinguistics, she investigates linguistic social justice and the power dynamics of displayed languages in the public space of California, Mexico, and Brazil. She uses interdisciplinary methods to explore these areas’ signage (linguistic landscape) and residents’ attitudes toward the presence and absence of different languages. Dr. Carr has also published work related...

Jhonni Carr receives The Arts & Humanities Teaching Award

May 15, 2025

The Department of Spanish & Portuguese is pleased to announce that Dr. Jhonni Carr has been awarded The Arts & Humanities Teaching Award in recognition of her extraordinary dedication to undergraduate student teaching.

Dr. Jhonni Carr holds a PhD in Hispanic Linguistics from the University of California, Los Angeles. She teaches in the Department of Spanish and Portuguese at the University of California, Berkeley. Specializing in Spanish Sociolinguistics, she investigates linguistic social justice and the power dynamics of displayed languages in the public space of...

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.

Tom McEnaney

Associate Professor of Latin American and Caribbean Literature and Culture. He holds a joint appointment in the Department of Comparative Literature and serves as the Director of the Berkeley Center for New Media, and on the Executive Board of UC Cuba. His work emphasizes the connections between Argentine, Cuban, and U.S. literature, the history of media and technology, sound studies, linguistic anthropology,...

"Translating Oral Traditions": Department Hosts Conversation with Pedro Cesarino and Katrina Dodson

February 21, 2025
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.

Katrina Dodson is the translator of The Complete Stories, by Clarice...

Justin Davidson

Ph.D., University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 2015. Spanish Linguistics, Romance linguistics, SLATE (Second Language Acquisition and Teacher Education).

Research Expertise and Interests

Sociolinguistics, contact linguistics and language contact, language variation and change, Romance linguistics, quantitative methods (statistics, variable rule analyses for sociolinguistics, and computer software for statistics), sociohistorical linguistics, sociophonetics, bilingualism, Catalan, Spanish, dialectal diversification, non-English language...

Alex Saum-Pascual

Alex Saum-Pascual is a (digital) poet, and professor. She is author of #Postweb! Crear con la máquina y en la red (Iberoamericana-Vervuert 2018) and numerous articles, special issues, and book chapters on digital media and literature in the Spanish-speaking world, being featured in The Journal of Spanish Cultural Studies, The Arizona Journal of Hispanic Cultural Studies, Comparative Literature Studies, Revista de Estudios Hispánicos, and Digital Humanities Quarterly, among others. Her work has been supported by fellowships and grants from UC Berkeley...