2017 Strategic Planning

Department of Romance Studies – 10 Position Requests, by Year (in alphabetical order)

(View Hiring plan by language section – PDF)

 

Year 1

 

Position Request #1 – FRENCH

Requested rank – Advanced Assistant or Associate Professor

Justification of Associate or Full Professor Rank, if requested

Due to recent retirements, the French section is critically understaffed, with only three tenure-stream faculty members to supervise some 20 graduate students. The section urgently needs an additional faculty member who will be capable of supervising dissertations immediately upon hire as well as helping to provide courses for at least 50 undergraduate majors and 85 minors.

Specialization – 20^th– and 21^st-century French and Francophone Studies

Explain what this hire will do for the unit and the College

Following the retirements of Martine Antle in 2013 and Dominique Fisher in 2016, the department currently has no specialist of French and Francophone Studies working in the 20^th– and 21^st-century period. Every Research University in the country offers courses in this vital area of study. Coverage of this period is essential to maintaining an active graduate program, assuring that students are adequately prepared for faculty positions, and attracting graduate students. Approximately half of the program’s current and incoming graduate students plan to specialize in this field. The contemporary period is also typically the most popular among undergraduate students, as reflected in the fact that two-thirds of current undergraduate offerings include this area of study. The program’s ability to serve the undergraduate demand for courses is therefore seriously compromised by the lack of a specialist in this area.

An advanced hire in 20^th– and 21^st-century French and Francophone Studies will also contribute diversity to our department’s and the College’s research and teaching by ensuring coverage of French-speaking cultures in Africa, Asia, and/or the Americas, in addition to Europe. The hire will be a valuable collaborator for UNC programs and centers such as the Africa Studies Center, Institute for the Study of the Americas, Middle East Center, and/or European Studies.

 

Position Request # 2 – FRENCH 

Requested rank – Assistant Professor

Specialization – 20^th– and 21^st-century French and Francophone Studies

Explain what this hire will do for the unit and the College

Following the retirements of Martine Antle in 2013 and Dominique Fisher in 2016, the French section is critically understaffed, with only three tenure-stream faculty members to supervise some 20 graduate students and provide courses for at least 50 undergraduate majors and 85 minors. In particular, the French program urgently needs specialists of French and Francophone Studies working in the 20^th– and 21^st-century period. Programs at peer institutions have multiple faculty members in this in this vital area of study. Coverage of this period is essential to maintaining an active graduate program, assuring that students are adequately prepared for faculty positions, and attracting graduate students. Approximately half of the program’s current and incoming graduate students plan to specialize in this field. The contemporary period is also typically the most popular among undergraduate students, as reflected in the fact that two-thirds of current undergraduate offerings include this area of study. The program’s ability to serve the undergraduate demand for courses is therefore seriously compromised by the lack of a specialist in this area.

 

Position Request #3 – ITALIAN

Requested rank – Assistant Professor

Specialization – Mediterranean Studies

 Explain what this hire will do for the unit and the College

The Italian section requests that tenure-line search in the field of Mediterranean Studies be prioritized in the 3-year strategic hiring plan of the Department of Romance Studies. Italian majors and non-majors alike continue to demand upper level courses in significant numbers, and our thriving Ph.D. program draws highly qualified students from an international pool of candidates. Because the Italian section faces a possible decrease in tenure-line faculty due to retirement in the near future, it is essential that we maintain our section’s vitality with a new hire. Doing so will preserve the size and functionality of the Italian section in the event that one of our faculty retire or leave UNC.

We seek an expert in Mediterranean Studies whose research will connect Italian literary tradition and practice to networks of influence beyond Italy’s geographic boundaries. We believe that a scholar of Renaissance and early modern culture who can situate canonical texts within Italy’s networks of cultural, political, religious, linguistic, and/or economic exchange will enhance Romance Studies’ commitment to interdisciplinary and transnational approaches to literature and culture. This hire will also ensure the Italian section’s continuing ability to cover all historical periods well into the future, as well as to enhance our collaborations with faculty and students in allied fields, including history, archaeology, religious studies, linguistics, global studies, music, art history, comparative literature,  anthropology, and/or women’s and gender studies.

 

Position Request #4 – PORTUGUESE

Requested rank  – Assistant Professor

Specialization – Luso-African and Diasporic Studies

Explain what this hire will do for the unit and the College

The Department of Romance Studies at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill seeks to appoint an Assistant Professor in Luso-African and Diasporic Studies. The preferred field of research concentration is modern and contemporary cultural production of Portuguese-speaking Africa, African diasporic cultures, and their critical engagement with the processes of migration, globalization and the aftermath of colonialism.

A generational turnover in the Portuguese Program has meant that it has been in transition over the last few years. Dr. Fred Clark retired from teaching in 2014, and at the end of the Fall 2015 Semester, Dr. Monica Rector, the last tenured professor and director of the Portuguese language program, stepped down from teaching and directing duties in advance of her retirement in June 2016. The program also lost an experienced lecturer, Dr. Loida Petersen, before the beginning of the Fall 2015 Semester. We were unable to secure funding to replace her. At the same time, however, Romance Studies hired on, as a tenure track professor, Dr. Carolina Sá Carvalho, whose effort is 50% in Portuguese and 50% in Spanish. The Department also hired Dr. Robert Anderson as Lecturer of Portuguese and Coordinator of UNC’s Languages Across the Curriculum (LAC) Program. Although this transition has resulted in a net loss of staff and seniority, there have also been new initiatives to come out of it. Since Fall 2015, we have been working to revise our program in order to increase the number of Portuguese majors and minors and increase the richness of the program. Hiring another tenure track faculty would be essential for the long lasting success of these efforts and the growth of the Portuguese program.

Several of the UNC-CH area and international studies centers depend on a strong Portuguese program for their Title VI and other grants.  Portuguese is a priority language for the Institute for the Study of the Americas (ISA) and the Center for European Studies (CES). The Portuguese program serves 3-4 Foreign Language and Area Studies (FLAS) fellows per academic year, out of the 5 FLAS grants awarded by ISA. Further, ISA typically awards two additional grants in the summer for Portuguese. Additional summer awards are made through the Center for Global Initiatives and CES. The 2013 MLA report, Enrollments in Languages Other Than English in United States Institutions of Higher Education, reports an increase in enrollment in Portuguese of 10% while there is a decrease in enrollment in the two most-studied languages (Spanish and French). An additional seventeen institutions added Portuguese to their offerings from 2006 to 2013.[1]

A specialist in diasporic studies could teach FLAS students (typically five graduate students a year), Portuguese majors and minors, as well as graduate students in the Spanish, French and Italian programs interested in conceptual and historical questions related to the African Diaspora, as well as collaborate with professors and students from the African, African American and Diaspora Studies Department. It is true that we currently have only 8 minors and 3 majors, but we have at least four students who have expressed a desire to declare a PORT major and plan to study abroad in the coming year in Brazil. We expect to have more in the coming year.

Although the majority of scholarly work in the Portuguese field focuses on Portugal and Brazil, six African countries have Portuguese as their official language. Moreover, the Portuguese spoken in Brazil –the country with the largest black population outside the African continent – has an important and often overlooked influence of African languages, such as Yoruba and Fon.

There is a healthy demand for Luso-African and Afro-Brazilian studies as seen by the enrollments in PORT 316 (Brazilian Performance in Music and Dance: Capoeira [an Afro-Brazilian martial art]) and in PORT 385 (Luso-African Literature). In Spring 2016, PORT 316 had 34 students and in Fall 2016 enrollment was 24, but was limited to that number because of room size. The the last two times PORT 385 was taught there were 25 students in both Fall of 2013 and 2014, despite being capped at 22.

The tenure-track position would contribute to the growth of the Portuguese program by helping to harness the resource of having the second largest undergraduate Portuguese program in the country. It will also allow the Romance Studies Department to become a reference in the expanding field of diasporic and transnational studies, addressing issues such as the relationship of Lusophone Africa to a larger African context, the evolving relationship with Portugal as well as with its sister-country Brazil, and with the Americas in general. Thus, the position is in accordance with the Romance Studies Department’s efforts to approach literature and culture through an interdisciplinary and transatlantic perspective, instead of reinforcing disciplinary and national boundaries.

The position would address the diversity needs of the department. We have recently hired our first African American tenure-track faculty member and currently we do not have any tenure-track professor fully engaged in the study of African or African Diasporic Cultures. This position would not only correct this detrimental deficiency, but also attract a more diverse body of students. Finally, the hire would also contribute to the promotion of institutional and public debates related to diversity.

 

 

Position Request #5 – SPANISH

 Requested rank – Associate Professor (preferred) or Assistant Professor

Justification of Associate Rank, if requested

The Spanish medievalist, Prof. Frank Domínguez, is retiring next year.  His departure will create a gap in the chronological coverage of Spanish studies that will severely impact graduate studies and the undergraduate major programs at a time when medieval cultural, social, and literary history are undergoing an exceptional resurgence, as witnessed by myriad books, articles, and journals that have appeared in just the last ten years.  Furthermore, a specialist whom we currently lack will be required to direct dissertations, thesis-substitute papers, and honors theses in the field.

Specialization – Medieval Literature

Explain what this hire will do for the unit and the College

For the section of Spanish in the Department of Romance Studies, it is extremely important that the area be covered. At the graduate and undergraduate levels, the courses that need medieval faculty are Spanish 701 (The Beginnings of Castilian Hegemony), Spanish 702 (The Trastámara Dynasty: 1369 to 1504/1516), and Spanish 371 (Survey of Spanish Literature to 1700). These courses on the Medieval/Early Renaissance periods cover texts that are on our MA qualifying exam and that every graduate student must read to pass the exam because they are a foundation for future studies of Spanish and Latin American literature.  They provide a similar historical foundation for students at the undergraduate level, not only for Romance Studies, but also for the MEMS program.

Demand 

	2010 F	2011 F	2011 S	2012 F	2012 S	2013 F	2013 S	2014 F	2014 S	2015 F	2015 S	2016 F	2016 S[2]	2017 S
Span 701		8				10						8
Span 702	8			7				9
Span 371[3]	23	20	22	22	21	23	20	22	18	22	20	20

 

 

Year 2

 

Position Request #7 – FRENCH 

Requested rank – Assistant Professor and Director of the French Language Program 

Specialization – French Linguistics with a specialization in Second-Language Acquisition

 Explain what this hire will do for the unit and the College

Following the retirement of Hannelore Jarausch, the department will require a new Director of French Language Instruction and instructor for ROML 700 (Theories and Techniques of Teaching), the required course for new graduate TAs. This urgent need to fill a key position in the program also gives the French section the opportunity to strengthen its graduate program with the addition of a research-active specialist in the field of Second Language Acquisition to train and supervise TAs. In addition, this hire will allow the French section to expand its undergraduate and graduate offerings into the field of French Linguistics. The popularity of the department’s offerings in Spanish linguistics suggests that there is high demand for this subject area among both undergraduate and graduate student populations. Finally, a specialist in French linguistics will enhance the department’s relatively new linguistic offerings. S/he will not only strengthen the Romance Studies linguistics program but will also help to integrate the departmental curriculum, a steady but usually unaddressed interest of many in the department.

 

Position Request #6 – ITALIAN

Requested rank – Assistant Professor

Specialization – Modern and Contemporary Italian Studies

Explain what this hire will do for the unit and the College

Specialization open to any field in Modern and Contemporary Italian Studies, with expertise in one or more of these areas of research: Performance Studies, Poetry, Environmental Humanities, Postcolonial Studies, Digital Humanities, Material Culture, Cultural Studies, Visual Studies, Film Studies. This hire will cover some of the key areas of research in Italian Studies, that attract both our undergraduate and graduate students. It will also enhance our collaborations with faculty and students in allied fields in the humanities, the arts, and the social sciences.

 

Position Request #8 – SPANISH

Requested Rank – Assistant Professor

Specialization – 20^th and 21^st Century Hispanic Theater

Explain what this hire will do for the unit and the College

We need a faculty member who shows promise of a strong publication record in Peninsular, Spanish American, or Transatlantic Theater and who possesses a broad background to provide maximum flexibility to the Spanish program.  A strong commitment to excellence in undergraduate and graduate teaching, to establishing and/or maintaining significant on-going research, and a readiness to direct Honors and MA theses, and dissertations are essential for our undergraduate and graduate programs to flourish.

While the present faculty covers adequately the literary output in Spain and Spanish America, we do not have anyone whose main focus is theater, an important genre across the centuries that would benefit not only Romance Studies, but also the Dramatic Art department, the Institute for the Study of the Americas, Global Studies, and other units.  We need to hire a specialist in contemporary theater who would be able to teach Peninsular and/or Spanish American theater of the 20^th and 21^st centuries, which interests many students and has also produced a significant literature of international renown.  On the one hand, over the past ten years we have had many Ph.D. applicants interested in pursuing doctoral studies in Peninsular and/or Spanish American theater, but we have not had a specialist with whom they could work.  On the other, the field of Contemporary Hispanic Theater is one of our required areas at the M.A. level (particularly on the qualifying exams) and we have not been able to cover this area, except in passing, in any of our classes over the past 11 years, since our former specialist, Professor Stuart Day, was hired by the University of Kansas.

 

 

Year 3

 

Position Request #9 – FRENCH

Requested rank – Assistant Professor

Specialization – French Medieval Studies or 18^th-Century French Studies

 Explain what this hire will do for the unit and the College

The French section is critically understaffed, with only three tenure-stream faculty members to supervise some 20 graduate students and provide courses for at least 50 undergraduate majors and 85 minors. In addition, the French faculty lacks specialists in several areas important for preparing graduate students for generalist positions. Major-level courses in French have been well enrolled over the past several years, although total enrollments have fallen as a smaller faculty has resulted in fewer sections being offered. We aim to bring total enrollment levels back to where they were in 2010 by expanding offerings available to undergraduate students and making the major accessible to more students. Finally, a medieval specialist in particular would strengthen medieval offerings across humanities programs at UNC, and increase our department’s participation in interdisciplinary medieval studies as represented by the MEMS program. Colleagues in English have repeatedly attested to a demand among their students for a colleague in Romance Studies who will teach old French.

 

Position Request #10 – SPANISH

Requested Rank – Assistant Professor

Specialization – 16^th and 17^th Century Peninsular Poetry

Explain what this hire will do for the unit and the College

We need a faculty member who will contribute to our strong interdisciplinary programs at both the undergraduate and graduate levels.  This person should show promise of a strong record of publication and have a broad background, as well as the ability to also teach other Golden Age areas to provide maximum flexibility to the Spanish program.

Golden Age Spanish literature has been one of the strengths of this department and, in the past, we had at least two faculty members who specialized in this important field.  At the present time, only one faculty member is exclusively dedicated to the period, which this makes it difficult or impossible to cover all of its literary output in the genres of comedia, narrative and poetry at both the graduate and undergraduate levels.  As our graduate applications demonstrate, students interested in 16^th  and 17^th Century Spanish literature apply to Carolina consistently; our strong library holdings in the period warrant nurturing this specialty.  Also, the Spanish section has been highly regarded nationally and internationally for its long-standing strengths in Golden Age studies and we should do everything we can to justify and retain this reputation.  This hire would benefit not only Romance Studies, but also the MEMS program.

 

 

[1] Goldberg, David, et al. Enrollments in Languages Other Than English in United States Institutions of Higher Education. Modern Language Association, February 2015, https://www.mla.org/content/download/31180/1452509/EMB_enrllmnts_nonEngl_2013.pdf . Accessed March 23, 2017.

[2] Entered phased retirement, which goes through Fall 2017.

[3] Enrollment set at 19.

 

 

in alphabetical order

• Sam Amago

• Rob Anderson

• Anna Bernard-Hoverstad (GRA representative)

• Sarah Booker (GRA representative)

• Glynis Cowell

• Dorothea Heitsch

• Federico Luisetti

• Jessica Tanner