DRCLAS Graduate Student Associates 2009-10

Harvard’s graduate students are an integral part of the Center’s scholarly community. The DRCLAS Graduate Student Associate Program formalizes this connection and facilitates doctoral students’ research on Latin America by providing affiliation and research support to approximately 7-10 graduate students each year, with several working in shared office space at the Center. Graduate Student Associates are selected through a competitive process that includes all professional schools and academic departments.

Linda Abarbanell, HGSE

Linda Abarbanell is a doctoral candidate in Human Development and Psychology at the Graduate School of Education where she is a Presidential Fellow and the recipient of a Spencer Research Training Grant. She studies the relationship between language and conceptual development in the context of language contact and cultural change among the Tseltal Maya of Chiapas, Mexico. Her dissertation looks at spatial representations in language and their effect on nonlinguistic cognition, cross-linguistic transfer of spatial language, and the spatial representations of bilingual speakers (Spanish/Tseltal). She has also studied how children in different cultures use different sources and forms of discourse (e.g. home vs. school) to distinguish between scientific and supernatural entities, and has collaborated on the cross-cultural component of a large-scale study of moral intuitions. Prior to coming to Harvard, Linda was a fourth grade bilingual teacher in East Harlem, New York. She has been a teaching fellow for various courses at Harvard and a visiting instructor at the University of Chiapas, School of Languages. Her research has been supported by a Harvard University Traveling Fellowship, a Mind Brain Behavior Graduate Student Fellowship, and several FLAS Awards.

Maryam Monalisa Gharavi, GSAS, Comparative Literature/Film and Visual Studies

Maryam Monalisa Gharavi is a doctoral candidate in Comparative Literature with a secondary field in Film and Visual Studies at Harvard University. She is primarily interested in discourses of modern progress in the global South, especially Latin America and the Middle East. Her dissertation compares transgression and banditry in cinema during Brazil’s military dictatorship and liberal democracy, investigating how representations of marginality and violence cast a hero/outlaw alienated from normative standards of justice. She graduated from the University of California-Berkeley in English literature and film, where she wrote an honors thesis about subjectivity and female authorship in Iranian cinema. As a visiting student at the Pontifícia Universidade Católica do Rio de Janeiro she studied contemporary Brazilian poetry, and currently translates Algaravias by the Syrian-Brazilian poet Waly Salomão, about whom she has written for the Latin American academic journal Brújula.

Martín L. Gaspar, GSAS, Romance Languages and Literatures

Martín L. Gaspar is a sixth-year doctoral candidate at the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, currently writing his dissertation on the figure of the translator in contemporary Brazilian and Argentine novels. A translator himself, his interests include Latin American fiction, translation and literary theory, philosophy, issues of language and identity, and studies of contemporary social and cultural processes. He is a Teaching Fellow in the Department of Romance Languages and Literatures and a regular contributing writer to language instruction textbooks. He has taught Spanish language courses at different levels, including at the Summer School in Buenos Aires –his city of birth–, as well as courses on Latin American Studies and Literature and Arts for the Core.

Manolo Núñez-Negrón, GSAS, Romance Languages and Literatures

Manolo Núñez-Negrón is a fifth-year doctoral student in the department of Romance Languages and Literatures.  earned a Bachelor's of Arts degree in Hispanic Studies and Humanities from the University of Puerto Rico, Rio Piedras Campus.  He continued his studies at New York University, earning a Master's degree in Hispanic Literatures.  He has been involved in electoral campaigns, speechwriting and political strategizing, and from 2003 to 2004 he worked as a speechwriter for the governor of Puerto Rico, Sila M. Calderón.  Before coming to Harvard, he also taught Spanish and Latin American Literature at the University of Puerto Rico, Utuado Campus.  Currently, he is writing his dissertation entitled "The Politics of Humor in Latin America: satirical discourse in the XIX century."  He is very interested in the relationship between political thought and literary production, specifically political satire in Latin America.

Amie Shei, GSAS, Health Policy

Amie Shei is a PhD student in the Health Policy program at Harvard University. She holds a Master of Science degree in Health Policy and Management from the Harvard School of Public Health (HSPH).  She has conducted research at the Harvard Center for Public Health Preparedness, the Department of Health Policy and Management at HSPH, and the World Health Organization in Geneva, Switzerland.  She has also spent time in Chile and Brazil to study their health systems, along with issues such as barriers to health care access, poverty, and infectious diseases.  Amie spent June through August of 2008 in Salvador, Brazil, beginning her dissertation research on the health impacts of Bolsa Família, the world’s largest conditional cash transfer program.