One reason why I like my job

When I work with students on their Senior Projects for their last class in our department's major, my role is primarily that of guide and facilitator for the students' efforts. Yes, there are many things I teach them about doing research, writing, editing an academic paper in Spanish, both in groups and in one-on-one session. Sometimes I even get to work with students whose interests coincide with my areas of expertise. But quite often I am helping connect them with other experts, and I learn a great deal from their projects. In most cases, students choose topics that fit with their double majors, their career plans, their experience studying abroad, and their personal relationships (sometimes via marriage). Many of the topics are ones that come up almost every semester, so I've now learned quite a bit about them!

Topics this semester include:

• Myths and facts about Mexican immigration to Minnesota, using the case of Lake Street as an immigrant neighborhood, historically and today;
  
• Américo Paredes and the relationship between his fiction, poetry and research as a founding figure of Chicano studies;
  
• the exhumation of mass graves in Spain today, comparing the case of García Lorca to that of someone not famous, but whose burial on the church threshold was a symbol of repression in the village;
• Sarmiento's novel Facundo, its ideological contradictions, and their relationship to present-day Argentine social tensions;
  
• The situation of Spanish-speaking people seeking health care in the Twin Cities: insurance access, language, and cultural difference as issues in inequality for basic medical care, and another study centered on physical therapy:inventory of resources, identification of problems, possible solutions;
  
• current discourses on discrimination against Nicaraguan migrants in Costa Rica, comparing academic sources and popular discourse in blogs, press, and other online sites;
• the use of "language brokering" or informal translation by children in K-8 classroom at a school in Minneapolis: what research has to say and what the teachers see;
• examining how relationship between traditional ideas about motherhood and polticial activism for Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo in Argentina through the films "The Official Story" and "Cautiva";
• Issues of literacy in Spanish for adult learners of English;
• how the maquiladora system on the U.S. Mexican border affects the women who work there, and the documentary film Maquilapolis's representation of that situation;
• What we are able to know about Aztec society before the arrival of the Spanish expeditions, and how we have to evaluate various sources in light of colonialism;
• what we should know about the different paths of Cuba and Puerto Rico after the Spanish-American War 1898 as roots of present-day situations;
• the uses of the iconic image of the Virgin of Guadalupe by Mexicans and others in the U.S., in art and popular culture, and how it works to signify different kinds of relationships in different contexts.
• Portuguese-language poetry in Angola, and the use of the trope of mother Africa in the emergence of discourses about identity during and after Independence struggles.