Spanish 101:Beginning Spanish I (to be offered Fall 2020)

Spanish 102: Beginning Spanish II (to be offered Spring 2021)

Spanish 201: Intermediate Spanish

Spanish 202: Conversation and Composition (to be offered Spring 2021)

Spanish 301: Introduction to Hispanic Literatures

Spanish 435: Advanced Literary Studies: Representations of the City in Early Modern Spain and Spanish America (to be offered Fall 2020) 

Spanish 460: Las Tres Edades del Siglo de Oro Español 

Spanish 491: Senior Seminar: Conceptos de raza en el Siglo de Oro español (to be offered Winter 2021)

James Nemiroff is currently a Visiting Assistant Professor of Spanish at Kalamazoo College. He joins the Department after earning his Ph.D in Romance Languages and Literatures from the University of Chicago and having taught at K previously as a Visiting Assistant Professor of Spanish, as well as experience as a Lecturer of Spanish at Iowa State University.  

His research focuses on the representation of Judaism in sixteenth- and seventeenth- century Spanish literature. More particularly, it analyzes the relationships between literature, historiography, and religious practice in Early Modern Spain and examines how religious identities and historical chronicles imitate each other creating performed forgeries. His work considers religious identities as both figures of thought and figures of flesh and blood, exploring how religious traditions configure hermeneutic spaces that can be interpreted distinctly by Old Christians, converted Christians and Crypto-Jews.  

He is currently working on two projects. The first is a digital concept dictionary on Early Modern historical drama. The second is a book entitled Lope’s Forgeries: Lope’s Toledan Comedias as Dramatic Historiography. He has also published essays in such journals as E-humanista and collections edited through Iberoamericana and the University of Chicago Press.

As a teacher scholar, Dr. Nemiroff is also engaged in the scholarship of teaching and learning, exploring two interrelated topics: theories of motivation particularly as they relate to L2 language and culture teaching and the incorporation of educational technologies to enhance intercultural communication. 

In the classroom, he preaches the importance of ánimo, which signifies the adventurous spirit that students have as they learn a new language. However, he also emphasizes the 17th century meaning referring to the courage that students must possess to take intellectual and personal risks both in the classroom and in college. He also translates this research interest into his teaching by incorporating high impact collaborative projects in all of his courses: whether that be an oral presentation incorporating virtual reality technology or an augmented reality poster project.

Publications:

Historiographic and Iconographic Crypto-Narratives in Lope de Vega’s El Niño Inocente de la Guardia(1598-1603). E-humanista/Conversos 5 (2017): 329-352. 

Archaeological Imitation of the Classics in Giovanni Batista Piranesi’s The Temple of the Sibyl (1720-1778). Classicisms. Eds: Larry Norman and Anne Leonard. Chicago: Smart Museum of Art, 2017 pp. 165-170.

“Comedias judaizantes en el teatro del joven Calderón: Ticoscopias paulinas y la representación de Jerusalénen Judas Macabeo (1623),” Nuevas sonoras aves: Catorce estudios sobre Calderón de la Barca. Eds: Frederick de Armas and Antonio Sánchez Jimenez. Madrid: Iberoamericana, 2015 pp. 169-183.

Publications in Progress:

Article in the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning: “Using Virtual Reality Technology in the Foreign Language Classroom” 

Ester as Crypto-Jew: Alternating Judeo-Christian Hermeneutics in Lope de Vega’s La hermosa Ester (1610). 

Spanish 485: Literary Revolutions from the Avant-garde to the Post-Boom

Spanish 480: Spanish-America Literature II

Spanish 435: Advanced Literary Studies

Spanish 401: Spanish-Speaking World on Film

Spanish 301: Introduction to Hispanic Literatures

Spanish 206: Business Spanish

Spanish 203: Advanced Composition and Conversation

Spanish 202: Conversation and Composition

Spanish 201: Intermediate Spanish

Spanish 102: Basic Spanish II

Diomedes S. Rábago specializes in Twentieth-century Mexican literature and film, particularly the Post-Revolution period.  His current research studies the reproduction of social distinction and its representations in literature, film, and social media. In exploring the cultural, social and ideological ramifications of the transition experienced by the elites, Rábago is seeking to shed light on how Mexican writers and, even more importantly, Mexican readers, helped to reconstruct the gente bien identity.