About
Mission
The mission of the the Department of Languages, Literatures and Cultures is to promote academic excellence by providing UNF students with the opportunity to learn to communicate effectively in writing as well as orally in a language other than English. Additionally, the Department fosters human understanding by exposing students to a multiplicity of textual constructs and by urging them to undertake cultural experiences that enhance their vision as global citizens.
Such a commitment to excellence requires that faculty members pursue in earnest academic research and publication to stay abreast of new developments in literary criticism, cultural studies and language acquisition, that they integrate results of their inquiry effectively in the courses they teach, and that they publish or present their research in highly regarded professional forums.
The Department's pedagogical focus is to underscore at all times the importance of language as a window to human understanding. The faculty strives to instill in students the critical skills necessary to analyze a variety of texts—literary and otherwise—in their original language and social context, so that they may discern and appreciate cultural differences.
Programmatic relevance is ensured by a shared teaching methodology that blends language instruction at its most practical level with academic approaches in the humanistic tradition, which assert the inherent value of multiculturalism. In order to ascertain success in its mission, the Department assesses its students yearly through instruments tailored to the program as well as to the desired learning outcomes. This commitment to rigorous assessment promotes self-reflection on the part of a dedicated faculty willing always to renovate and upgrade the language program for the benefit of UNF students as well as to address the needs of the community the university serves.
Faculty and Staff
Department Chair
Gregory Helmick, Associate Professor of Spanish, (904) 620-1246, Building 10, Room 2425, g.helmick.130720@unf.edu
Office Manager
Juliette Blaylock, (904) 620-2282, Building 10, Room 2424, j.blaylock@unf.edu
Full-Time Faculty
Johana Barrero, Instructor of Spanish and Language Coordinator, (904) 620-2282, Building 10, Room 2149, johana.barrero@unf.edu
María Ángeles Fernández Cifuentes, Associate Professor of Spanish, (904) 620-2282, Building 10, Room 2155, a.fernandez-cifuentes@unf.edu
Andrea Gaytan Cuesta, Assistant Professor of Spanish and Latin American Studies, (904) 620-2282, Building 10, Room 2131, a.gaytan@unf.edu
Patricia Geesey, Professor of French, (904) 620-2282, Building 10, Room 2147, pgeesey@unf.edu
Nuria Ibáñez Quintana, Associate Professor of Spanish, (904) 620-2282, Building 10, Room 2143, nuria.ibanez@unf.edu
Constanza López Baquero, Associate Professor of Spanish, (904) 620-2282, Building 10, Room 2127, constanza.lopez@unf.edu
Clayton McCarl, Associate Professor of Spanish and Digital Humanities, (904) 620-2282, Building 10, Room 2139, clayton.mccarl@unf.edu
Agnès Schaffauser, Assistant Professor of French and Francophone Studies, (904) 620-2282, Building 10, Room 2151, agnes.schaffauser@unf.edu
Shirley Wright, Instructor of Spanish, (904) 620-2282, Building 10, Room 2145, shirley.wright@unf.edu
Part-Time Faculty
Marina Alonso de Gallo, Part-Time Professor of Spanish, (904) 620-5738, Building 10, Room 2124, n00174811@unf.edu
Natalie Avilés, Part-Time Professor of Spanish, (904) 620-5738, Building 10, Room 2124, naviles@unf.edu
David Bellamy, Part-Time Professor of French, (904) 620-2282, Building 10, Room 2153, d.bellamy@unf.edu
Martha García, Part-Time Professor of Spanish, (904) 620-5738, Building 10, Room 2126, m.garcia.156890@unf.edu
Daniel Holloway, Part-Time Professor of German, (904) 620-5738, Building 10, Room 2124, n00074672@unf.edu
Mei Lian Lu, Part-Time Professor of Chinese, (904) 620-5738, Building 10, Room 2124, n00179353@unf.edu
Hortensia Salcedo, Part-Time Professor of Spanish, (904) 620-5738, Building 10, Room 2126, h.salcedo@unf.edu
Joanne Taylor, Part-Time Professor of French, (904) 620-2282, Building 10, Room 2153, joanne.taylor@unf.edu
Emeritus Faculty
Jorge Febles, Professor Emeritus of Spanish, (904) 620-2282, Building 10, Room 2425, jorge.febles@unf.edu
Shira Schwam-Baird, Professor of Emeritus of French, (904) 620-2282, Building 10, Room 2425, sschwam@unf.edu
Renée Scott, Professor Emeritus of Spanish, (904) 620-2282, Building 10, Room 2425, rscott@unf.edu
Recent Faculty Publications
Fernández Cifuentes, Ángeles. “Calderón reloaded: El gran mercado del mundo para niños.” Comedia Performance, vol.16, no. 1, 2019, pp. 14-27.
Helmick, Gregory. "The Specular Continuity of Antonio Benítez Rojo’s Mujer en traje de batalla in the Post- Exile of Roberto G. Fernández’s El príncipe y la bella cubana." Nachexil/Post-Exile, edited by Bettina Bannasch and Katja Sarkowsky. De Gruyter, 2020, pp. 354-369, https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110688030.
Ibáñez Quintana, Nuria. “Expresiones de la memoria: creación dramática en la clase como puente entre pasado, presente y futuro”. Contextos. Estudios de Humanidades y Ciencias Sociales, vol. 49, 2021, http://revistas.umce.cl/index.php/contextos/article/view/1656.
———. "En busca de la utopía desde el espacio de la memoria. Música para expresar lo indecible en La armonía del silencio de Lola Blasco." Escenarios de utopía, distopia y miopía en el teatro contemporáneo de España del siglo XXI, edited by Albert David Hitchcook and Candyce Crew Leonard. University of Southern Indiana, 2019, pp. 233-244.
López Baquero, Constanza. “Wounds and Monsters: Representations of Gender-Based Violence and Feminicide in the Aftermath of the Colombian Armed Conflict.” Human Rights in Colombian Literature & Cultural Production: Embodied Enactments, edited by Kevin Guerrieri and Carlos Gardeazábal Bravo. Routledge, 2022.
———. “La poesía de Marta Quiñónez: Testimonio del camino, de los tiempos y del pan.” Poemas y cantos: Antología critica de autoras afrodescendientes de América Latina, edited by María M. Jaramillo and Betty Osorio. Biblioteca Nacional de Colombia, 2019, https://bibliotecanacional.gov.co/es-co/colecciones/biblioteca-digital/poemas-y-cantos/Paginas/00-home.html.
McCarl, Clayton. “Imagining a Multi-Modal Digital Corpus of Early Modern Maritime Texts.” Hydrocriticism and Colonialism in Latin America: Water Marks, edited by Mabel Moraña, Palgrave Macmillan, 2022, pp. 99–117.
McCarl, Clayton, and Lindsay Van Tine. “Colonial Bibliography and the Indigenous Text.” Latin American Literature in Transition: Pre-1491–1800, edited by Amber Brian and Rocío Quispe-Agnoli, Cambridge University Press, 2023, pp. 258–272.
Schaffauser, Agnès. “The Wretched of the Sea: Clandestine Immigration and Graphic Artistry in Bessora and Barroux’s Alpha: Abidjan to Gare du Nord.” Inks: The Journal of the Comics Studies Society, special issue on “Migration in 21st-Century Documentary Comics,” vol. 5, no. 1, 2021, pp. 100-118.
———, director. Salim Bachi, L’Harmattan, 2019. Collection Autour des écrivains maghrébins.
Giving
Please consider making a donation to the Department of Languages, Literatures and Cultures.
Major Donors
The Department thanks the following individuals for their generous support of our academic and study abroad programs:
- Cascone Family Foundation. In the spring of 2008, the Cascone Family Foundation, on behalf of Michael Cascone and Juliette Cascone, a former UNF French student, created the Cascone Family Study Abroad Endowment to provide scholarships to Business and Language students who plan to study abroad.
- Ms. Harriet LeMaster. In the fall of 2007, Ms. Harriet LeMaster, who studied French language, history and culture at UNF for over 15 years, provided a very substantial endowment to support study abroad scholarships in French.
- Mr. Donald Loop. In the spring of 2007, Mr. Donald M. Loop (BA in Spanish, 2007; MA student in Spanish Education) also provided the Spanish area with a generous endowment to support academic and/or study abroad scholarships.