About
Mission
The Department of Languages, Literatures and Cultures prepares students to become engaged and informed citizens who can think critically, communicate effectively in a language other than English, and participate fully in today’s global economy. Our courses and extracurricular programming emphasize language as a window to human understanding and challenge students to improve their interpersonal and problem-solving skills; use language in specific professional contexts and situations; gain competency with digital media; and become more confident, adaptable, and comfortable taking risks. We strive to achieve our mission through instruction that is interdisciplinary and experiential; through the production of innovative scholarship; and through engagement with communities both locally and internationally. Our graduates possess skills that are in demand today across a broad range of fields and are ready to navigate the changing landscape of today’s professional world.
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
David Bellamy, (904) 620-2282, Building 10, Room 2424, d.bellamy@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
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.