Marina Llorente

Dr. Marina A. Llorente, Charles A. Dana Professor of World Languages, Cultures, and Media and former Hanson Associate Dean for International and Intercultural Studies at St. Lawrence University, received her Ph.D and M.A in Spanish Literature from the University of Kansas and her B.A from the University of Málaga, Spain. In August 2009 she was awarded the Louis and Frances Maslow Award, given annually to the St. Lawrence University faculty member “who has shown the most interest in and understanding of the education and welfare of the student body as a whole.” She published Palabra y deseo: Espacios transgresores en la poesía española, 1975-1990 (Word and Desire. Transgressive Spaces in the Poetry of Spain 1975-1990), and co-edited the anthology Abuelas Hispanas: desde la memoria y el recuerdo (Hispanic Grandmothers: Memories and Recollections). Her latest monograph Poesía en acción: poemas críticos en la España contemporánea (Poetry in Action: Critical Poems in Contemporary Spain), was launched by Baile del Sol in Spain in June 2014. She has articles on the intersections between Hispanic literatures, gender and social justice with a focus on contemporary Hispanic poetry analyzed under the theoretical framework of cultural studies. Her current research addresses ethics, the politics of memory and contemporary literature and film in Spain and Latin America. She has co-edited the volume Sites of Memory in Spain and Latin America: Trauma, Politics, and Resistance which was released by Lexington Books in September 2015. The volume is a collection of essays exploring historical memory at the intersection of political, cultural, social, and economic forces in the contexts of Spain and Latin America. Llorente’s latest book Activism Through Poetry: Critical Spanish Poems in Translation, a bilingual Spanish/English contemporary poetry anthology which she co-edited and co-translated, was published by Hamilton Books-Rowman & Littlefield on May 2017. This poetry anthology presents cultural, political, social, and ecological issues in the context of contemporary Spain. Her new project explores traces of the Francoism time in contemporary Spanish poetry focusing in the analysis of poems dealing with violence against women.   

She teaches elementary, intermediate and advanced Spanish language courses. Her upper level courses are Hispanic Cultural Studies, Cultures of Spain, Introduction to Spanish Literature, Literature, Film and Popular Culture in Contemporary Spain, Hispanic Protest Music, Poetry and Ethics, and Hispanic Women Writers. She has also taught a First-Year Seminar on Remapping the Old World: the Politics of Immigration in the New Europe. The Spring of 2015 she taught Diverse Culinary Traditions. International Cuisine, Literature, and Film, a special topic seminar taught in English. In the seminar students learnt about food and associated traditions in countries where Arabic, Chinese, French, German, Hindi, Italian, Japanese, Spanish, and Swahili are the primary language. This course also offered an optional travel component for seven selected first year and junior students who traveled to Spain to study in situ its culinary traditions. She has directed student research projects on the artistic movement of "La Movida" in Madrid, Education and Gender in Spain, Latino poetry writing in the United States, community-based learning in Bolivia, Latin American immigrant women in Madrid, the influence of Flamenco in the integration of gypsies in Spanish culture, the Mayan voice in the writings of Miguel Ángel Asturias, and Hispanic women writers among others. She has directed the SLU Program Abroad in Spain four times, founded the Poetry for Peace reading series in 2003, and delivered the Piskor Lecture on April 2013 on contemporary Spanish poetry and politics.