Affiliated Faculty

Maya Abtahian

Abtahian, Maya Ravindranath

she/her/hers

Associate Professor of Linguistics

Director of Graduate Studies

Co-Director of Grammar and Variation Lab

Office Location
514 Lattimore Hall
Web Address
Website

Interests: Sociolinguistics; Language Variation and Change; Language Contact; Language Shift

Molly Ball Headshot

Ball, Molly

Assistant Professor of History

Director, Latin American Studies Program

Office Location
449 Rush Rhees Library
Telephone
(585) 276-7184
Web Address
Website

Interests: Brazilian History; Latin American History; Economic History; Immigration History

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Castañeda, Benjamín

Professor of Biomedical Engineering

Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering

Office Location
310 Goergen Hall
Telephone
(585) 275-5774

Interests: Development of Point-of-Care Technologies for resource limitted settings. Development of ultrasound-based imaging diagnostic techniques.

Vialcary Crisóstomo Tejada

Crisóstomo Tejada, Vialcary

Assistant Professor of Spanish and Comparative Literature

Office Location
412 Lattimore Hall
Telephone
(585) 275-4251

Interests: Twentieth and twentieth-first century Caribbean Literature and Cultures; Latin American and Latinx Studies; Decolonial Feminism and Praxis; Black Feminism; Race, Ethnicity, and Politics; Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies; Afro-Caribbean Studies; Africana Philosophy; Literary Theory and Criticism

Jack Downey

Downey, Jack

John Henry Newman Professor of Roman Catholic Studies

Associate Professor of Religion

Research Active

Office Location
436 Rush Rhees Library
Telephone
(585) 275-5224

Interests: Contemporary Justice Movements; Liberation Theologies; North American religious history; Christianity; Buddhism: and Contemplative Traditions

Headshot of Gretchen Helmke.

Helmke, Gretchen

Thomas H. Jackson Distinguished University Professor

Professor of Political Science

Co-Chair, Department of Political Science

Office Location
331 Harkness Hall
Telephone
(585) 275-4291
Web Address
Website

Interests: Political institutions; judicial politics and the rule of law; informal institutions and norms; democratic erosion in Latin America and the United States

Profile Photo Jed Kuhn

Kuhn, Jedediah

Assistant Professor of History

Office Location
457 Rush Rhees Library

Interests: Native American and Indigenous Studies; U.S.-Mexico borderlands; Queer Studies; Latinx/Chicanx; American West; 19th and 20th Cen. U.S. cultural; Gender and sexuality

Headshot of Agnes.

Mondragon-Celis, Agnes

Assistant Professor of Anthropology

Office Location
458 Rush Rhees Library

Interests: Knowledge production and circulation; Drug warfare and organized crime; Political authority ; US imperialism in Latin America; Affect and performative politics; Militarization; Feminism in the Global South; Mexico

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Prendergast, Ryan

Associate Professor of Spanish

Chair, Modern Languages and Cultures

Office Location
408A Lattimore Hall
Telephone
(585) 275-4113

Interests: Representations of identity and difference in sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Spain and Spanish America

Headshot of Alanna Simone Radlo-Dzur.

Radlo-Dzur, Alanna Simone

she/ella/they/elle

Assistant Professor of Art History

Office Location
518 Morey Hall

Interests: Native American and Indigenous studies; Histories and materialities of the book, printing, writing, and mark-making; Storytelling, performance, and ethnohistory; Mesoamerican art and cultural studies; The sensorium and phenomenology; Museum studies and critique

Daniel Reichman

Reichman, Daniel

Professor of Anthropology

Office Location
439 Lattimore Hall
Telephone
(585) 275-8737

Interests: Globalization and trade; Migration and transnationalism; Food, development, and environment; Coffee industry; Latin America; Honduras, Brazil

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Rodríguez-Hernández, Raúl

Associate Professor of Spanish

Advisor to minors; study abroad credit for minors; placement petitions; Take Five

Office Location
420 Lattimore Hall
Telephone
(585) 275-4257

Interests: Twentieth- and twenty-first-century Hispanic literatures and cultures; literary theory; Frankfurt School; European philosophical traditions in Latin America; Latin American cinema; the visual arts; the Baroque and Neo-Baroque; the Gothic tradition

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Rojas-Rimachi, Luisa-Maria

Professor of Instruction in Spanish and Language Education

Office Location
421 Lattimore Hall
Telephone
(585) 275-7112

Interests: Language ideology in higher education; foreign language learning; aesthetic judgment in cultures in contact; contemporary Latin American literature and cultural studies; cultural discourse analysis

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Schaefer, Claudia

Rush Rhees Professor

Professor of Modern Languages and Cultures

Professor of Film and Media Studies

Program Head 2025-2026; advisor to majors, transfers, and clusters

Office Location
418 Lattimore Hall
Telephone
(585) 275-4251

Interests: Nineteenth-, twentieth- and twenty-first-century Hispanic literatures and cultures; Spanish cinema; critical theory; popular culture; the visual arts; Spanish modernity; the culture of science in Spain; surrealism in Spain; digital humanities

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Valdez, Maria Teresa

Director of the Language Center

Head, Portuguese Program

Office Location
305E Douglass Hall
Telephone
(585) 275-5156

Interests: Portuguese language instruction; foreign-language pedagogy; second- and foreign-language acquisition and development; heritage-language acquisition and development; teaching and learning methodologies for foreign, second, and heritage languages; second- and heritage-language learning materials; online language instruction