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

Associate Professor of History

Director, Latin American Studies Program (on leave for 2026/2027)

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

Professor of Imaging Sciences

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

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; 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
445A Lattimore Hall

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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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

Steven's headshot.

Schwartz, Steven

Assistant Professor of Anthropology

Office Location
444A Lattimore Hall

Interests: Extractive capitalism; Renewable energy; Energy transitions and the afterlives of oil; Climate change; Corporations and corporate responsibility; Infrastructures; Borders; Indigeneity; Indigenous environmental politics; Colombia and Venezuela; Latin America and the Caribbean

Alice's photo.

Seixas, Alice

Assistant Professor of Instruction of Spanish

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

Interests: Sociolinguistics; Language contact; Variationist linguistics; Spanish in contact with Portuguese; Subject pronoun variation; Hispanic communities in Brazil

Pablo Sierra Silva Headshot

Sierra Silva, Pablo M.

Associate Professor of History

Acting Director 2026/2027, Latin American Studies Program

Office Location
461 Rush Rhees Library

Interests: African Diaspora, Latin American, Caribbean and Atlantic History

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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