Full Directory

Skip navigation of people last names

A

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

B

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

C

Profile photo

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

D

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

E

F

H

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

J

K

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

L

M

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

O

P

Person's photo

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

R

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

Person's photo

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

Person's photo

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

S

Person's photo

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

V

Person's photo

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