UNC Chapel Hill

Benito Jerónimo Feijoo, Cartas eruditas y curiosas, a book review (my first!)

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David Gies is an authority in 18th C Spanish Literature, an eminence, arguably the doyen of the field. He was professor at UVA for decades, he founded Dieciocho, the leading academic journal of 18th C Spanish Literature, he was my Dissertation Director’s Dissertation Director, and he is a great, funny, brilliant fellow!

When David Gies asks you to do a book review for Dieciocho, you drop whatever academic project you were working on and you read-and then write-that book review (even if the book has 700 pages).

Benito Jerónimo Feijoo is probably the most important Spanish writer of whom you have never heard of. Starting in the early 18th Century and for the rest of it, Feijoo was the first to break down many of Spain’s dark superstitions, he was the first to write about science and medicine, about all sorts of topics. These essays were published in a collection called the Teatro Crítico Universal and later the Cartas eruditas y curiosas. Feijoo is considered the Spanish Montaigne.

Of course I had read Feijoo for my doctorate, and I enjoyed it, but it was great to revisit his work. Feijoo writes clearly, to the point, and occasionally with humor. More importantly, it is fascinating to understand how revolutionary and groundbreaking Feijoo’s writing was in traditional, conservative 18th C. Spain. In fact, the Inquisition had its eye set of this Benedictine monk, so much so that King Fernando VI had to issue a letter protecting him.

Feijoo has some similarity to my main research interest Francisco de Isla, in that they were both pre ilustrados, advancing and preparing for the Enlightenment to arrive in Spain later in the century.

While I have written many book reviews for this blog, it is not the same as having them published in a leading academic journal…

This was a great project to work on and you can read it here. Hope you like it, let me know in the comments!

On the importance of academia, presenting at conferences, a return to UNC Chapel Hill

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Yes, there are a lot of problems with academia, the ivory tower and all that. But at its core, it is still important, necessary, even critical I would say.

It has to do with research, discovery and then sharing that information. I was blessed to be able to participate at this year’s Carolina Conference for Romance Studies, It was great! I had some issues getting to Chapel Hill (but that merits its own post).

Living in 2 season Florida (dry, warm, and wet, and humid) it was fantastic to feel Spring, cool in the morning and evening and warm during the day. I was grateful for Spring! Plus everything was blooming and it was just so beautiful!

My panel was fantastic, well attended, and with great questions. I presented on a little-known 18th C. Spanish book: Los aldeanos críticos. My colleague presented on Galdós, so it was exciting. Other panels I attended were brilliant. During drinks that evening, I had great conversations about Zola with an old classmate and Posthumanism with the conference’s keynote speaker (expect a post on that also).

I also managed to see old professors and friends, even to sneak into the Ackland museum and bask in Carducho, Picasso, and all the other artists, to visit old hangouts; YoPo for frozen yogurt, and Zogs for drinks!

So my mission was accomplished, I was incredibly happy and satisfied with it!

Punch drunk on Oswaldo Estrada’s “Luces de emergencia”

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Luces de emergencia with a churro

When you sip a drink, a glass of wine, a scotch, you enjoy the flavors and complexities, the layers and textures, you return to it again and discover new subtleties, you explore the color and smell, every sip brings new nuances.

Reading Oswaldo Estrada’s Luces de emergencia is more like downing a shot: you feel the explosion of flavor in your mouth, the burning of your throat, and then a punch to your stomach. Do this eleven times and you feel like you have been eleven rounds with Joe Frazier.

As you go deeper and deeper into the stories you feel like you are eavesdropping on very private, personal stories, you feel embarrassed because you should not be listening to them. And then you start another one, hooked on the adrenaline of learning secret gossip. It is exhilarating, you want to talk to the characters, grab some by the shoulders and give them a good shake, hug others, sit and listen to others, console others. Get ready for an emotional roller coaster.

Not surprising, Luces won the International Latino Book Awards in 2020.

Luces de emergencia

A return to academia, the Carolina Conference on Romance Studies, returning to UNC.

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Although I consider myself more of a teacher than a scholar, I do enjoy research and writing. Also, I get to do my research at my pace and not at the breakneck pace demanded by the research universities.

If you are an old timer of this blog, you know that my PhD dissertation was on the early works of 18th C. Francisco de Isla, before he wrote his best-selling Fray Gerundio. This time I focused on Isla´s first writings after the Gerundio, still up to his old crafty rhetorical tricks and double plays. Right after selling out the first edition of the Gerundio overnight, the head of the Carmelites denounced the book to the Inquisition, Isla´s defense of his novel is the Apologia por la Historia de Fray Gerundio, and that is what my paper is on.

And it was accepted at the Carolina Conference on Romance Studies. So, with the generous support of my school, off I went to present my research at my alma mater.

Chapel Hill will always have a special place in my heart. The four years that I lived there studying for my PhD were very enriching, even though I was teaching and getting my doctorate at the same time. I loved the University, my classses, the town, the community, my colleagues and professors, my volunteering, the lot.

So without the Covid restrictions of last October’s lightning visit (read about that here) I was able to see old colleagues and classmates, to spend time with Irene, my dissertation director, to have a long conversation with my old spiritual director Fr. Bill, to have a great catch up with my favorite librarian, Teresa, to revisit the Ackland museum, to go to mass, to have a meal at Imbibe and a drink at Zog’s with Mandey the owner, to enjoy a cigar with my brilliant friend Jedd, to buy too much UNC gear, to walk around campus, to enjoy a YOPO frozen yogurt, and basically to walk and soak it all in. It was so comforting, it felt like coming home.

Helping at church, on being an usher

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One of the resources I leveraged years ago when I went through a rough crisis was going to church. While the church had always been there, I never really had a spiritual connection to it. Then I started going regularly, enjoying the time to recollect myself, the ceremony, the silences, begging for forgiveness, etc. and hopefully, if I was lucky a good lesson in the form of a sermon, these however are understandably rare.

The first church I went to during this crisis was St. Elizabeth in Milton, outside of Boston. I only went there for a couple of weeks and I spent most of the time (ok, all the time) crying. From there I went to Our Lady of Victories in Boston, which unfortunately has now closed. One day one of the Marist brothers who ran the church asked me to help during mass. I explained that I was not worthy of helping but they insisted. My first job was ringing the little altar bells before Consecration and Communion, then I started reading. Then I moved to North Carolina where I was warmly welcomed by the UNC Newman parish and Franciscan Brother Bill of whom I have written a lot about before here.

St. Ann’s in Naples was my home for a couple of years. Here in Madrid, I went to cute, tiny Our Lady of Lourdes for a while, and to the Jesuits for a few years, but my official parish and the one I have been going to for many years is San Fermín de los Navarros, which is basically across the street and where both my sisters got married. Like in Boston, the Pastor after seeing that I was a bit of a regular asked me to read, and I do so humbly and with pride.

Cut to the chase, after a few times at St. Marks in in Boynton Beach, I was approached by an usher and asked if I wanted to join their crew. I had never really thought about it, but I am happy to serve. The team is a fun, hodgepodge collection of characters, Christine who recruited me is, of course, the boss, the usher coordinator. I have to wear black pants, a white jacket, white shirt, and a tie. Yes, I look a waiter but since I am snob, I prefer to think I look like a sommelier. Since I did not have a white jacket, they lent me one… until I found a vintage one that I much preferred. The job is easy enough: be charming and welcome everyone as they come in, once mass has started guide the late comers to socially distanced seating, manage the Communion flow, at the end open the doors and say “goodbye”, then clean up bulletins left in the pews and put the collection in a bag. Easy peasy.

In conclusion, no job is too simple, too easy. Every honest job is honorable. I am happy to serve and to be useful.

Don Quijote, 400 anniversary of Cervantes’ death, and conference panel time management

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So proud of all my students reading!! (even in their muscle shirts!)
Chillin’ in the office with the awesome Camille
So proud of all my students reading!!
The great Stacey from the now defunct Bull’s Head Bookshop
Chairing the Don Quixote panel at the UNC Conference on Romance Studies
So proud of all my students reading!!
So proud of all my students reading!!
So proud of all my students reading!!
Totally unrealistic DQ with a big head
Live projection of the recording
So proud of all my students reading!!
The great Juan Carlos Gonzalez Espitia, I am so honoured to have had him in my committee!
My great panel!

April 23rd marked the 400 anniversary of Cervantes’ death. UNC had two great events to celebrate, and as a Cervantes and Quixote fan I am very happy and proud to have participated in both.

The 22nd Annual Carolina Conference for Romance Studies hosted the “I Am Quixote Festival” panel… and I was asked to be the chair! Needless to say, I was thrilled to be asked and I jumped at the opportunity.

Given the importance of this 400 anniversary the conference room was packed, and the panel was filmed. The panelists were Alexandra Veronica Combs from UNC-Wilmington who presented on “The Heroines of the Quixote who Challenged Narrative Structures”, our own Colleen McAlister, who presented on “Violence and Fame in the Quijote: Corporeal Manifestations of the Search for Identity”, and finally, University of Texas at San Antonio professor Santiago Daydí-Tolson, presenting on “The Contrasting Diets of Don Quixote and Sancho”. They were all awesome and great sports to boot. I must confess I was as proud as a schoolboy when my Dissertation Director, Irene, came to the event. In case things got out of hand, I picked up a copy of the Riquer edition of the Quijote.

One of the main responsibilities of a panel chair is keeping the panelists from exceeding the time limits. This is always a delicate matter that can – if the panelist ignores the time limits – result in awkward situations. The problem is that it is also difficult for the chair to elegantly interrupt the panelist to let them know that they are running long. Of course part of the problem with this is the culture of these events where the panelists just sit there and read their papers, it would be much more interesting and fun if they just talked about their research! But that is not something I am going to change regardless of how wildly popular my blog is. I thought long and hard about how I was going to deal with my panelists if they ran long. The solution came from football (soccer if you are American). I bought a yellow and a red piece of paper and cut them down to card size. The first warning when the panelist was approaching the time limit I would slide the yellow card under their noses, sorry, eyes. If they still kept going, We would pull the red card, just like in football!! Fortunately, or unfortunately my panelists stayed well within their allotted time and I didn’t have to use my revolutionary new technique.

The second event was a marathon reading of Don Quixote. For this event my whole class signed up to read (ok, I bribed them with a free class period – but it was well worth it – and they all read in Spanish, in front of an audience). You can see them all read on the attached video, my bit is at 5:08:50. For this event I sourced a real suit of armor from a great theater costume shop in Raleigh and wore bits and pieces as Don Quixote, it was a great way to promote the event and it was a lot fun. As luck would have it I read the hilarious bit where Sancho is tossed in a blanket at an inn while his master looks on from outside the inn’s wall. I was – as I always am – reminded of how funny, brilliant, clever and well written this book is, and how fresh it remains at 400 years old.

Now, if you have not done so already, go read Don Quixote, the first modern novel, it makes a great summer read, extra points if you read it in Spanish.

Don Quixote Marathon reading at UNC

The Ackland Art Museum

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Francis Bacon, Study for Portrait VI (1953)

In my four years in Chapel Hill, I have mentioned it in passing and I have written about my girlfriend Melanie de Forbin-Gardanne by Jean-Louis Le Barbier but I have not dedicated a blog entry to one of my favorite spots. The Ackland Art Museum. That needs to change.

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My Sunday morning ritual

I discovered the Ackland in 2012 when I went to visit UNC during my Spring break from BB&N. I remember walking upstairs and coming face to face with some Goya prints from the Caprichos series. My mind was blown. Those prints let me know that Chapel Hill might look like a southern college town, but that it has some cultural weight. It was a deciding factor in my going to UNC.

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El sueño de la razón produce monstruos. Goya

Once school started, I discovered that walking home after Sunday mass I passed the museum. My Sunday morning routine was set: church, coffee and reading across the street at the beautiful Carolina Inn, and then walk to the museum, walk around and sit and read with Melanie. I know I am going to miss my Sundays in Chapel Hill.

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My girlfriend for the last four years, I’m gonna miss you Melanie!

This year was a bit special, the museum had an exchange loan with the Minneapolis Institute of Art, and we had Francis Bacon’s Study for Portrait VI, based on Velazquez’s Pope Innocent X. It was a pleasure to enjoy it all year long. The painting reminded me of Pierre Boulez sur incises that the Ensemble Intercontemporain performed at Memorial Hall. The piece is one, total and complete, but you have to use your imagination to “fill in the blanks”. The blurriness of the Bacon painting is also very tactile, like it was smudged. Another thought on the painting is that it is the real portrait of Pope Innocent X, it is what Velazquez would have painted if he could really represent the guy he was painting: a shifty, double faced, shrewd politician, a warmonger pope with a mistress – that might be why Bacon paints his own bedframe in the background of the painting.

Spanish 203 Spring 16, I love my students!
Spanish for Composition, another awesome class
Spanish 204, memorable!

For four years I have taken all my classes to the museum. We see the Spanish and Hispanic art (Picasso, Carducho, the Goyas, one of Korda’s original Che prints, etc.), I also took my French class when I taught French, and there is a wealth of French artists in the Ackland. When I was my Dissertation director’s Graduate Research Assistant for her 18th C. literature class I organized a class at the museum, and they set up some of those Goya prints in a special classroom they have. It was a great experience.

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Picasso print

After four years, I got to know the staff, the security personnel, the student employees, they could not be a nicer group of people! Professional, attentive, kind, funny, just great. I have always been a fan of the smaller, more intimate museums like the Sorolla or the Lazaro Galdiano in Madrid, the Isabella Stewart Gardner in Boston or the Frick in New York, so now the Ackland joins that list!

UNC Softball

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During my four years at UNC I have taught a great bunch of students, Carolina’s finest indeed. Every single one of them had a great talent: I have finally understood Einstein’s Theory of Relativity, thanks to a student who made a presentation on it – in Spanish! I have taught students that had full time jobs, students that were in every kind of club and activity imaginable. And I have taught many athletes: Rowers, Soccer players, Track and Field stars, Baseball players, female Rugby players, Swimmers, Football players – it is very rewarding when star wide receiver Mack Hollins stops you (not the other way around) on Franklin Street to say hi and catch up! -, and Softball players.

I taught a few Softball players my first year at UNC, and those girls probably told other incoming players, so throughout my four years I’ve had a few take Spanish with me. Walking across campus one day this Spring, I bumped into Lauren Fuller and Erin Satterfield, those girls are like sisters, and they asked me if I would – as their favorite teacher – throw the first pitch in the senior recognition game.

Confession time, I have never played, never mind pitch softball, so I watched a few Youtube tutorial videos, those girls are good. Then on March 25 I rode Rocinante down to the softball stadium. Those girls think of everything, I even had a parking spot reserved with my name on it!

All the seniors’ favorite teachers pitched at the same time. It was very nice, even a bit emotional, which would be a nice excuse to explain why my ball is now one of the moons of Jupiter, that’s how high I sent it. After that, I stayed to watch the game against Florida State. Although I do not know the rules, it was very exciting to see all my students play. What an honor to have been a small part of their Carolina experience and to be so generously rewarded!

The ultimate test of cerebral fitness*

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It has been nine months since my last entry. In my defense, it has been a crazy year. I am at Miami International Airport and this is the first chance I have to write, it feels good.

You see, I was busy finishing and defending my doctoral dissertation, which was a very difficult but rewarding process.

As soon as classes started in the Fall I was having my twice weekly coffee with Irene, my director, to finish and fine tune each chapter. At the same time I was teaching two classes: Advanced Intermediate 204, a new class for me, and Intermediate 203, my “standard” class. Oh, and I had to write an academic article if I wanted to have any chance of applying for a university job. On top of all that I had to prepare my job search, but those items will have their own blog entries.

The work only got more intense in the spring. I was assigned an extra class from the regular Spring load of one section, this one teaching Advanced Spanish at the Gillings School of Public Health. I had to give up my volunteering shift at the Ronald McDonald House, as well as cutting down on the number of concerts and plays I went to (although I did not totally give that up).

April was when the proverbial rubber met the proverbial road. Finishing and editing my dissertation and going to job interviews. Spring Break was anything but break, driving to Charlotte and flying to Florida for job interviews.

But everything came to a head on April 8. That morning I spent two and a half hours locked up in a conference room with four of the professors on my committee, and Ana Rueda from the University of Kentucky looming over all of us, Skyping in on the massive screen, like a science fiction overlord, only much nicer and sweeter! I also had like ten spectators: old students, friends, including Mandey from Zog’s, my friendly librarians Teresa and Becky, and colleagues that came to give me moral support. Poor things, they had to endure my grilling session.

I passed. Walking out of the meeting, feeling exhilarated but exhausted and numb, I had a message on my phone. Seacrest Country Day School in Naples Florida – my top choice for work – had made me an offer while I was defending my dissertation. Coincidence? I think not.

After defending I thought things would slow down, wrong again. I still had to do edits on my dissertation, dress up as Don Quixote for a marathon reading celebrating the 400th anniversary of his death, chair a panel at our Carolina Conference on Romance Studies, teach and wrap up my four years in Carolina. My mom and my little sister came for my hooding ceremony and we had a blast. After that I moved to Florida and had only enough time to dump my boxes before heading back to Spain for my nephew’s First Communion, which explains why I am sitting at the airport now.

*with thanks to Murray Head from his song One Night in Bangkok

Leaving my beloved Chapel Hill
My PhD committee!! (with the awesome Ana Rueda on the big screen)
Jimmy’s First Communion
My new work… on the gorgeous Florida Gulf Shore!