UF Center for Latin American Studies
April 18, 2018 - Patricia Alba
The UF Center for Latin American Studies (LAS) is proud to announce the winner of the 2018 Consortium of Latin American Studies Programs (CLASP) Junior Faculty Teaching Award is Dr. Rosana Resende. Created in 2013, the award seeks to “recognize excellence in teaching Latin American Studies designated courses.” This is the second time that a LAS faculty member has received this award; Dr. Ieva Jusionyte was the 2015 award recipient.
“Dr. Resende is a highly innovative and committed teacher who is most deserving of this award,” said Dr. Philip Williams, Director of the Center for Latin American Studies. “In all of her courses, Resende connects topics from class to students’ lived experiences, helping students draw connections between course material and contemporary socio-political debates.”
Dr. Resende is a cultural anthropologist and Latinamericanist. She is a lecturer at the University of Florida Center for Latin American Studies and an affiliate of the Department of Anthropology and the Center for Gender, Sexualities, and Women’s Research. Dr. Resende teaches Introduction to Latin America and more advanced courses focusing on race, class, and gender as sites of inequality in contemporary urban Latin America. She is the Program Director for UF in Bahia: Race, Inequality, and Power, a summer study abroad program in Bahia, Brazil, examining the commodification of Afro-Bahian culture and bodies and the “performance of blackness.” In addition to teaching, Dr. Resende also serves as the coordinator for the Brazilian Studies Specialization for the Master of Arts in Latin America, the undergraduate coordinator for Latin American Studies and as the Associate Director for the Florida-Brazil Linkage Institute.
As a teacher, Dr. Resende aims to “inspire, engage, and empower students to consider their education as a critical component of their formation as adult citizens, no matter where their professional steps may take them. Education can and should be transformative but for that, learning must be rooted in the human experience.”
Dr. Vincent T. Gawronski, a member of the CLASP committee, stated that “Dr. Resende’s focus on critical pedagogies and social justice are exemplified in her work to partner with NGOs to support a study abroad program and to co-sponsor a social justice summit. Her research work strengthens her teaching and facilitates her connections with students while helping them to dissect difficult issues relative to race and power relations in Latin America.”
For more information about Dr. Resende and the 2018 CLASP Junior Faculty Teaching Award, contact Patricia Alba at patricia@latam.ufl.edu.
