The research and teaching interests of Patricia Vilches, associate professor of Spanish and Italian, span continents and centuries — from Italian Renaissance literature, with a concentration on the works of Niccolò Machiavelli, to Latin American literature, with a focus on female authors such as Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz and Violeta Parra, “la Violeta.”
In the Spanish department, she teaches upper-level literature and culture courses and has created such new offerings as Spanish Phonetics and Hispanic Issues. She is advisor to Viva!, a student organization dedicated to expanding and promoting awareness of Hispanic culture, and is joined in the photo by Teresa Hardison ’08, its co-president.
She also teaches the Italian language sequence at Lawrence, which is offered as a series of non-departmental University Courses. The first person to complete a student-designed major in Italian graduated in June 2006, and two more are scheduled to complete their studies at the end of this academic year. Michael Beaderstadt ’07, one of those Italian majors, is also pictured above.
Professor Vilches will be the visiting faculty member for the Associated Colleges of the Midwest’s Florence Program in 2007-08. She is the author of Karma desde el Mar, a collection of short stories about Chile, and currently is co-editing, with her husband, Gerald Seaman, vice president and dean of faculty at Ripon College, A Companion to Machiavelli Studies. A native of Viña del Mar, Chile, she returned to her home country this past summer to participate in a conference at the University of Tarapacá.
View other faculty profiles from the president's annual report