CURRICULUM VITAE
Laura Hunt

Major Area:   Twentieth-Century and Contemporary Spanish American Literature
Minor Areas: Twentieth-Century Peninsular Literature, Spanish American Colonial Literature, Ecocriticism and Geography

Dissertation: Exceptionalism and the Construction of Nature in the Spanish American novela de la selva, expected defense August 2006. Directed by Dr. Susan Carvalho, University of Kentucky.

This dissertation investigates how the natural world of Amazonia is constructed into national and regional imaginaries in the jungle novels as a reaction to independence and an assertion of autochthony.  Informed by the fields of Ecocriticism and Geography, it examines how various tropes, including Edenic narrative and Green Hell, for example, appear in texts by Rómulo Gallegos, Mário de Andrade, José Eustasio Rivera, Ciro Alegría, Alejo Carpentier, and Mario Vargas Llosa.  As these Latin American authors set out to establish a national identity unlike that imposed by European nations, they write exceptionalist representations of Amazonia into their novels through these tropes.  The dissertation explores how the novelas de la selva capitalize upon difference—from race, religion, myth, and language to the natural world itself — inscribing various ideologies onto the Amazonian landscape.

B.A., Spanish, 2002 Furman University
Concentration: Environmental Studies

Instructor, Department of Hispanic Studies
University of Kentucky, Lexington, KY
August 2002-present
Courses: Spanish 101, 102, 201, 202

Instructor, Spanish
Transylvania University, Lexington, KY
August 2005-present
Courses: Spanish 102
Syllabus and material selection and implementation

Course Leader, Spanish Labs
August-December 2004
Coordinated all Spanish labs and supervised lab instructors

Vice President, HIGSA (Hispanic Studies Graduate Student Association)
August 2005-May 2006

Hispanic Studies Division Coordinator, Kentucky Foreign Language Conference
August 2005-May 2006

Assistant Director, Kentucky Foreign Language Conference
June 2003-May 2005

Department of Hispanic Studies official site (2003-2005)
www.uky.edu/as/spa

Kentucky Foreign Language Conference (2003-2005)
www.uky.edu/as/kflc

Spanish Phonetics Class Project (2004)

Spanish 101 and 102 courses (2002-2003)
www.uky.edu/classes/spa/101

Computer Experience: proficient in Acrobat, Photoshop, Dreamweaver, PowerPoint, Blackboard, TurningPoint, Excel

“Nature and Regionalism in Galicia, Spain”
Fourteenth North American Interdisciplinary Conference on Environment and Community
Saratoga Springs, New York, February 19-21, 2004

“The Discourse of Nature: Problems of Representation in Horacio Quiroga’s ‘El Regreso de Anaconda’”
Fifth Biennial Conference of the Association for the Study of Literature and the Environment
Boston University, June 3-7, 2003

Professor Enrico Mario Santí
esant2@uky.edu, 859.257.7093

Professor Susan Larson
slarson@uky.edu, 859.257.1569

Professor Yanira Paz
yblaba0@uky.edu, 859.257.7100