Professor Vilma Navarro-Daniels has been appointed as director of the School of Languages, Cultures, and Race within the College of Arts and Sciences, effective Oct. 1. Navarro-Daniels had been serving as interim director since August 2024.
The School of Languages, Cultures, and Race offers the degree of Bachelor of Arts in humanities, social sciences, comparative ethnic studies, and foreign languages and cultures (in French, Japanese, and Spanish). Also, professional second majors in French, German, Japanese, and Spanish. In addition, the academic unit has minors in film studies, popular culture, and global studies, among others, and certificates in core competencies in Chinese, French, German, Japanese, and Spanish, and in Latinx studies and race and ethnicity in the corporate world.
“It is from the humanities — as a systemic body of knowledge — that we pose the fundamental questions that concern human beings. I am excited about the possibility of deepening my commitment to the fields of study we foster in our academic unit, areas of knowledge that I consider crucial in the formation of our students: topics that promote reflection on human rights, justice, freedom, and diversity as values in themselves, disciplines that will allow our students to understand and appreciate other cultures, languages, ethnicities, worldviews, literary productions, artistic expressions, and more,” said Navarro-Daniels.
Navarro-Daniels’s background is a professor of Spanish and film studies. Her current research project titled, El Canto Nuevo or The Utopian Potential of Chilean Popular Song to Resist Dictatorial Violence (from 1974 onwards), is a book-length manuscript positioned as a utopian counter-discourse to the official narratives about national identity created during Augusto Pinochet’s dictatorship. She is a three-time recipient of the Marianna Merritt Matteson and Donald S. Matteson Distinguished Professor of Foreign Languages/Spanish, and she has held international offices serving as president and vice president of the Association of Gender and Sexuality Studies.
“Vilma’s dedication to the school, college, and university is exemplary. Her motivation to help develop students as future leaders for an ever-changing world through the School of Languages, Cultures, and Race will profoundly shape their academic journeys and elevate the department’s impact,” said Dean Courtney Meehan.
