News and Achievements

Carmen Lugo Lugo’s essay titled “The Multiple Timelines and One Love of a Puerto Rican in the Diaspora” has been published by Latinx Talk as part of the series “Reflection on the Puerto Rican Diaspora, which she is also editing. While we will never have a full picture of diasporic Puerto Ricans, the essays in this series—all written by authors born in Puerto Rico who later left (“se fueron pa’ fuera”)—contribute to an ongoing discussion on this topic.

The School of Languages, Cultures, and Race invites you to join us at the SLCR Lecture Series on Monday, October 26, where we will present research produced at WSU on the politics and science of understanding the invisible. Two researchers will explore, from different disciplinary perspectives, how the boundaries of knowledge are drawn and contested. From UFO testimonies in Cuba and Puerto Rico as sites of colonial critique and planetary consciousness to the astrophysical methods used to detect black holes and supermassive formations beyond the reach of light, the talks will offer a reflection on what is at stake when we ask what lies beyond the threshold of the visible.

On September 25th, SLCR hosted their Open House event and welcomed around 150 students who had the chance to practice Japanese and Chinese calligraphy; attend a tea ceremony; play pétanque, Catan, trivia and lotería; make origami and zines; share their interest in world languages; express their personal and communal motivations for engaging with ethnic studies; and enjoy a variety of international food, like Colombian arepas!

The Palouse French Film Festival will present its 16th edition in October at the Kenworthy Performing Arts Centre in Moscow, Idaho. Tickets are free for students, and $5 per film or $12 for a festival pass for the general public

Vilma Navarro-Daniels’s article, “De un orden recibido a uno por construir: Lo crudo, lo cocido, lo podrido de Marco Antonio de la Parra”, published in Contextos: Estudios de Humanidades y Ciencias Sociales, no. 55, has recently been awarded Best Article Written by a Professor by the Canadian Association of Hispanists.

On August 27, Dr. Etna Ávalos presented the edited volume Habitar la diferencia: corporalidades disidentes en la literatura latino/americana de Estados Unidos (Albatros Ediciones, 2026) on Hablemos Escritoras.

On Thursday, September 3rd , Amanda Hussein, Ph.D. in American Studies and Culture, gave a presentation entitled “Greener Grass and Fading Color” for the V International Conference “FEmale Creations in Literary and Intercultural Education” V CICELI. The presentation formed part of her dissertation in which she examined the depth of colonized consciousness seen in specific literary pieces in both the Dominican Republic and the United States.

Xinmin Liu, Associate Professor of Chinese-Pullman, has co-edited with Hua Li the volume Ecocriticism and Speculative Fiction in East Asia. “This volume illustrates Asian speculative fiction’s potential to interrogate and inspire humanity’s ecological and ethical responsibilities, seeking to fill a major lacuna in previous academic literature around ecocriticism in speculative fiction.”

Nicole Scoggins spent five months in Paris as a part of the Study Abroad program. The fall application for the Gilman scholarship is due Oct. 1.

Seventy-three students at the Showcase for Undergraduate Research and Creative Activities (SURCA) 2026 were the recipients of 65 awards totaling $14,000.

Three WSU undergraduate students, Nicole Diefenbach, Taylor Page, and Katy Touretsky, have been named recipients of the Barry M. Goldwater Scholarship.

Three undergraduate Washington State University students traveled to Geneva, Switzerland, last month to take part in the Global Model WHO 2025 conference.

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.

Publicly Engaged Fellow, Ashley Wells, has piloted “Grace and Grounding: A Dialogue Series on Black Women, Mental Health, and the Church.”