Henry James Morello

221 Hawknest Rd., State College, PA 16801 /Cell: (814) 574-2770 /  morello@psu.edu

Education:

Ph.D. in Hispanic Studies, University of Illinois, 2006.                                        .

M.A. in Hispanic Studies, Illinois State University, 1998.   

B.A. in Theatre, Western Illinois University, 1989.                                

Areas of Specialization:

20th Century Latin American and Spanish Theatre, Literature, and Culture; Comparative Theatre Studies; Trauma Theory; Film and Media

PROFESSIONAL EXPERIENCE:

Associate Teaching Professor. Comparative Literature, Spanish, Latin American Studies. Pennsylvania State University, University Park, PA. (2017-Present).

Senior Lecturer. Comparative Literature, Spanish, Latin American Studies.  Pennsylvania State

University, University Park, PA. (2006-Current; Lecturer 2002-2006).

Director of Undergraduate Studies. Comparative Literature. Pennsylvania State University. University Park, PA (2015-2017)

Director and Honors Adviser of Global and International Studies Major. Pennsylvania State University. University Park, PA (2015-2016)

Graduate Teaching Assistant.  Department of Spanish, Italian, and Portuguese. University of

Illinois, Urbana, IL. (1999-2002).

Graduate Teaching Assistant.  Department of Foreign Languages. Illinois State University, Normal, IL. (1997-1998).

Teacher. Colegio Nueva Granada, Bogotá, Colombia. (1995-1996). Introduction to Theatre,

Language Arts (English).

Teacher Providence St. Mel. Chicago, Illinois (1994-1995) (Spanish)

PUBLICATIONS:

 

Edited Volume:

Editorial Volume Advisor. Contemporary Literary Criticism: Ricardo Piglia. Gale Cengage Press, 2016. 

With Sophia A. McClennen. Representing Humanity in an Age of Terror. West Lafayette, IN: Purdue UP, 2010.  (originally appeared as a special issue of CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture. <http://docs.lib.purdue.edu/clcweb/vol9/iss1/> (March 2007).

 

 

Journal Articles:       

“Voiceless Victims in Sin tetas no hay paraíso.” CLC Web: Comparative Literature and Culture (Forthcoming December, 2017)

“Fractured Narratives in El secreto de sus ojos and Zulu Love Letter.” (Submitted Cultural Critique Fall, 2017.)

 “Performing Torture in Argentina and Chile” Argus-a: Arts & Humanities. 5 (21) 2016. Web.

 “Time and Trauma in Ricardo Piglia’s The Absent City.” The Comparatist. 37 (1), 219-233 (May 2013).

“Aterciopelados’ Musical Testimony: Bearing Witness to Colombia’s Traumas.” Studies in Latin American Popular Culture. 30 (2012). (Winner of the Carlos and Guillermo Vigil Best Essay of the Year Prize)

“Autobiographical Fantasies:” Identity Construction in a Virtual World.” Americana: American Popular Culture.com.< http://www.americanpopularculture.com/emerging.htm >  (January 2012).

“Two Traumas One Aesthetic in Rodolfo Walsh’s Operación masacre and Moisés Kaufman’s The Laramie Project.” CLC Web: Comparative Literature and Culture, 12.1 (2011)

Revised Reprint (With Sophia A. McClennen). “Introduction.” Representing Humanity in an Age of Terror. West Lafayette, IN: Purdue UP, 2010. 1-14.

(With Sophia A. McClennen). “Introduction” in Representing Humanity in an Age of Terror. Thematic issue of CLC Web: Comparative Literature and Culture 9.1 <http://docs.lib.purdue.edu/clcweb/vol9/iss1/1/>.  (2007).

 “e-(re)volution: Zapatistas and the Emancipatory Internet.” A Contracorriente, 4.2 (2007): 54-76.

Reviews:

Review of Michelle Balaev’s The Nature of Trauma in American Novels. (Northwestern UP, 2012) in Simplokē 22 (1) 2014, 422-425.

Review of Stef Craps’ Postcolonial Witnessing: Trauma Out of Bounds. (Palgrave, 2013) in The Comparatist 38 (1) 2014, 345-347.

 

Translation:

“Novels of the End of the World,” by Carlos Franz.  Mediations, volume 22, Spring (1999): 144-49.

 

Research in progress

Books:

Posttraumatic Culture in Spanish and Latin American Theatre

 

This book studies the relationship between traumatic histories and cultural responses to social trauma. Through their stylistic features, the plays examined here manifest the symptoms of posttraumatic stress disorder.  These texts also, due to the performative nature of the genre, serve as tools for ameliorating the pain that societies have suffered.  Furthermore, this book employs work in the areas of cognitive and clinical psychology, neuroscience, illness studies, and Paul Ricoeur’s theories of time and narrative to better understand the cultural production of traumatized societies.

 
Vicarious Victims: Trauma Texts from the Next Generation

This manuscript looks at the way literature, film, music, and performance from the children of those who directly suffered trauma attempts to deal with those events. Preliminary research shows a distinct difference in the way the next generation approaches those traumas.

 

                Stages of Violence: Depictions of Violence in Latin American Theater

Starting with the circuses that depicted fist fights on stage and ending with sometimes vary graphic depictions of violence this book traces the history of as well as the possible reasons for the use of violence in Latin American theater.

Essays:

“From Cyber Resistance to Cyborg Resistance in Mexico: Zapatistas and Sleep Dealer

“Virtual Reality as Microcosm in Edmundo Paz Soldán’s El delirio de Turing.”

“Colombia’s Theater of Hope”

“Interview with Cesar Badillo of Teatro de Candelaria

“Yes, the River Talks: Testimonial Poetry in Si el río hablara”

 

FELLOWSHIPS AND AWARDS:

Recipient of NEH summer seminar award to attend seminar on Latin American Theater in Buenos Aires. 2015

Winner of the Carlos and Guillermo Vigil Best Essay of the Year Prize for “Aterciopelados’ Musical Testimony: Bearing Witness to Colombia’s Traumas.” Studies in Latin American Popular Culture. 30 (2012).

The Erasmus award for excellence in mentoring and advising in Comparative Literature – Penn State, 2011 and 2012.

Research Fellowship at Zentrum für interdiszipinäre Forschung, (Center for Interdisciplinary Research at Universität Bielefeld, Germany) Summer 2009.

Foreign Language and Area Studies (FLAS) Fellowship for the study of Portuguese, Summer 2001.

Incomplete List of Excellent Teachers – UIUC Fall 1999, Spring 2000, Spring 2001

Illinois State University Departmental Research Grant for Travel to Guadalajara, Mexico. Project Title: “Memory and History in Mexican Theatre,” 1998.

CONFERENCE PRESENTATIONS (Selected):

“The Contagious Nature of Trauma” Society for Comparative Literature and the Arts, October 2016

“Horror, BDSM, and Trauma Tourism: Questions of Voyeurism in Posttraumatic Latin America” Society for Comparative Literature and the Arts, October 2013

“Voices of the (un)dead in the Work of Edmundo Paz Soldán”

            American Comparative Literature Association, March 2013

“Visual Distortions: Space and Time in El secreto de sus ojos and Zulu Love Letter.”

Southern Comparative Literature Association, Fall 2012.

“History and Memory in Edmundo Paz Soldán’s Sueños digitales and Ricardo Piglia’s La ciudad ausente.” The Kentucky Foreign Language Conference, Spring 2012

 “The Magical in the Virtual Reality in Edmundo Paz Soldán’s El delirio de Turing.”

The Kentucky Foreign Language Conference, Spring 2011

“Time and Trauma in Ricardo Piglia’s La ciudad ausente,

American Comparative Literature Association, Spring 2011

“Virtual Reality as Microcosm in Edmundo Paz Soldán’s El delirio de Turing

Southern Comparative Literature Association, Fall 2010

“Digital Exile? Teaching and Studying Literature in the Online and Hybrid Classroom”

Roundtable, Southern Comparative Literature Association, Fall 2010

“Repackaging Pain: Colombia’s Tragedies for Global Consumption”

American Comparative Literature Association, April 2010.

“Sin senos no hay paraíso: The Socially Conscious Soap Opera?”

Southern Comparative Literature Association, October 2009

“Identity in Virtual Worlds” Zentrum für interdisziplinäre Forschung, Bielefeld, Germany: “E pluribus unum?”Multiculturalism and Beyond: Identity Politics, Cultural Difference, and Hybridity in the Americas, July 2009

“Voiceless Victims in Gustavo Bolívar Moreno’s “Sin tetas no hay paraíso”

American Comparative Literature Association, March 2009

“A More Personal Anonymity: Subjectivity in Virtual Worlds”

Modern Language Association, December 2008

“Colombia Calling: Punk Rock from London to Bogotá”

Southern Comparative Literature Association, October 2008

 “Finding the Self: Colombian Identity in the Music of Aterciopelados”

Latin American Studies Association, September 2007.

 “Two Traumas, One Aesthetic: Post-Traumatic Theory in Rodolfo Walsh’s Operación Masacre and Tectonic Theater’s The Laramie Project.” American Comparative Literature Association, Princeton, New Jersey, March 2006.

“Teaching Critical Thinking After 9/11.” 

Modern Language Association, December 2005.

“Witnessing History and Trauma in Latin America.”

Latin American Studies Association Conference November 2004.

“Echoing Silence: Responsible Politics In and Out of the Classroom.”

Modern Language Association, December 2003.

SCHOLARLY EVENTS CHAIRED/ORGANIZED (Selected):

Co-Organizer/Chair “The Lives of Others: Voyeurism and the Art of Witnessing” Society for Comparative Literature and the Arts, October 2013.

Organizer/Chair “Bending Time and Space: Narratives of Disruption and Distortion”

Southern Comparative Literature Association, October 2011.

Organizer/Chair. “Languages of Terror, Cultures of Trauma”

American Comparative Literature Association, March 2009.

Co-Organizer/Chair. "Terrorism, Violence, and Topographies of Otherness"

Southern Comparative Literature Association, September 2007.

Seminar Organizer/Chair. “Representing Humanity in an Age of Terror”

American Comparative Literature Association, March 2006.

Panel Organizer/Chair. “Performing Humanity in an Age of Repression”

Latin American Studies Association, March 2006.

Seminar Organizer/Chair. “Colonizing the Mind”

American Comparative Literature Association, March 2005.

Panel Chair. “We Work: Graduate Student Activists Making Over the MLA”

Modern Language Association, December 2001.

COURSES TAUGHT:

Spanish:

Survey of Spanish Literature Since 1700

Spanish and Latin American Film

Spanish American Literature through “Modernismo”

Iberian Civilization

Ibero-American Civilization

Spanish Composition

Intermediate Spanish Grammar

Spanish Conversation

Basic Spanish

Comparative Literature:

Introduction to World Literature

Introduction to World Drama

Narrative Theory: Film and Literature

International Film and Literature

Honors Introduction to Comparative Literature

Honors Comparative Human Rights

Literature of the Americas

Internet Course: International Film and Literature

                Global and International Studies:

Introduction to Globalization

Capstone course on Globalization

English:

                                Introduction to Film

Theatre Experience:

Professional Actor – Chicago Actor’s Ensemble, Oklahoma Shakespeare Festival, Torso Theatre

Plays Directed – La agonía del difunto, Bogotá, Colombia 1996

Play scripted – Still Life with Death, University produced in Debrecen Hungary; “The Killing Game” Citation recipient with Chicago Emerging Artists Project 1994.

SERVICE TO THE PROFESSION (SELECTED):

Director of Social Media– SCLA (2011-present)

Executive Board – Southern Comparative Literature Association (2009- 2011)

Book Review Editor Comparative Literature and Culture CLCWeb (2005-2008)

President – Graduate Student Caucus of the MLA – 2002-3

Web Master – Graduate Student Caucus of the MLA – 2004-6

DEPARTMENTAL AND UNIVERSITY SERVICE (SELECTED):

Curriculum Development Committee (2016-Present)

Director of Undergraduate Recruitment and Alumni Relations (2017-Present)

Leader: Study Abroad Puebla Mexico Program, Pennsylvania State University (Summer 2017)

Director of Undergraduate Studies, Pennsylvania State University (2015-2017)

Director of Global and International Studies Major, Pennsylvania State University (2015-Present)

Faculty Senate, Pennsylvania State University (2013-2016)

Undergraduate Committee, Pennsylvania State University (2012-2015)

Faculty Advisor, International Studies Program, Pennsylvania State University (2011-Present)

Teaching Mentor, Department of Comparative Literature – Pennsylvania State University (2008-Present)

Graduate Representative to Faculty – University of Illinois (2001-02)

Graduate Student Advisory Group - Representative – Illinois State University (1998)

Graduate Committee - Student Representative – Illinois State University (1997)

Fine Arts Planning Committee - Western Illinois University (1988)

 

PROFESSIONAL MEMBERSHIPS:

Modern Language Association

                Latin American Studies Association

                American Comparative Literature Association

                Society for Comparative Literature and the Arts

LANGUAGES:

                English – Native

                Spanish- Near-Native

                Portuguese – Research Competent

PUBLIC SERVICE:

                Habitat for Humanity Honduras (2011)

                Portable Assisted Study Sequence for students of migrant farm workers

ADDITIONAL SKILLS:

Taught Computer-Aided Courses

Created Online Teaching Courses

Web Editing and Design (Plone and Dreamweaver)

Digital Video Editing

Digital Humanities: Including digital applications in the classroom, collaboration with online publishing, and analysis of digital media culture.