Co-Chair
208 Milbank Hall
Ext. 4-2061
wriosfon@barnard.edu
wr2142@columbia.edu

   Wadda C. Rios-Font received her BA in Hispanic Studies and English from The Johns Hopkins University in 1985, and her PhD in Romance Languages and Literatures from Harvard University in 1991. Before joining the Barnard faculty in 2005, she was Associate Professor at Brown University and Assistant Professor at the University of Rochester; she has also held visiting appointments at Berkeley, UCLA, and Rutgers.

  Her main academic specialization is Spanish peninsular literature and culture from 1800 to the present. Within this area, she focuses on the cultural history of modern Spain, and on issues of literary historiography. She is especially interested in the role of class and gender in processes of canonization, in popular and noncanonical genres, and in transatlantic cultural exchanges.

   Prof. Rios-Font has published two books: Rewriting Melodrama: The Hidden Paradigm in Modern Spanish Theater (Bucknell UP 1997), and The Canon and the Archive: Configuring Literature in Modern Spain (Bucknell UP 2004). She has also been published in journals including Hispanic Review, Hispania, MLN, and Revista de Estudios Hispánicos, and in the Cambridge History of Spanish Literature, among other venues.

   She is currently engaged in two major research projects. The first involves the relationship between different cultural fields in nineteenth-century Spain, and has already led to articles and courses on the semiotics of the construction of criminality and the early juridical system, and on the connection between literature and economics during the Bourbon Restoration. The second project looks at historical, political, economic, and cultural/literary exchanges between Spain and Puerto Rico during the late Spanish Empire (1815-1898), examining their bearing on early formulations of national identity in the island.

In addition to her work at SLAC, Professor Rios-Font is affiliated with the Comparative Literature Program, and teaches in the graduate program of the Department of Spanish and Portuguese at Columbia. Recent courses at Barnard include:
The Bourgeois Imagination in 19th-Century Spain (BC3442)
Angels and Seagulls: The Cultural Construction of Womanhood in Nineteenth-Century Spain (BC3159)
¿Contra Franco Vivíamos Mejor?: Literature and Culture of the Franco Dictatorship (BC3671)
Advanced Language through Content: Reading and Interpreting Narrative (W3300)
Advanced Language through Content: Issues in Contemporary Spain (W3300)

Related links: http://www.columbia.edu/cu/spanish/people/faculty/riosfont.html