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Guillén Awarded NEH Teaching Fellowship
Occidental College Spanish Professor Felisa Guillén has been awarded a Teaching Development Fellowship from the National Endowment for the Humanities for a project titled “Links to the Past: A Digital Connection to Spain’s Literary History.”
The $21,000 fellowship is one of only 16 granted to faculty at liberal arts colleges in all categories of the NEH’s latest competitive award cycle, and is one of the largest awards to a faculty member at a liberal arts college.
Teaching Development Fellowships, awarded in partnership with NEH’s Division of Research, support college and university teachers pursuing research aimed specifically at deepening their knowledge in the humanities to improve undergraduate teaching.
“My project is part of a larger effort to integrate technology into upper division Spanish literature classes to allow students to branch out into areas of history, politics, religion and various forms of artistic expression,” said Guillén. “Through the creation of a publically accessible website, I will provide students with the resources to gain a solid understanding of the complexities of the literature and culture of the Spanish medieval, renaissance and baroque periods.”
Guillén, a member of the Occidental faculty since 1990, received both her undergraduate and master’s degrees from the University of Madrid. She earned her Ph.D. at UC Santa Barbara. She teaches intermediate and advanced language courses, and classes on medieval and Golden Age Spanish literature, including the work of Miguel Cervantes.
Created in 1965 as an independent federal agency, the National Endowment for the Humanities supports learning in history, literature, philosophy, and other areas of the humanities. NEH grants enrich classroom learning, create and preserve knowledge, and bring ideas to life through public television, radio, new technologies, museum exhibitions, and programs in libraries and other community places.