Associate Professor of Spanish

Year Joined RCNJ: 2003

Contact Information

• Phone: (201) 684-7195
• Email: pstraile@ramapo.edu
• Office: B-206
• Office Hours: TF 1:30-3:00 pm; Also By Appt.

Education:

• B.A., Grove City College
• M.A. and Ph.D., Pennsylvania State University

Courses Offered:

• Spanish Language all levels and Spanish Literature

Teaching Interests:

• Inter-American Literatures: (Spanish American and Brazilian Literatures; Literatures of the United States; Afro-Hispanic Literatures)
• Literary Theory and Criticism
• Communicative Language Teaching and Second Language Acquisition
• Languages of Scholarship: English (Native speaker), Spanish (Near-native), Portuguese (Brazilian Near-native), French (Reading fluency)

Research Interests:

• Inter-American Literatures: (Spanish American and Brazilian Literatures; Literatures of the United States; Afro-Hispanic Literatures)
• Literary Theory and Criticism
• Communicative Language Teaching and Second Language Acquisition
• Languages of Scholarship: English (Native speaker), Spanish (Near-native), Portuguese (Brazilian Near-native), French (Reading fluency)

Scholarly Activity:

• “Gentrifying the Quilombo:  Ó Paí Ó, Afro-Brazilian Resistance, and Salvador’s Pelourinho,” Proceedings from conference, “Rusia e Iberoamerica en el mundo globalizante: historia y contemporaneidad” (Russia and Iberoamerica in the Globalized World:  History and   Contemporaneity”), at St. Petersburg State University, St. Petersburg, Russia, September 26-28, 2013, translated into Russian.
• “Myth and Ritual in The Hungry Woman: A Mexican Medea: Cherríe Moraga’s Xicana Indígena Interpretation of the Medea.” Medea: Mutations and Permutations of a Myth. Anne Simon and Heike Bartel, Eds. (Forthcoming – contract with Oxford’s Legenda Publishing.)
• “Indigenous Ecology and Chicanada Coalition Building in the dramatic works of Cherríe Moraga:  ‘Living Models’ for a Sustainable Future.” NACCS 35^th Annual Conference Proceedings, “Poesía, Baile y Canción: the Politics, Implications and Future of Chicana/os’ Culture Production.”  Ed. Mari Castañeda. San José State University  http://scholarworks.sjsu.edu/naccs/2008/.
• “The Pillory/Pelourinho in Open Air Museums in the U. S. and Brazil: A Site of Racism and Racial Reconciliation.” Erasing Public Memory: Race, Aesthetics, and Cultural Amnesia in the Americas (Voices of the African Diaspora). Eds. Joe Young and Jana Braziel. Macon, GA: Mercer University Press, 2007.

Presentations

• “Hacking the Border: Undocumented Migration and Technologies of Resistance in the Digital Media and Film of Alex Rivera.” University of Toronto, Scarborough campus, April 3, 2014.
• “Violent Death and Xicana Indígena Healing: Cherríe Moraga’s Digging Up the Dirt:  An Old Story of Loving to Death” NeMLA conference, April 7-11, 2011, Rutgers University, New Brunswick, N.J..
• “…to be seen as the Earth is seen…”: Environmental Crisis in the Autobiographical Writings of Cherríe Moraga.” presented at the LASA Latin American Studies Association conference in Toronto, Canada, October 2010.
• “Environmental Racism and Urban Decay:  Salvador, Bahia’s Pelourinho on Film.” presented at the LASA Latin American Studies Association conference in Rio de Janeiro, June 11-14, 2009.

Grants

• Ramapo Foundation Grant Proposal – “Faculty Colloquia through the Disciplines: Economic Crisis and The Worker: Historical Perspectives, Global Challenges”.