Jonathan Arries, Associate Professor of Hispanic Studies, received his Ph.D. from the University of Wisconsin-Madison in Curriculum and Instruction with a specialty in Foreign Language Education. His dissertation title was “Ideology and Social Studies Textbooks Used in the Education of Hispanic Americans,” and his current area of research is the scholarship of teaching and learning, focusing on service-learning in two different locations: in the Latino community in the U.S. and also in Nicaragua. His most recent contribution to that field is an article titled Searching for Conscientização: Mentoring Fieldwork in International Service-learning, coauthored with alumna Lauren Jones and accepted by the online journal Reconstruction: Studies in Contemporary Culture. For the complete article, see http://reconstruction.eserver.org/091/contents091.shtml. Professor Arries was also associate editor of Juntos: Communty Partnerships in Spanish and Portuguese, Heinle, 2004. Professor Arries’ courses address such topics as action research in Nicaraguan schools, Hispanic Cultural Studies and service-learning in the Latino community, dialects of Spanish and national identity, farm worker culture and art, and medical interpretation for clinics that serve farm workers on the Eastern Shore of Virginia.
Publications
Juntos: Community Partnerships in Spanish and Portuguese (2004). Jonathan Arries, editor
The senior editor of “Juntos” , Josef Hellebrandt, finds inspiration in the following challenge to higher education: “Our great universities simply cannot afford to remain islands of affluence, self-importance and horticultural beauty in seas of squalor, violence and despair” (Harkavay). Hellebrandt, Lucía T. Varona (my fellow co-editor) and I set out to discover how faculty in Spanish and Hispanic Studies across the country traverse disciplinary boundaries, use technology and adapt new theories of learning as they design service-learning courses. It is our hope that this volume will help others develop their praxis, make our universities less insular, and develop the skills and intellect of students in the Humanities so they become engaged citizens who can work with Latino communities.