Looking Ahead to Hispania 2013

It is exciting to work on the 96th volume of the AATSP’s journal Hispania. I am honored to begin my second term as Editor. The March issue before you highlights a series of articles about film from multiple perspectives. You can look forward to more about film over the next several years because of our plans for the 2015 Special Focus Issue: The Scholarship of Film and Film Studies.

I am delighted to announce that three distinguished scholars—David W. Foster of Arizona State University, Benjamin Fraser of the College of Charleston, and Bill VanPatten of Michigan State University—accepted my invitation to collaborate as Guest Editors for the Special Focus Issue on The Scholarship of Film and Film Studies.

To that end, we invite you to submit literary, linguistic, and pedagogical manuscripts for peer review that relate to the Scholarship of Film and Film Studies in Spanish and Portuguese. The Scholarship of Film and Film Studies encompasses the teaching of film in the classroom, film as text for language learners of all levels, theory and film, literary works in film, linguistic aspects of film, and related concepts. The deadline to submit a manuscript is January 1, 2014.

In addition to the future Special Focus Issue, the first Special Focus Issue of my terms as Hispania’s Editor will debut in June 2013. Just prior to the 2013 Annual Meeting of the AATSP in San Antonio, Texas, watch for the publication of our Special Focus Issue on The Scholarship of Community Engagement in issue 96.2 (June 2013). Our Guest Editors Ethel Jorge (Pitzer College) and Josef Hellebrandt (Santa Clara University) have done a superb job editing and selecting the unique and timely content for the issue, which contains research studies and practical models for educational community partnerships both locally and globally from the perspective of language learning.

In Hispania 96.3 (September 2013), there will be a cluster of essays focused on Spanglish that are being edited by Hispania’s Book/Media Review Editor Domnita Dumitrescu. The essays are based on the AATSP panel presentations at the Modern Language Association Annual Convention (2013). In December 2013, Hispania will roll out what we plan as a regular feature each December: “State of the State” articles. Our first State of the State article will be by linguist Carrie Bonilla (University of Pittsburgh) and contains an overview and update about the relationship between tense and aspect. I invite you to share with me your ideas for need areas for future State of the State articles, so that we can publish research of high interest and utility for those who teach Spanish and Portuguese.

Finally, I am thrilled to announce that there will be a new award sponsored by the AATSP. The award is the brainchild of Associate Editor Bill VanPatten and has the enthusiastic support of Hispania’s Editorial Board. The AATSP’s Executive Council has sanctioned a new “AATSP Outstanding Scholarly Publication Award.” All details about the award criteria and application procedures will be available on the AATSP website soon.