Ana María Díaz Burgos Earns Excellence in Teaching Award

Oberlin College and Conservatory has recognized six faculty members with Excellence in Teaching Awards for the 2021-22 academic year. The annual Excellence in Teaching Award recognizes faculty in the college and conservatory who have demonstrated sustained and distinctive excellence in their teaching at the college and conservatory.

Associate Professor of Hispanic Studies Ana María Díaz Burgos specializes in Spanish and Spanish American early modern literature and culture with an emphasis on gender studies and social history. Her research explores the impact of institutional practices and legal systems on the creation of female subjectivities in Hispanic territories. Her work has appeared in a variety of academic journals and edited volumes.

Most recently she published the chapter “Marital Pains, Heterodox Cures: Alternative Economies of Sorcery and Witchcraft in the Inquisition of Cartagena de Indias” in Women Facing the Inquisition (2021) and co-edited the dossier “Yo llana estoy’: jerarquías, transgresiones y despliegues de género en América hispana colonial (1492-1898)” for Revista de Estudios de Género y Sexualidades (2022). Her book Tráfico de saberes: Agencia femenina, hechicería e inquisición en Cartagena de Indias 1610-1614 (Iberoamericana-Vervuert 2020) studies the first inquisitorial prosecution of female sorcery in early seventeenth-century Cartagena de Indias. 

“Associate Professor Ana María Díaz Burgos brings her superb pedagogical skills to a wide range of language, literature, culture, film and history courses in Hispanic Studies, while making the most of our extraordinary Special Collections and Allen Memorial Art Museum resources,” says Dean of the College of Arts and Sciences David Kamitsuka. “Ana has a rare talent for highlighting the contemporary relevance and significance of centuries and cultures often far removed from our students’ present-day experiences.”

Díaz Burgos teaches Spanish language classes and early modern literature and culture courses in the Department of Hispanic Studies, some of which are cross-referenced with the Gender, Sexuality, and Feminist Studies Program. Collaborating with the Special Collections and the Allen Memorial Art Museum has played an essential role in her courses to increase students' opportunities to engage with class material. For instance, students in her classes this spring have written bilingual labels and are planning public programming initiatives for the exhibition “What is in a Spell?: Love Magic, Healing and Punishment in the Early Modern Hispanic World,” which she and Hannah Kinney, Curator of Academic Programs, are curating.

"I am truly honored to receive this award along with this amazing group of peers, Díaz Burgos says. “I am thankful to my students' curiosity and willingness to explore topics that at times seem completely foreign to them. I am inspired by the generosity and openness of my colleagues inside and outside my department and from the Special Collections and the Allen Memorial Art Museum, from whom I continuously learn how to create spaces for conversation and debate with and for students. This recognition is a motivation to continue building bridges that go beyond the classroom."