David Phillip Laraway
— Associate Professor
Spanish
Contact Information
Office: 3190B JFSB
Phone: 422-3807
Email: david_laraway@byu.edu
Commonly Taught Courses Spanish 339 (Introduction to Spanish Literature)
Spanish 355 (Spanish American Culture)
Spanish 451 (Survey of Spanish American Literature)
Spanish 455R/655R (Seminar in Spanish American Poetry)
Spanish 459R/650R (Borges, Philosophy, and New Media)
Semester Schedule: Winter 2013 Office Hours: TTh 10-10:50 or by appointment
Vita: Link to Vita
Biography:
David Laraway received his PhD in Romance Studies (Hispanic Literature) from Cornell University in 1998, writing his doctoral dissertation on the notion of place in the works of Jorge Luis Borges. In addition to Árbol de imágenes: nueva historia de la poesía hispanoamericana (with Merlin H. Forster), he is the author of numerous articles and book chapters on a wide range of topics in Hispanic literature and culture, from modernista poetry to contemporary Basque narrative to Chilean cyberpunk. He is an erstwhile doctoral student in Philosophy at the University of Utah (completing several seminars and passing the PhD qualifying exam) and is currently pursuing another PhD in Media and Communication at the European Graduate School in Saas-Fee, Switzerland, where he has taken seminars from Simon Critchley, Slavoj Zizek, Michael Hardt, and Lev Manovich, among others. In addition to his interests in Hispanic studies, he takes an active interest in philosophy and new media. He is working intermittently on three separate book projects, including a book on Borges and atheism; another on outsider art and music; and a third on the new polytheism, tentatively entitled The Return of the Gods (one of these—he doesn’t yet know which—will also serve as his dissertation at EGS).
Dr. Laraway currently serves as the chair of the Department of Spanish and Portuguese at Brigham Young University, where he teaches advanced undergraduate courses on Hispanic literature and culture and graduate seminars on topics such as modernismo, contemporary Latin American poetry, and Borges and Philosophy. He is looking forward to teaching an Honors course on Outsider Art and Music in Fall 2013 and plans to develop a course on Basque literature and culture in the near future as well.
Degrees: PhD, European Graduate School (2014, expected) [Media and Communication]
PhD coursework and qualifying exam, University of Utah (2001-2003) [Philosophy]
PhD, Cornell U. (1998) [Romance Studies, with an emphasis in Hispanic Literatures]
MA, Brigham Young U. (1994) [Spanish]
BA, Brigham Young U. (1992) [Philosophy and Spanish]
Interests:
Hispanic Literature and Culture (Spanish American poetry Borges; contemporary Spanish American narrative; Basque literature and culture)
Philosophy and Critical Theory
New Media