Contact Information

Office: 3165 JFSB

Phone: 422-3807

E-mail: david_laraway@byu.edu

I joined the Department of Spanish and Portuguese at BYU after receiving my PhD in Romance Studies from Cornell University in 1998, specializing in Hispanic literature. I regularly teach courses including Latin American Culture, Introduction to Hispanic Literature, and Survey of Spanish American Literature, as well as specialized courses and graduate seminars on various topics in Latin American poetry, Borges, and philosophical issues in literature. In addition to Árbol de imágenes: nueva historia de la poesía latinoamericana, (University of Mississippi Press, 2007) and a handful of articles on poetry, I have published a number of articles on Borges and other writers who have shown up on my radar screen for one reason or another, from the well known (Mariano Azuela, Martín Luis Guzmán, Benito Pérez Galdós, José Asunción Silva) to the more obscure (contemporary Mexican writer Luis Arturo Ramos, Chilean writer Jaime Collyer, and Costa Rican poet Eunice Odio). I take an active interest in philosophy in general and have been an occasional part-time PhD student in philosophy at the University of Utah, taking doctoral seminars when circumstances permit.

I should finally mention the personal, and increasingly professional, interest that I take in Basque and Basque-American literature and culture. My own family history is connected to the wave of immigration from the Gernika region of Euskal Herria to the Boise area at the turn of the last century and I have recently begun to lay the groundwork for future teaching and research along these lines. I have published a number of articles on contemporary Basque writer Ramon Saizarbitoria and am planning to teach courses in Basque and Basque-American literature and culture.

Degrees

BA, Brigham Young U., 1992;
MA, Brigham Young U., 1994;
PhD, Cornell U., 1998

Interests

Latin American literature and culture (poetry, Borges)
Basque and Basque-American literature and culture
Philosophy