Assistant Professor of Spanish M. Cecilia Hwangpo was awarded the Class of 1966 Career Development Award.
This award, established by the Class of 1966 on the occasion of its 25th reunion, provides a stipend and research funds to a Hamilton professor to use during the summer of 2005 "to enhance the quality of undergraduate teaching at Hamilton." Projects must seek to create an opportunity to develop new ideas and creative pedagogical approaches that might lead to new vitality in the classroom, studio or laboratory.
Hwangpo will use the award to study the phases of the large Argentinean social movement known as los Piqueteros and why groups like this do not exist in other Latin American countries. This group comprises unemployed and underemployed Argentineans and includes numerous smaller groups that work to resolve the economic crisis in the nation. Hwangpo will study the role of media in the evolution of los Piqueteros, as well as film and literature of Argentina. She hopes that a student will share her interest in the subject and, through an Emerson Grant, Hwangpo and the student will collaborate on the research project.
Hwangpo hopes to create a new interdisciplinary course at Hamilton "based on the historical events and the political economy of corruption and globalization using non-fictional literary texts and 'live' materials such as newspaper articles and TV reports." Hwangpo also believes this concept could be developed further and become a Sophomore Seminar class.
