Special Event
Celebrating 400 years of Cervantes and Shakespeare! -- Join EKU Professors Manuel Cortés-Castañeda (Department of Languages, Cultures and Humanities), Ezra Engling (Department of Languages, Cultures and Humanities) & Kevin Rahimzadeh (Department of English and Theatre) as we celebrate the works of Miguel de Cervantes and William Shakespeare on the 400th anniversary of their deaths in 1616.
Program:
Manuel Cortés-Castañeda: "Language, Literature and Nationalism: The Case of Quijote"
Ezra Engling: "The Chaotic Mind of the Loco-cuerdo (the not-so-crazy man): Don Quijote and Hamlet"
Kevin Rahimzadeh: "Some Disorderly Thoughts on Order and Chaos in Shakespeare’s Plays."
Manuel Cortés-Castañeda was born in Colombia, and grew up in the Amazon Jungle where he studied in a Catholic seminary ruled by Italian priests. Twenty years later he moved to Bogotá to study Psychology, Spanish language and literature. After graduation he worked as an actor and director. His main interest was the theater of the absurd, especially Beckett's works. In 1987 he moved to Spain to begin his doctoral work on modern poetry at the University Complutense. Dr. Cortés-Castañeda is an Associate Professor of Spanish at Eastern Kentucky University. Dr. Cortés-Castañeda writes poetry, short stories and essays on poetry and films. He has published four books:Trazos al margen (Notes in the Margin), Madrid 1990. Prohibido fijar avisos (Post No Bills), Madrid 1991. Caja de iniquidades (Den of Iniquities), Chile 1995. El espejo del otro (The Mirrored Other) Paris/Bogotá 1999. He has also been included in various anthologies: Trayecto contiguo (Parallel Paths), Madrid 1994, Los pasajeros del Arca(Travellers of the Ark), Argentina 1994, Libro de bitácora (Ship’s Log), Argentina 1996, Donde mora el amor (Where Love Abides), Argentina 1997. Dr. Cortés-Castañeda has written several articles about Hispanic literature. Some of them published in magazines such as Imagen, (Venezuela), Con-textos (Colombia), andANQ: A Quarterly Journal of Short Articles, Notes, and Reviews (Washington). He has written more than forty articles on poetry and short narrative, some of them about the most outstanding Hispanic poets (Borges, Arreola, Coral Bracho, Armando Romero, Alvaro Mutis, Fernado Arbelaez, etc.) His poems have been included in leading Poetry Magazines: Mississippi Review, Textos: Works and Criticism, Mascaluna, Brujula y Compaz, Dolor y Literatura, Folios etc. Currently Manuel has completed two more poetry books: Appetizers and Metáfora de la desnudez total (A Total Nude Metaphor).
Born in Jamaica, Dr. Ezra Engling, professor of Spanish and former chair of the foreign languages and humanities department, knows six languages, has lived in four continents and is published on three. As a senior Fulbright research fellow in Morocco, he analyzed representations of Moorish characters in Spanish Golden Age literature. Other academic interests include medieval literature, cultural and gender studies, learning technologies, translation, Caribbean dialectology and reggae. Engling’s musical gifts are significant. After winning regional and national awards as a tenor soloist in Jamaica, he continued high level amateur performances in the U.S., singing at Princeton and Texas A&M. Joining Eastern’s faculty in 2006, he also joined the Lexington Singers, participating in the 2007 Brazil tour.
Engling’s tenure as department chair of foreign languages and humanities saw increased enrollment and staffing; restoration of Arabic study; a new major in comparative humanities; introduction of online, hybrid and service-learning offerings; and a significant upgrade of the media lab. His dedication to a new Spanish translation program, ongoing work for a Japanese consortium with Kentucky universities, and extensive involvement with Black History Month and the Latino Student Association enrich multiculturalism on the Eastern campus.
Classes, labs and monthly tertulias [chats] create a warm, supportive Spanish-speaking campus community. Nominations for the Teaching Excellence Award gratefully acknowledge a “master teacher” with “a talent for creating questions that demand close reading and analysis,” while his international experience gives in-depth, integrated views of foreign affairs. True, he gives abundant homework, students note, but Engling’s generous enthusiasm compensates. To create a mental picture of the great epochs of Spanish history, he invites students to movie viewing days at his home with elaborate, delicious meals, Spanish snacks and Spanish-speaking guests to practice conversation skills. Dr. Ezra Engling’s goals are “a reach,” one student wrote, but this master teacher also builds the “scaffolding” to reach those goals with a clear understanding of a great, diverse culture.
Dr. Kevin Rahimzadeh has taught in the Department of English and Theatre at EKU since 1997. He holds a BSFS in International Relations from Georgetown University and an M.A. and Ph.D. in Renaissance and Medieval Literature from the University of North Carolina. Nearly all of Dr. Rahimzadeh’s interests involve the word “early”: he teaches Early World Literature, Early British Literature, Early Drama, and various other courses in earlier periods, such as Shakespeare and John Milton. When an especially professorial mood strikes, he likes to tell to students that he seldom pays attention to anything written after 1674, which is much the lie but fun to insist upon. After many years of great if intermittent effort, he has yet to compose a single decent poem. “Someday,” he tells himself. “Someday…..”
Sponsored by the Department of English & Theatre, the Department of Languages, Cultures & Humanities, and the Honors Program
Published on September 15, 2016