Margarita Vargas to Head UB Department of Modern Languages And Literatures

BUFFALO, N.Y. -- Margarita Vargas, Ph.D., associate professor in the University at Buffalo Department of Modern Languages and Literatures, has been named chair of the department for a three-year term.

In this position, she will administer UB's undergraduate- and graduate-degree programs in French, German, Italian and Spanish, as well as undergraduate minors in Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Polish, Portuguese and Russian.

Vargas, who directs UB's new Latino/Latina Studies Program, also will oversee the operation of the department's World Languages Institute, which offers instruction in American Sign Language, Arabic, Danish, (Modern) Greek, Haitian Creole, Hebrew, Hindi, Indonesian, Irish, Swahili, Thai, Turkish, Ukrainian and Vietnamese.

A UB faculty member since 1985, Vargas is a cum laude graduate of Yale University and received master's and doctoral degrees in Spanish from the University of Kansas. Her work has been published in major literary journals here and abroad, and she has translated a number of works, including "The House on the Beach" and "The Night," both by Juan Garcia Ponce, and fictional works by Ines Arrodondo.

A 1995 recipient of the SUNY Chancellor's Award for Excellence in Teaching, Vargas has main research and teaching interests in women's theater, Mexican literature, Spanish-American theater, feminism and postmodernism. She is developing a course in Latina/Latino theater.

She has received a number of grants and fellowships, including a Lilly Endowment Teaching Fellowship, a Fulbright-Hays Fellowship and a travel grant from the American Council of Learned Societies.

Vargas, a resident of Buffalo, has been a member of the editorial board of the journal Latin American Theatre Review since 1992. She is a member of the Modern Language Association, for which she was an assembly delegate from 1995-97; the American Association of Teachers of Spanish and Portuguese, and Feministas Unidas.