Dr. Gustavo Geirola, the Summer Seminar director, and Dr. Lola Proaño, Summer Seminar co-director, have been working together for many years (for their résumés click on CV Dr. Gustavo Geirola / Dr. Lola Proaño Gómez). 


     Their interdisciplinary scholarship allows them to approach the Seminar’s topic appropriately because they have been researching and teaching Latin American theater for a long time at the undergraduate and graduate level; their publications are very well-known and respected not only in Latin America but also in the United States and Europe. Furthermore, Dr. Proaño and Dr. Geirola’s approach to theater are perfectly complementary: while Dr. Proaño has been oriented to explore how political discourses of resistance to dictatorships (particularly in Argentina 1966-73 and again in Argentina 1977-83) have impacted aesthetical responses to oppressive socio-historical circumstances, Dr. Geirola was involved in producing and researching theater since 1981, whether student productions, amateur or professional productions.

They were also working together and producing Latin American plays in Los Angeles for many years at Pasadena City College and Whittier College. The director’s and co-director’s expertise has been welcomed at many international conferences and panels in the United States, Europe, Latin America, and even in China. Certainly, in May and June 2010, Dr. Geirola have lectured about “Lacanian Psychoanalysis and Contemporary Western Theatre” to faculty in the Foreign Language Department at Tsinghua University, Beijing, and faculty and students on students “Asian Cultures in Latin America” at Zhongyuan University of Tecnology, Zhengzhou, China. 

Dr. Gustavo Geirola 

Dr. Geirola is a Full Professor at Whittier College, got two teaching awards: the Teaching Assistant Excellence Award in Recognition of Outstanding Service, April 22nd, 1993, at Arizona State University and the Nerhood Teaching Excellence Award, at Whittier College in 2004. In 2006 he became Full Professor and in 2008 got the Hazel Cooper Jordan Chair in Arts and Humanities given by Whittier College. In 2012 he was awarded by Sigma Delta Pi National Collegiate Hispanic Honor Society with the prestigious Orden de Don Quijote: “The highest honor conferred by Sigma Delta Pi, the Order of Don Quijote recognizes exceptional and meritorious service in the fields of Hispanic scholarship, the teaching of Spanish, and the promotion of good relations between English-speaking countries and those of Spanish speech.” Carlos Fuentes, Elena Poniatowska, Seymour Menton, Ernesto Cardenal are the prominent scholars who were also awarded with that meritorious Orden.

Dr. Lola Proaño-Gómez

Dr. Proaño Gómez has participated in many Theater Conferences in the United States, Spain, England, Germany, Ecuador, Uruguay and Argentina, as well as taught Graduate and Doctoral Seminars at the University of the Republic, Montevideo (Maestría de Teatro Latinoamericano, 2014), at the National University of Buenos Aires (UBA, 2014) (Doctorado de Filosofía y Letras), at the National University of La Plata, Buenos Aires (Maestría de Historia y Memoria, 2012), and at the IUNA, 2011 (National University Institute of the Arts). The main subject of her lectures has always been the impact of politics and history on theater as well as the presence of a new staging in the light of feminist theories. Dr. Proaño Gómez brings to the Seminar a multidisciplinary approach since she holds a degree in Philosophy besides her Ph.D. in theater and poetry. As she is now living in Argentina and visiting Ecuador regularly, she is very familiar with the theater world in Buenos Aires and Quito. Dr. Proaño, Full Professor at Pasadena City College, was nominated for a teaching award at Pasadena City College and also got the “Armando Discépolo Award” in 2013 for her scholarship, teaching career and promotion of Latin American theater worldwide. This prestigious award is annually given to scholars by the University of Buenos Aires at the International Conference on Iberoamerican and Argentine Theater held in Buenos Aires every August. 


Undoubtedly, Dr. Geirola’s and Dr. Proaño Gómez’s scholarship and expertise will make this Summer Seminar a true success for participants.