Jared White
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“En el mar de la duda en que bogo— Gustavo Adolfo Bécquer “Rima VIII”
ni aún sé lo que creo;
sin embargo estas ansias me dicen
que yo llevo algo
divino aquí dentro.”
Faculty Information
Additional Faculty Information for Jared White
Education
Ph.D., Spanish, University of California, Irvine, 2015
M.A., Spanish, Brigham Young University, 2008
B.A., Spanish, Brigham Young University, 2006
Memberships
Association for Hispanic Classical Theater
Modern Language Association
American Association of Teachers of Spanish and Portuguese
Publications
“In the Beginning, There Were Dragon(cillo)s: Using Shadow Puppetry to Engage Young Audiences.” Co-authored with Dr. Esther Fernández, Dr. Jonathan Wade, and Dr. Jason Yancey. Open Library of Humanities 8.1 (2022). doi: https://olh.openlibhums.org/article/id/4791
“An Everyman Knight Errant: Performing Don Quijote in Las cortes de la muerte.” eHumanista/Cervantes 8 (2020): 192-202.
“When Shadows Move: The Art of Outreach through Shadow Puppets.” Co-authored with Dr. Esther Fernández, Dr. Jonathan Wade, and Dr. Jason Yancey. Living the Comedia. Essays in Honor of Amy Williamsen. Vol. II. New Orleans: UP of the South, 2020. 27-39.“Inaudible Resistance: How La Cava Found Her Voice.” MLN 132.2 (2017): 255-71.
“An Anonymous Don Juan: The Meaning of the Proper Name.” Gestos 58 (2014): 51-63.
Interviews
“A Passion for Puppetry.” By Stephanie Gordon. Student Stories Blog. Hillsdale College. Hillsdale, Michigan. Dec. 2021.
“Newest Spanish Professor Is the ‘Dream Colleague.’” By Elyse Hawkins. The Collegian. Hillsdale College. Hillsdale, Michigan. Oct. 2021.
“Bringing the Classroom to the Community: Jared S. White.” By Cody Holtgrewe. The Tack. Buena Vista University. Storm Lake, Iowa. Oct. 2019.
“Investing in Cultural Knowledge: Wythe Finalist Dr. Jared White.” By Aubrey Anderson. The Tack. Buena Vista University. Storm Lake, Iowa. May 2019.
Biography
Not a day goes by that I do not speak, read, or write in Spanish. As the official language used in twenty countries and spoken by more than 550 million people around the globe, I feel incredibly blessed to share my knowledge and expertise of the Spanish language and the cultures that speak it. Some of my favorite teaching moments derive from genuine learning opportunities both inside and outside the classroom. From community engagement and school visits to conversational practice and textual analysis, I strive to create authentic experiences that challenge my students to express themselves in a foreign language, allow them to appreciate new cultures and traditions, and enable them to think critically and coherently about our multilingual world and its citizens.
To better provide educational service opportunities for my students, I cofounded a puppetry troupe, Dragoncillo, in 2018. Through Dragoncillo, we have partnered with our students to present informative outreach performances at K-12 schools and theater festivals in Iowa, Florida, Michigan, North Carolina, Texas, and Austria. During these performances, we use imaginative, bilingual storytelling to feature shadow puppet shows that both educate and entertain. The Dragoncillo project and the unique community-engagement experiences it has fostered have been a highlight of my career thus far.
As a scholar, I am consistently drawn to Spanish theater. Although I specialize in early modern Iberia, I have also studied and written about Spain’s nineteenth and twentieth centuries. In my research, I consider Spanish theater as a collective whole or, to borrow an idea from José Ortega y Gasset, a dramatic vertebral column that stretches far back into the Middle Ages and extends well into the twenty-first century. This itinerant approach to research, while centered on theatrical works, has enabled me to publish research from diverse periods of time: from medieval romances and the Golden Age comedia to modern dramatic forms such as Valle-Inclán’s esperpento and Buero Vallejo’s posibilismo.
When I’m not teaching, researching, or acting, you can find me watching sports (most likely soccer or basketball), reading a good book, or spending time with my wife, Emily, and our four boys: Maxwell, Sean, Dylan, and Rory.