Professor Named to Digital Humanities Institute
Yamile Silva, Ph.D., professor and chair of the Department of World Languages and Cultures at The University of Scranton, has been accepted to the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) and the United Kingdom’s Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) Spanish Paleography and Digital Humanities Institute. The NEH/AHRC joint initiatives seek to advance digital scholarship.
Participation in the institute, which runs from Nov. 1 to Dec. 17, will benefit Dr. Silva’s research and teaching on 16 to 18 century manuscripts in Spanish. The six-week, on-line institute will provide her with specialized training from digital humanities practitioners from the University of Texas at Austin (LLILAS Benson Latin American Studies and Collections) and Lancaster University on several open-source tools that can be used to facilitate collaborative research and to visualize data in colonial texts. She can also include these digital tools in the courses she teaches at the University.
Dr. Silva is a member of the Executive Council of the Colonial Section, Latin American Studies Association, the largest professional association in the world for individuals and institutions engaged in the study of Latin America. She also serves as former president of the academic organization Association of Gender and Sexuality Studies and has served on the Curator Council of the Festival de la Palabra, San Juan, Puerto Rico, since 2013.
Dr. Silva joined the faculty at The University of Scranton in 2009. She received the University’s Excellence in Advancing Global Learning Award in 2014. At Scranton, Dr. Silva served as director of the Latin American Studies Program from 2013-2018 and has been an associated faculty member of the Women Studies Program since 2010. She also serves as director of the Intersession Study Abroad Program in Puebla, México (Universidad Iberoamericana) and the Summer Spain Program (Universidad de Navarra).
Dr. Silva’s recent books include Agencia, Historia y Empoderamiento Femenino (2018) coedited with Diane Martin, Ph.D., and Eva Paris, Ph.D.; La sonrisa del paisaje. Diarios de Abigail Mejía (2020); the anthology Palabras: Dispatches from the Festival de la Palabra (2014), coedited with Hank Willenbrink, Ph.D., associate professor of English and theatre at The University of Scranton; the monograph issues Raza, género y diáspora en el Caribe (2017) and Las utopias en la literatura (2018), both co-edited with Daniel Torres, Ph.D.
Dr. Silva earned her Ph.D. and master’s degrees in Hispanic literatures and cultures from the University of Massachusetts and her bachelor’s degree in modern languages and linguistics from Los Andes University in Bogota, Colombia.