The College of Liberal Arts & Sciences has awarded funding to several faculty members through the Study in a Second Discipline Program, which gives professors time and support to push beyond their primary discipline and cultivate new scholarly tools.
The program provides funding so that faculty members can immerse themselves in a second discipline and bring fresh perspectives back to their research, teaching, and creative work.
This year's recipients include Eduardo Ledesma, a professor in the Department of Spanish & Portuguese.
Ledesma researches Spanish and Latin American film and media. His early academic foundation began at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, where he studied civil engineering as an undergrad before receiving a master’s in structural engineering from the Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya in Barcelona, Spain. He also received master’s and PhD degrees from Harvard in Spanish and Portuguese and Romance languages and literatures, respectively.
In studying architecture, Ledesma further enhances his current scholarship in Spanish cinema and returns to Barcelona, this time combining his early academic pursuits with his extensive work in cultural studies.
Past awardees of this program include Brett Ashley Kaplan, a professor of comparative literature and the director of the Initiative in Holocaust, Genocide, and Memory Studies, who applied her Study in a Second Discipline award to study creative writing in 2020-21. The resulting literary novel, “Rare Stuff” (2022), takes readers through a search for a missing person in real and magical universes. She is currently working on another book.
Editor's note: A version of this story first appeared on the College of LAS website.