Brian Gollnick is Associate Professor of Spanish and Portuguese and Latin American Studies and Director of the Latin American Studies Program at the University of Iowa. 

Brian works on modern Mexican and Latin American cultural history from a perspective broadly influenced by the thinking of Antonio Gramsci. He is particularly concerned with the interactions between cultures and with how cultural expression relates to social justice. These interests also influence his teaching, which aims to expose students to historical perspectives through objects of study including music, film, art, and literary texts. The study of literature forms part of a Liberal Arts education aimed at helping students find new interests and encouraging the skills and passions necessary for a life of sustained learning and development. This reflects his own experience. He started at university with the goal of becoming a research scientist, but the first two years of undergraduate showed a deeper calling in the Humanities. The greatest gift any teacher can give is the space to make that kind of discovery. Regardless of their career goals, students in his classes are asked to look at problems from unexpected angles and build confidence in their ability to assimilate new ideas and information. As all his research and teaching addresses how ideas move between cultures, He has started to work in recent years with students from our MFA program in Literary Translation. Both of Brian's parents were from Wisconsin, but they raised him in the Pacific Northwest. Brian's undergraduate education in Comparative Literature is from the University of Washington in Seattle (1992) and his PhD in Literature is from the University of California, San Diego (1998). He has had the pleasure to work and spend time in a number of Latin American countries, including Mexico, Venezuela, Colombia, Peru, the Dominican Republic, and Brazil. Brian encourages everyone to embrace the experience of living abroad as the greatest education of all.