Spanish and Portuguese

For medieval Iberian queens, love was a dangerous sickness

Anonymous — Tue, 13 Aug 2024 22:45:41 +0000

For medieval Iberian queens, love was a dangerous sickness Anonymous (not verified) Tue, 08/13/2024 - 16:45

Blake Puscher

In a newly published history of the region’s female monarchs, ��ý�Ļ��Ʒ scholar shows the connections between love, grief and madness

Like many of their royal European counterparts of the time, the medieval queens of Spain and Portugal often married for politics, but rarely for love.

Instead, their marriages generally embodied the political intrigue facilitated by personal relationships in hereditary monarchical power structures. During a time of religious conflicts between Christian and Muslim kingdoms, as well as cultural and philosophical developments spurred by the rediscovery of Aristotle, their marriages were more political maneuvering than swooning.

And even when love was involved, it rarely ended well.

Núria Silleras-Fernández

In a newly published exploration of emotion and political power in the medieval Iberian Peninsula, which is composed largely of peninsular Spain and continental Portugal, University of Colorado Boulder scholar Núria Silleras-Fernández, a professor of Spanish and Portuguese, analyzes a time and place and the royal women who navigated the treacherous territory between heart and state.

In her book The Politics of Emotion: Love, Grief, and Madness in Medieval and Early Modern Iberia, Silleras-Fernández focuses broadly on these powerful emotions through the individual stories of three queens, whose stories in some ways presage the issues that women in politics still face today.

Somewhat confusingly for the reader, several were named Isabel, so Silleras-Fernández gives each woman a brief distinguishing title: Isabel of Portugal (1428–96), who was the grandmother of Isabel of Aragon (1470–98) and Juana of Castile (1479–1555).

A comparative study of the three women, whom historians had not previously put together, is informative not only because their lives tell us about the politics and culture of their society, but because—despite facing similar tragedies—Juana, Isabel of Aragon, and Isabel of Portugal’s lives took very different directions.

‘El amor es un gusano’

According to Silleras-Fernández, these three women “suffered from very intense grief following the death of their spouses.” Their grief was ultimately viewed as excessive, in part because of the cultural attitude towards love— expressed in the poem “Las Mañas del Amor” by Florencia del Pinar, Silleras-Fernández says. “She describes love as un gusano, a worm.

“In medieval times, passionate love was seen as a sort of affliction. When someone was really in love, it was seen as dangerous.”

This is not to say that love had no place in court culture; in fact, according to a historian whom Silleras-Fernández cites, it was fashionable for Spanish lords to pretend to be in love.

In The Politics of Emotion: Love, Grief, and Madness in Medieval and Early Modern Iberia, ��ý�Ļ��Ʒ scholar Núria Silleras-Fernández notes that in medieval times, passionate love was seen as an affliction.

Nonetheless, authentic, passionate love was seen as a personal affliction, a spiritual danger and a political vulnerability. “Passionate love was even medicalized,” Silleras-Fernández says, and in a way, it “was seen as an affliction that was tied to melancholy,” with unrequited passions causing lovesickness.

When it came to medieval Christian culture in Spain, she explains, “there was something called the religion of love. For men, their lady was not merely the object of their desire, as in courtly love; she became more important to them than God.” This was understood as a form of idolatry and therefore a violation of the second of the 10 commandments from the Bible.

Moreover, Silleras-Fernández says, “royal marriages were arranged for political purposes, so it was common for women not to be in love with their husbands. The idea was that the couple would enjoy some sort of affection and collaborate in ruling the kingdom and producing heirs.”

To the extent that it interfered with remarriage, love was even an obstacle to the political maneuverings of the royalty. Ultimately, then, passionate love “was seen as dangerous, and it was not encouraged for royal partners.”

Conflict at court

Isabel of Portugal, who was born in Portugal but became Queen Consort of Castile and León through her marriage to King Juan II (as opposed to becoming a queen regnant in her own right by inheriting the throne), exemplified the dangers of “loving too much.”

According to Silleras-Fernández, the chronicles of her life suggest an unusually intense love for her husband. The conflict between her and Álvaro de Luna, the royal favorite and Constable, is an example of this.

Both Isabel and Álvaro exercised significant influence over Juan, Silleras-Fernández says: “Álvaro de Luna’s role as adviser put him in clear competition with the functions of the queen.” Isabel and her faction within the nobility and Juan’s entourage eventually won out, and she convinced the King to have Álvaro executed.

While overtly political, this situation may not seem at first to involve love. However, according to Silleras-Fernández, Álvaro wrote a letter to Juan’s advisors from prison, asking them to prevent the king from having too much sex, arguing it could compromise his health. This suggests the intimate nature of Álvaro’s interference with the king and queen’s relationship and demonstrates the importance of love to a queen consort’s political power.

Perhaps more illustratively, Isabel “felt such great pain at the death of her husband that she fell into a sickness so grave and long that she was never able to recover,” Silleras-Fernández writes, and lived the rest of her life without much political influence.

Mixing politics, religion and grief

Isabel of Aragon, one of Isabel of Portugal’s grandchildren, also suffered greatly after the death of her first husband. She became Princess of Portugal through her marriage to Crown Prince Afonso, and this marriage was, by all accounts, happy, Silleras-Fernández says—if brief.

"Infanta Isabel de Trastámara," artist unknown.

Unfortunately, Afonso died young, which caused national grief and inspired a series of consolatory texts by noted clergymen. Isabel of Aragon was “presented with works explaining that his death should be seen as an opportunity for her to become a better Christian, and that she needed to remember that it was important to love God above anyone else,” Silleras-Fernández explains.

Like her father-in-law, João II, Isabel received letters from important clergymen blaming the bereaved for the death of their loved ones, Silleras-Fernández explains. João was even accused of loving his son more than God, and informed that his son’s death was a form of retribution for this sin.

Despite Isabel’s continued mourning, she was a princess and therefore a political asset for the Catholic monarchs, most especially because she could secure a marriage alliance for them. Whether because she did not want to remarry, or because the religious messages in the consolatory letters had heightened her Catholic convictions, she requested, as a condition of her planned second marriage to Manuel I, that all the “heretics” be expelled from his kingdom, Portugal.

The exact meaning of “heretics” here is unclear, but according to Silleras-Fernández, “it probably meant that she wanted the expulsion of the Jews, the Muslims, and all the recent converts from Judaism to Christianity who had been prosecuted by the Inquisition.”

Regardless of Isabel’s motivations, it is clear that grief played a role. Hence, Silleras-Fernández says, grief and other emotions can have serious consequences when they interact with politics and religion, which were closely related in medieval and early modern times.

Juana the Mad

“Most people knew about Juana,” Silleras-Fernández says, “because she is famous as Juana the Mad.” Like Isabel of Aragon, she was a daughter of Isabel the Catholic, and she was the mother of the Holy Roman Emperor Charles V. Like Isabel of Portugal, her grandmother, Juana was ultimately alienated from the political power she once possessed, Silleras-Fernández explains, spending the rest of her life put away.

“The difference between her grandmother and Juana’s eldest sister Isabel was that both of them were queen consorts, while Juana was queen in her own right, and she needed to rule.”

Perhaps the most extraordinary story of Juana’s grief—also incited by the unexpected death of her husband—was her insistence on personally accompanying the king’s remains to Granada, a trip of more than 400 miles, while she was in the third trimester of pregnancy. This trip was a perpetual funerary procession, taking more than two years and including religious services at every stop.

Juana is reported to have become ill along the way, and began to not change her clothes, as well as eat and sleep on the floor. After this, her father, King Fernando, sent her to a palace in Tordesillas where she was confined for the rest of her life.

"The Madness of Joanna of Castille" by Lorenzo Vallés (1866)

When she finally returned from her husband’s burial, she was in a bad place emotionally and mentally, but her condition improved. “If you read the letters that the people who were living with her sent to her son, Charles V, it was obvious that she was feeling better.

“The problem was that, when you send someone away because you have decided that person cannot rule, you cannot easily reestablish that person as a viable ruler,” Silleras-Fernández continues. “Neither her father nor her son was interested in rehabilitating Juana because they were already doing Juana’s job.” They had taken over out of necessity while Juana was gone and did not want to give up power. For her family to continue ruling, she had to be put away.

According to Silleras-Fernández, what makes her situation different from those of Isabel of Portugal and Isabel the Catholic is that the Isabels had more freedom as queen consorts. Since they were not formal rulers, they were not seen as a threat to the status quo, but “because Juana had the potential to personally take charge of the kingdom, she was dangerous.”

‘Backwards and wearing high heels’

These three Iberian queens embody the lesson that, as a ruler, “one needed to be perceived as someone could control their emotions, because they served as a mirror for their subjects,” Silleras-Fernández says. “A ruler needed to be in control, and the ruler needed to demonstrate balance and stability—what Aristotle called the golden mean.”

It was particularly difficult for women to present themselves this way because, she says, “as in the eyes of Aristotle, women were seen as imperfect males. It was harder for them because they were asked to perform like men but were not valued like men. At the same time, of course, women had to adhere to the standards and preconceptions of the time regarding gender. It’s a little bit like the old saying that Ginger Rogers had to dance as well as Fred Astaire, but in her case, going backwards and wearing high heels.

“In many ways, this is a period that is very far from today’s reality, but you would be amazed how much of the dynamics and prejudices surrounding gender and emotion are similar and how— despite the fact that we live in an age of science—medicine and health are still socially and culturally constructed. I expect that with recent events, we will see all of these dynamics at play today in the USA over the course of the next four months.”

Top image: Juana la Loca by Francisco Pradilla y Ortiz (1877)

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In a newly published history of the region’s female monarchs, ��ý�Ļ��Ʒ scholar shows the connections between love, grief and madness.

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Modified Language Program drops the ‘f’ word

Anonymous — Mon, 01 Apr 2024 19:49:50 +0000

Modified Language Program drops the ‘f’ word Anonymous (not verified) Mon, 04/01/2024 - 13:49

The former ��ý�Ļ��Ʒ Modified Foreign Language Program has dropped the word ‘foreign’ from its name to emphasize inclusivity and recognize the harm inherent in the word

The University of Colorado Boulder Anderson Language and Technology Center (ALTEC) and the Department of Spanish and Portuguese are dropping the “f” word.

Beginning today, the former Modified Foreign Language Program is now the Modified Language Program, dropping the word “foreign” to emphasize a commitment to creating a more inclusive and equitable educational environment and recognize the harm inherent in the term “foreign” when applied to languages other than English.

The Modified Foreign Language Program (MFLP) was established in 1998 and initially focused on speech pathology and language learning disabilities. Over 26 years, it transformed into a collaborative between ALTEC and the Department of Spanish and Portuguese, offering modified Spanish courses for students with dyslexia, learning disabilities, PTSD or who otherwise experience difficulties learning another language.

The now-Modified Language Program (MLP) is one of the few university programs in the field of modified language instruction nationally. While some schools and universities allow at-risk students to waive language requirements or take substitution courses, research suggests that at-risk students have the ability to learn another language. Also, feedback from former students emphasizes how important and impactful the program was for them.

The MLP provides support to students facing language-related challenges. Class sizes are capped at 14 students, allowing instructors to give personalized instruction that caters to individual needs and learning styles. A multisensory teaching approach enhances memory and retention, while accommodations ensure every student has the chance to succeed. Additionally, free tutoring services offered through ALTEC further supplement classroom learning.

Dropping the word “foreign” from the program name signifies a commitment to linguistic justice and acknowledges the exclusionary connotations of the term when applied to languages other than English.

In the United States, MLP administrators note, the adjective “foreign” has become a shorthand when referring to languages other than English. This trend previously extended to leading professional organizations like ACTFL, previously known as the American Council on the Teaching of Foreign Languages, as well as publications and other educational institutions, including ��ý�Ļ��Ʒ.

Now, ��ý�Ļ��Ʒ has replaced the adjective “foreign” with “world” when describing languages other than English, and ACTFL has dropped the word “foreign” from its materials and website as well as from the organization name. This change reflects the understanding that diversity and inclusivity should be celebrated and that the word “foreign” can be alienating and exclusionary, MLP administrators note. Moreover, for Spanish-heritage speakers and Latinx-identifying individuals, Spanish is not "foreign," but a local language and part of a cultural identity.

The name change happened April 1 to coincide with the start of Celebrate Diversity Month. The name change and continuing evolution of the program were spearheaded by Elizabeth Huard, program coordinator in the Department of Spanish and Portuguese; Ayelen Costa, educational services coordinator at ALTEC; Susanna Pàmies, director of ALTEC; Esther Brown, chair of the Department of Spanish and Portuguese; and Tracy Quan, a linguistic expert who consulted on the name change.

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The former ��ý�Ļ��Ʒ Modified Foreign Language Program has dropped the word ‘foreign’ from its name to emphasize inclusivity and recognize the harm inherent in the word.

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Haunting Don Juan through the centuries

Anonymous — Mon, 30 Oct 2023 17:51:29 +0000

Haunting Don Juan through the centuries Anonymous (not verified) Mon, 10/30/2023 - 11:51

Rachel Sauer

In a newly published paper, ��ý�Ļ��Ʒ’s Emmy Herland explores how the very old story of Don Juan remains relevant through its ghosts

Time and the popular imagination have been kind to Don Juan—perhaps too kind.

As written in “El burlador de Sevilla y convidado de piedra” by Andrés de Claramonte (previously attributed to Tirso de Molina) around 1635, Don Juan is a liar and unrepentant manipulator who falsely promises women marriage to coerce them into sex. He fights and kills the father of one of his victims and the father, Don Gonzalo, eventually returns to haunt Don Juan and drag him to hell.

These days, Don Juan has been smoothed into more of an incorrigible seducer and a shameless, though often charming, rogue. Little mention is made of dark intentions or a dark, perhaps absent, heart. It’s up to the ghosts to point those out.

��ý�Ļ��Ʒ researcher Emmy Herland studies Early Modern Spain, particularly representations of ghosts and other supernatural phenomena in the literature and theater of the era.

In a newly published exploration of haunting and the Don Juan legend, Emmy Herland, a University of Colorado Boulder teaching assistant professor of Spanish and Portuguese, compares two modern theatrical adaptations of the Don Juan legend to highlight not only the vital role ghosts play in understanding the character, but to illuminate the theater as a meeting place between the living and the dead.

“There are a lot of reasons this play has lived on for so long,” Herland says. “Don Juan is wealthy, smart, he has a lot of social pull and he is able to keep running away, keep getting away with how he treats women, and embodies a justice system that isn’t working. The supernatural aspect of the ghosts could be seen as a desire for justice—this idea that we can’t catch him, but God is going to come in and solve it.”

Ghosts as messengers

Herland focuses on Octavio Solis’ 1987 “Man of the Flesh” and “Dom Juan: Les morts ne sont pas morts” by José Gabriel López de Antuñano and Ignacio García, first staged in December 2020 in Abidjan, Ivory Coast. Both adaptations present ghosts slightly different than the ghost of Don Gonzalo in the 17th century, but “what unites the spectral characters within the theater to the ghostly elements of the theater is the search for justice for the dead,” Herland writes. “These adaptations, like the ghosts that they stage, revive the past in order to reveal something important about the present into which they are summoned.”

Solis’ Don Juan is haunted by the ghost of his mother, who is accompanied by the ghost of Luis, brother of one of Juan’s victims, and the ghost of Anne, whom Juan considers his ideal woman and whom he smothered to death while declaring his love.

In “Dom Juan,” three of the ghosts are victims of his “seductions”—women he sexually assaulted and murdered, who revive his last victim, the brother of a woman he intended to rape, to help them pursue justice.

“The Ivory Coast adaptation is a one-act play,” Herland explains. “The women are killed very quickly and very early on, and it’s so unfair. You feel so mad at this character who’s just strangled all these women, who’s awful throughout the play, threatening to rape a fourth victim who he never actually rapes, but kills her brother. He’s horrible and you want to see him face justice, so it’s incredibly satisfying to believe the women could be the ones to fix it.”

In Solis’ “Man of the Flesh,” Don Juan is haunted by the ghost of his mother, Concepción, who is conjured by her husband, looking for help managing their son’s behavior.

“She has a line where she says, essentially, ‘I’m not responsible for how you’ve turned out; the dead are not responsible for the living,’” Herland says. “She is also coming in to say, ‘I created this mess; this is my son, he’s not listening to his father, he didn’t listen to me when I was alive.’

“It’s also interesting because she is not a character whom he has personally wronged. In many adaptations, he is killed by the ghost of someone he killed—the unfinished ghost. It’s direct revenge, but we don’t have that here—it’s a different dynamic, a lot more complex. She’s revealed at the end to be an incarnation of death itself. She starts to violently seduce him, this death who is in form of his mother, to prove to him that seduction is wrong, that his way of seducing is really harmful to women.”

In the 1926 film "Don Juan," Lionel Barrymore (left, with Mary Astor) played Don Juan as a famous lover and adventurer.

‘The story becomes the ghost’

Adaptations of Don Juan are, in many ways, ideal for understanding the associations between haunting and theater, Herland says. Each adaptation is haunted by all previous iterations of the story it is telling, and each production is haunted by its text—perpetuating the haunting and allowing ghosts to haunt the audience.

In “Dom Juan,” the women he killed become a chorus of sorts, haunting not only him but the audience, “reminding them of the violent injustices perpetrated against women every day,” Herland writes. “In other words, this chorus of women will not let Dom Juan forget his individual crimes, but they also will not let the audience forget the larger social inequalities that his actions represent.”

That throughline from the 17^th century to modern times is what drew Herland to works originating more than 400 years ago in her undergraduate studies, before she was even aware of the area of humanities specifically studying spectrality and hauntology.

“How do we talk about and stage the 17^th century now?” Herland says. “How do we adapt it in a way that’s relevant now? In Solis’ play, some of the women Don Juan has previously impregnated, some of whom are underage, are also undocumented. When they say, ‘You have to make this right,’ he says. ‘I’ll just call ICE; you have no power here.’ So, there are a lot of issues that are incredibly relevant today.”

The telling and retelling of Don Juan also raises issues of justice, and whether it is served in acts of revenge, Herland says. Does the omnipotent presence of ghosts alter the equation of justice?

“It’s so interesting to think about all adaption as ghostly and all theater as ghostly,” Herland says. “In theater adaptations of historical stories, why are we still talking about them? How are they still relevant? How are they still relevant in different parts of world, through history?

“I think it connects back to idea of history keeps repeating, which is a really ghostly idea. These stories are going to keep circling back, until we can imagine the story becomes the ghost.”

Top image: "The Story of Constance and Don Juan" by Hendrik Carré (1710)

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In a newly published paper, ��ý�Ļ��Ʒ’s Emmy Herland explores how the very old story of Don Juan remains relevant through its ghosts.

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Two instructors win honor, support for teaching of foreign languages

Anonymous — Tue, 27 Feb 2018 23:01:35 +0000

Two instructors win honor, support for teaching of foreign languages Anonymous (not verified) Tue, 02/27/2018 - 16:01

University of Colorado Boulder Instructors Anne Becher and Edwige Simon have each been honored this year by the Colorado Congress of Foreign Language Teachers (CCFLT).

Anne Becher and Edwige Simon

Becher, senior instructor of Spanish and Portuguese, received the annual Excellence in Teaching Award, while Simon, director of the Division of Continuing Education’s Certificate Program in Language Teaching with Technology, received a post-secondary research grant.

CCFLT is a 550-plus member organization, founded in 1947, that supports and advances world language teaching and learning in Colorado’s schools, colleges and universities, through its conferences, newsletters and advocacy for world language education.

Becher and Simon were recognized at the CCFLT conference held this month in Loveland, Colo.

“I am humbled by this recognition, and I wish to express my deep appreciation to my fantastic colleagues and students, and especially to David Burrous, who nominated me,” said Becher.

“I love teaching because it allows me to lose myself in class almost every day. I believe in my students and feel like I may be helping to improve our future by investing my time and energy in helping them grow.”

Simon will use her grant to conduct research and learning assessment for a course she teaches called Telecollaboration Exchanges, which is offered exclusively online to language educators who wish to improve their proficiency. She will co-direct her project with Jennifer Gray, a former certificate student and visiting instructor of French at Beloit College.

“This is a project that I care very much about, and receiving this grant means the CCFLT board sees this work as worthy of funding,” said Simon. “It means a lot to me.”

University of Colorado Boulder Instructors Anne Becher and Edwige Simon have each been honored this year by the Colorado Congress of Foreign Language Teachers.

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Scholar probes myths and realities of bandits

Anonymous — Wed, 17 May 2017 21:59:34 +0000

Scholar probes myths and realities of bandits Anonymous (not verified) Wed, 05/17/2017 - 15:59

Courtney Packard

The myth of the rural outlaw is deeply ingrained in human imagination worldwide. Robin Hood, Jesse James and Billy the Kid, for example, are easily recognizable and have enduring appeal. But disparate groups motivated by individual agendas find outlaws appealing (or despicable) for vastly different reasons.

What does each outlaw story come to embody at any given time, and what is the relationship between the real-life bandit and the narratives that feature him or her? Juan Pablo Dabove, a faculty member at the University of Colorado Boulder, investigates this question in his ongoing research on Latin American bandits.

Juan Pablo Dabove

“Bandits and outlaws are more than just colorful characters—the stuff of romantic myth,” says Dabove, associate professor of Spanish and Portuguese.

“They can embody, while alive or after their deaths, powerful social desires or anxieties: dreams of justice, anxieties about the breakdown of a given social order. The outlaw, as a cultural trope, as a narrative character, has political and cultural relevance because he is like a character in a dream or in a nightmare: It is created and animated by our aspirations or by our fears.”

The romantic version of the outlaw’s story shows that even the outlaw can be king or leader of men. He’s a criminal, but he might as well be a president.”

Dabove’s book, Bandit Narratives in Latin America: From Villa to Chavez (University of Pittsburgh Press, 2017), maps a number of case studies, from Mexico to Argentina, to illustrate how the bandit was “used” by intellectuals of all types, from the nationalist right to the far left. The bandit trope appeared in both fictional and nonfictional narratives to legitimize certain political agendas and delegitimize others, he contends.

The label “banditry,” far from a clearly defined penal figure, is a wildly accommodating catch-all word, he says. A “bandit” could be a destitute highwayman or, like Pancho Villa, a leader of multitudes.

Dabove examines cases of both, showing how the “bandit” trope connects or blends two extremes: the abject outcast and the just sovereign. The bandit has been alternatively considered an enemy of humankind or the forerunner of a utopian society, he says.

“In fact, this ‘blending’ of or contamination between the figures of the outlaw and the sovereign is what interests me.”

“When the Revolution came, Pancho Villa became the most able, charismatic and capable leader of the Mexican Revolution,” explains Dabove. “The romantic version of the outlaw’s story shows that even the outlaw can be king or leader of men. He’s a criminal, but he might as well be a president.”

For example, argues Dabove, “In places where the postcolonial state in Latin America was unable to control the territory or the population, these figures appeared—we would call them today warlords or strong men, people who had informal command of men and resources. They are, by our definition, outlaws, but in a very real sense, they were the law, and they created violent albeit functional systems of social regulation, collective defense, and conflict resolution, in situations where a more ‘formal state’ was absent.”

“They were local figures interested in local issues. They have different ideas of politics, what they want or what they don’t want,” says Dabove.

“It is similar to what’s happening today in places like Afghanistan or Syria or Yemen, in which the breakdown of state authority gives rise to local, brutal figures,” says Dabove. “In the 19^th century, that happened in many places in Latin America.”

These larger-than-life figures “emerged in specific situations, but if they become a part of the collective memory, this image, different from the reality of the bandit, acquires a life of its own. That ‘life’ has been for some years now the object of my inquiries.”

Bandit Narratives in Latin America: From Villa to Chavez is available for purchase now.

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Alum’s unplanned paths led to prosperity and pandas

Anonymous — Wed, 27 Apr 2016 22:20:00 +0000

Alum’s unplanned paths led to prosperity and pandas Anonymous (not verified) Wed, 04/27/2016 - 16:20

Laura Kriho

Click here for a printable PDF of this article

Take a pinch of serendipity, add a dash of coincidence and top it with a smidgen of good fortune, and you have the recipe for Janet Romberg Pollack’s life. The University of Colorado Boulder alumna and donor is now a narrator at the giant panda exhibit at the San Diego Zoo. But how she got there is a tale of unexpected twists and surprising turns.

Pollack says she always had a strong faith in the universe that things would “work out in the end” and never found the need to have a master outline by which she would rigorously make decisions and chart the course of her life.

“My life has been a series of the next indicated step,” she explains. “I’ve had passion for certain things, but I’ve never really had plans. Why push when you can ride?”

Pollack graduated from CU-Boulder in 1984 with a degree in international Spanish for the professions, which she describes as a “Spanish degree with an emphasis on business and economics.”

She ended up going to CU, not after a meticulous consideration of all of her college options, but as a means of getting an automobile. “My dad said I could buy myself a car if I went to a state school,” she says. “At the time, a car was way more important than where I went to college.”

Janet Pollack poses with funny glasses on her graduation day in 1984. The woman on the left is Barb Keller Richard (Journ ’84).

Her family lived in Steamboat Springs, Colo. Her father had attended Colorado State University, and her mother, Jane Romberg, graduated from CU-Boulder in 1960 with a degree from the College of Arts & Sciences in elementary education. Pollack picked CU because, “Boulder sounded way more cosmopolitan and hip than Fort Collins.”

CU-Boulder was the only school to which she applied, and she got accepted. “I just lucked out, as I did with most of my life, that I got led in the right direction, because Boulder was a great school for me. Not only did I get to buy myself a car, but I got a really good education.”

Pollack says she knew on her first day at CU that she had made the right choice. “It was my very first class on my very first day of college, and I had an astronomy class taught by a full professor.”

The professor began the class by saying, “My name is Professor Kim Malville, but you can call me ‘Kim.’ And if you have problem calling a full professor by his first name, then you can just call me ‘Your Majesty.’” Pollack said to herself, “I’m going to like this school!”

You can only be as strong as the people who stood before you. If someone else was generous enough to do it for me, then I want to be able to give that back.”

The universe again steered her right when she moved into the CU dorms. At first, she was upset that she was in an all-girl dorm, but then decided that it was really a blessing. “I discovered that 18-year-old boys are slobs, and they smell,” she remembers.

Pollack enjoyed her time on campus. As with many CU-Boulder students, she felt that college was “more about the people and experiences than it was the classes.” She joined Alpha Chi Omega sorority and made many friends whom she still keeps in contact with today. “College should be much more about life. Classes are great, but facts change,” she says.

After graduation, she once again looked no further than the “next indicated step.” Pollack admits, “I didn’t have any idea what I wanted to be after I graduated.” She only knew she wanted to move to a place where there was no snow and where she could use her Spanish language skills.

She picked California over Texas, and a friend advised her to move to San Diego instead of Los Angeles. She has lived happily in San Diego ever since. “I love it here,” she says.

The Pollack family: Rachel, Larry, Janet and Ben

Her first job after graduation was another twist of fate. “There was a print shop across the street from my first house in San Diego. I took my resume there to be printed, and they offered me a job.”

“My life has been very serendipitous,” Pollack notes. “If you just keep your eyes open, the coincidences turn into, ‘This is the way your life is supposed to go.’”

Pollack had her eyes open when she met her husband on a blind date that was arranged by a friend she met through activities that were promoted by a video dating service. “So I met my husband because of a video dating service, but not through one.”

Pollack was a stay-at-home mom for 24 years. She has two grown children, one of whom also attended CU-Boulder on a full scholarship to the School of Music.

Pollack’s serendipitous path did not reduce her obvious work ethic. Among other things, she:

Sold office equipment, for which she won numerous sales awards
Taught a gym class for kids at the YMCA
Served on the board of directors of the Alpha Chi Omega alumnae group in San Diego
Served as treasurer and president of the House Corporation Board for Gamma Nu Chapter in San Diego
Served as president of the Sisterhood of her synagogue from 2000-2004
Became an adult Bat Mitzvah in 2003
Received the Kavod Award from Temple Adat Shalom, the highest honor they give for service to the synagogue in 2006
Was named the Sisterhood Woman of the Year in 2008
Served as volunteer coordinator for the 2006 Biennial of the Women of Reform Judaism
Served as volunteer coordinator for the Union for Reform Judaism Biennial in 2014
Wrote the PTA newsletter for many years for her children’s schools; she was also named PTA volunteer of the year
Served as Girl Scout troop leader and service unit manager and worked both Boy Scout and Girl Scout summer camps
Volunteered in the classrooms and the school libraries of both of her children
Managed the Temple Gift Shop for 10 years, including purchasing, merchandising and scheduling
Coordinated and ran the San Diego Jewish Food Festival in 2011
Played the guitar for services every week during religious school
Received the Volunteer of the Year award for the religious school in 2013
Studies the Torah and substitutes for the Cantor and Rabbi
Goes to the soup kitchen once a month to serve breakfast and make lunches for the homeless.

When her husband was temporarily out of work a few years ago, a friend sent her a listing for a position as a narrator at the giant panda exhibit at the San Diego Zoo. With the help of her Spanish degree from CU, Pollack beat out more than 170 other applicants to get the job. “To go back into the job market with people half of my age was a pretty scary thing to do.” But, once again, things just worked out.

Janet Romberg Pollack is a narrator at the giant panda exhibit at the San Diego Zoo. Photo courtesy of Janet Romberg Pollack.

The San Diego Zoo currently has three giant pandas and is renowned worldwide as a first-class research and educational facility. “It’s fun to work with kids and help people have a good time on vacation,” she says. “I also enjoy watching people’s eyes when they get to see pandas for the first time, or get to touch a lizard or hear a kookaburra laugh.”

Pollack and her husband have decided to give back to CU by creating two scholarships for students that will be established as part of their estate after they pass away. She benefited from scholarships when she was at CU, and her son was also aided by scholarships when he attended the School of Music.

“You can only be as strong as the people who stood before you,” Pollack explains. “If someone else was generous enough to do it for me, then I want to be able to give that back.”

Pollack’s advice to CU students is to be kind to others and to keep an open mind to all options. “If someone gives you an opportunity to step up, then take it, because you never know where it is going to lead.”

“There is a saying that goes: ‘Everything works out in the end, so if it’s not working out, then it’s not the end,’” Pollack says. “It will work out if you keep taking the next step forward, the trick is remembering that while you’re wading through the muck.”

Laura Kriho is web and publications coordinator for the College of Arts and Sciences.

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Bilingual pediatrician is medical ‘historian’ for patients

Anonymous — Wed, 27 Apr 2016 19:11:41 +0000

Bilingual pediatrician is medical ‘historian’ for patients Anonymous (not verified) Wed, 04/27/2016 - 13:11

Lara Herrington

Alum credits CU-Boulder history professor with launching him into med school

University of Colorado Boulder alumnus and pediatrician Mike Nelson (’91 History & Spanish) uses his degrees every day and credits a passionate professor with helping him get into medical school.

Nelson is general pediatrician at Kaiser Permanente, where he is also a Kaiser-certified medical Spanish translator. Nelson’s fluency in Spanish often surprises his patients, because of his appearance. As Nelson describes it, he is “not the picture of Hispaniola.”

He practices in the United States, five miles from Tijuana, Mexico. Nearly two-thirds of his patients are primary Spanish speakers.

Mike Nelson

When he first meets patients and their families, Nelson says, “They come in and see a Caucasian guy. I can feel the tension from the parents about communicating in English about their sick children."

When Nelson introduces himself with a kind, “Yo soy el doctor Nelson. En que le puedo ayudar hoy?” he sees their faces relax. “It’s an honor to bridge that gap and help parents focus on their kids. It’s difficult to describe how satisfying that is.”

Nelson honed much of his skill set at CU-Boulder, a natural fit given his family ties to the school, which his older sister Wendy and mother Sandy also attended.

“CU-Boulder was always this pinnacle of higher education, a fun and friendly place to really do something academically,” Nelson says.

There, Nelson followed his passions, Spanish and history, which in turn led him to medicine.

Having traveled in Latin America with Amigos de las Americas, a program connecting volunteers to community-health programs, Nelson quickly learned what he could accomplish with a medical background.

He also learned how vital communication is to medicine.

“I can still remember the first few times I got sick in Latin America…[and] the terror I had about effectively [communicating] my symptoms and concerns in a second language,” Nelson says.

Today, he is on the other side of the hospital bed.

After speaking Spanish in Latin America for three summers, he spent a year abroad in Seville, Spain, where he achieved fluency by, among other things, reading Spanish newspapers aloud in his room at night.

He became fluent in medical Spanish by volunteering at a small medical clinic in eastern Boulder.

“I really liked this idea of completely embedding and engrossing myself in [the Spanish] culture,” Nelson says.

Outside his practice, Nelson volunteers as a translator and pediatrician at the Children’s Hospital of Tijuana to help world-renowned geneticists Dr. Ken and Marilyn Jones run a specialty genetics clinic.

Nelson is also the medical director of the San Diego Kaiser Cleft and Craniofacial Clinic, a nationally recognized interdisciplinary team that coordinates the sometimes-complicated care of these patients. With an incidence of one in 600 to 1,200 births, cleft lips and cleft palates are extremely common birth defects.

They come in and see a Caucasian guy. I can feel the tension from the parents about communicating in English about their sick children.”

When newborns are found to have a cleft of the lip and/or palate, Nelson breaks the news to their parents.

“Part of helping the babies is helping the families come to terms with a birth defect,” Nelson says. “It is a very difficult and intensely emotional experience for a parent.”

“I have tremendous confidence in the cleft team I’ve helped to develop at Kaiser Permanente, and I try to convey that confidence to the parents to reassure them that things are going to be all right…I’m very proud to be a part of it.”

To better help the families emotionally and medically, specifically with special bottles and feeding techniques, Nelson uses his Spanish and history skills.

It was at CU-Boulder that Nelson fell in love with history and learned to think like a historian.

“It was my dream to passionately pursue history and make [it] come alive,” Nelson says. He often spent six or eight hours in the library, reading everything he could about a single historic figure or event.

He remembers that Fred Anderson, his American history professor at CU-Boulder, had such passion that “you would walk into his lecture and it was like going to a movie. He [was an] unbelievable storyteller who could make things that were completely foreign, like the economics of the French and Indian War, make complete and utter sense.”

Anderson demanded that his students synthesize that information and write 45-minute essays on tests. Nelson learned to take complex information and simplify it.

The year Nelson took the MCAT test for entrance into medical school, it included a weighted essay. The prompt: Why do societies need to know about their histories?

“This was a perfect golfball, teed right up on my platter,” says Nelson, who answered the question with an essay about the American Revolution. “I did okay in sciences. I think [the essay] slanted the rest of my test.”

Two decades later, after attending George Washington University and serving in the Navy in Guam and San Diego, Nelson is still using skills he learned from Anderson: “I’m a doctor, but I’m also a historian. I take a [medical] history 25 times a day.”

Every day, he gathers information on a patient’s physiologic, anatomic and psychiatric conditions. He also looks at each patient in the context of their community, culture, and socioeconomic status.

Nelson’s end goal is not solely to produce an in-depth medical history, but also to more completely comprehend the whole patient, to improve his patients’ overall health and to help them thrive.

He also must synthesize this information for his colleagues, something he says is often difficult for physicians.

Ultimately, Nelson says, “You’ve got to be able to communicate [about] the medical record, to be able to tell a story and explain what you’re doing in a concise, precise and easy-to-read format. Thinking like a historian makes me a better doctor for my patients.”

Lara Herrington Watson is a CU alumna (’11) and freelance writer who splits her time between Denver and Phoenix.

Alumnus and pediatrician Mike Nelson uses his degrees every day and credits a passionate professor with helping him get into medical school. Nelson followed his passions, Spanish and history, which in turn led him to medicine. Having traveled in Latin America with Amigos de las Americas, a program connecting volunteers to community-health programs, Nelson quickly learned what he could accomplish with a medical background.

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