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Edgar Luis Colón Meléndez

  • Teaching Assistant Professor

Edgar Luis Colón Meléndez is a Teaching Assistant Professor in the Department of Spanish and Portuguese at the University of Pittsburgh, where he teaches courses ranging from beginner to advanced Spanish. He also offers tutoring to students of Spanish and organizes workshops at El Centro, the department’s Spanish Hub, focusing on grammar, composition, and the cultures of the Spanish speaking world. He earned his Ph.D. in Hispanic Languages and Literatures from the University of Pittsburgh and is currently pursuing a Master of Data Science at Pitt’s School of Computing and Information. He also earned an M.A. in Hispanic Languages and Literatures from Pitt and a B.A. in Hispanic Studies from the University of Puerto Rico, Río Piedras.

His research explores twentieth-century Latin American literature, cultural history, and intersections between literature and fields such as mathematics and chess. His recent articles include “Variación en ‘La biblioteca de Babel’: las matemáticas de Borges en la década de 1930,” published in Variaciones Borges, and “Piglia, el ajedrez y Walsh,” published in Revista Iberoamericana. He also contributed to a Borges Center Digital Humanities project using StoryMapJS to trace Borges’ lecture circuits across the 1940s and 1950s.

In addition to his academic work, Colón Meléndez created the Hillman Library Latin American Postcard Collection and contributed to the Robert E. Conrad Papers archival project at Hillman. He currently serves as Assistant Editor of Revista Iberoamericana.

Degrees

·       PhD, Hispanic Languages and Literatures, University of Pittsburgh

·       MA, Hispanic Languages and Literatures, University of Pittsburgh

·       BA, Hispanic Studies, University of Puerto Rico, Río Piedras

·       MS (in progress), Data Science, University of Pittsburgh

Courses Taught at Pitt

·       SPAN 115: Intensive Elementary Spanish

·       SPAN 103: Intermediate Spanish

·       SPAN 104: Intermediate Spanish II

·       SPAN 120: Conversational Spanish

·       SPAN 125: Advanced Grammar and Composition

·       SPAN 1323: Medical Spanish

·       SPAN 1055: Introduction to Hispanic Literature

·       SPAN 1250: Hispanic Civilizations

·       SPAN 1417: Latin American Film & Media

Areas of Specialization

·       Twentieth-century Latin American literature

·       Borges Studies

·       Digital Humanities