Office Hours
- Photo album of Pamplona’s running of the bulls. When professor Dean-Thacker traveled to Spain back in the ’00s with two students (one of whom, Rachel Wilson ’07, is now Transylvania’s director of global and intercultural engagement), they watched the event from a safe distance. They were in the country to research how a change in government affected the Church.
- “Upon the Death of Don Quixote,” originally written in Spanish by renowned novelist Andrés Trapiello, was translated by Dean-Thacker. It imagines what happens after the demise of one of the most well-known characters in Western literature.
- Police officer Alejandro Zaglul visited Dean-Thacker’s Spanish in the Community class last fall to discuss issues concerning the local Hispanic population, such as an acute need for translators. Soon afterward, the students saw him at the Festival Latino de Lexington and struck up a conversation.
- Photo with Edward James Olmos. Dean-Thacker introduced him on stage to a packed Haggin Auditorium back in the mid-’90s. Through her efforts, the actor traveled to Lexington to give a talk on the importance of education — without charging a speaker fee.
- Student painting left behind. Reflecting the multidisciplinary nature of the liberal arts, this piece was part of a project that had students bring together cultural elements they remembered from a Spanish Conversation course.
- Abolitionist Frederick Douglass. Dean-Thacker always has her students translate the quote on this poster into Spanish: “Those who profess to favor freedom, and yet depreciate agitation, are men who want crops without plowing up the ground.” A former adviser for Transylvania’s Black Student Alliance, she grew up in Rochester, New York, where Douglass is buried.
- A booklet of recent article abstracts, including one by the professor inspired by literary works related to Madrid. Each abstract includes an image of a statue reminiscent of the princess in the famous painting “Las Meninas” by Diego Velázquez, (a poster of which hangs behind the pencil sharpener in the photo illustration). These statues pop up in Madrid like those of horses in Lexington.
- “Las Meninas” (see No. 7)
- Folder of collaborative work. Dean-Thacker is participating with colleagues in Spain on an anthology focused on the question: How do you get students to form and defend an opinion in Spanish?
- Coffee. Students drop by, turn around a chair and talk about coursework, problems with roommates, how to get a job after college …
