¡Bienvenidos a un año más! As a faculty member of Modern Languages, Literatures, and Cultures, I’d like to welcome everyone to another year here, up the hill. I graduated in 2010 from the University of Iowa with a PhD degree in Spanish (Spanish American Literature track). Since then I have devoted my professional career to exploring the intersection between literature, culture, and gender studies. I teach Spanish courses across different levels, from elementary to higher level classes. I also teach JTerm courses on Literature and Film that portray armed conflict, as well as its transformation into productive forms of social interaction. I have also taught courses on the war on drugs, depictions of evil and the devil in Latin American culture, and Literary Experience for the Three Crowns Curriculum. This semester, in my classes, I teach two novels about which I am passionate: El rumor del astracán by Azriel Bibliowicz is a thorough and honest exploration of immigration, through the experience of a group of Jewish immigrants to Colombia in the mid twentieth century. I also teach Cien años de soledad by Gabriel García Márquez, which encompasses the most salient tensions, dreams, and anxieties of the Latin American region. Literature has been my passion since I was a teenager and I am fortunate that Gustavus has offered the opportunity for me to convey this passion and to relate it to the challenges we face in the world nowadays.