Gerardo T. Cummings

Biography

Gerardo T. Cummings entered Wayne State University through the Chicano-Boricua Studies and received his Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees in 1995 and 1997 respectively.   He was a Graduate Teaching Assistant in the Department of Romance Languages for five years beginning in 1995 and earned, in 1996, the Certificate of Recognition as Outstanding Teaching Assistant from the Spanish area.  Furthermore, in 2001 and 2002 he was awarded 1) the Competitive Martin Luther King-Cesar Chávez-Rosa Parks Future Faculty Fellowship, 2) the Summer Dissertation Fellowship from Wayne State University’s Graduate School and 3) the Latino En Marcha Scholarship from the Chicano Boricua Studies Center.  He was also board member of the 1) WSU College of Liberal Arts Alumni Association, 2) the Wayne State University Alumni Association  and 3) the Wayne State Universitiy Humanities Center Advisory Board.  On August 22nd, 2006, he successfully defended his dissertation, earning his Ph.D. in Modern Languages from Wayne State University.  From 2002 to 2004 he worked as Visiting Instructor in Cleveland State University and from 2004 to 2007 he was an instructor in Bowling Green State University were taught graduate and undergraduate courses and lead as Faculty Advisor La Comunidad—a living and learning community, El Club de Español, and Sigma Delta Pi, a Hispanic honor society.  In 2000 he began presenting his research at regional, national and international conferences were he has organized, moderated and chaired sessions. He his writing career in 1988 with a music article in the Novedades de Acapulco (a Mexican newspaper) and in the 1990’s he wrote for various Michigan newspapers and fanzines like Jam Rag, The Weekender, Etch and El Central.  He is the author of entries in Brown Reference Group’s Hispanic American Biographies as well as over 25 academic articles, interviews, translations and book reviews on Latin American and Peninsular literature and culture in national and international refereed journals such as The Arizona Journal of Hispanic Cultural Studies, Hispania, Revista de Filología y Lingüística de la Universidad de Costa Rica. Film Quarterly, Revista de Literatura Mexicana Contemporánea, and Crítica Hispánica. His first book, Buñuel y la transposición cinemática de la novela hispanoamericana, will be published by the Edwin Mellen Press in 2008.  He has begun to prepare his second book—to be co-written with his wife, Elizabeth Juárez-Cummings, also a new addition to the LLL department—tentatively titled: Emiliano Zapata en el cine mexicano y universal: El héroe morelense en la pantalla.  He has submitted an article on “Pre-Columbian America” to be included in The World and its Peoples Encyclopedia to be published by the Brown Reference Group in 2008.   He is currently listed in Marqui’s Who’s Who in America (58th and 59th editions) and Who’s Who in American Education (7th edition).  He is also a member of the Modern Language Association (MLA), and the American Association of Teachers of Spanish and Portuguese (AATSP).

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