Professor of Spanish, Latin America, and Latino Literature at Kenyon College in Gambier, Ohio. Román-Odio maintains a strong pedagogical commitment in the area of community-engaged learning and research and oral history, examples of which are: the public humanities project Latinos in Rural America, Becoming: First Generation and Latinx Experiences, and Stories of Knox County. She has contributed extensively to the critical examination of the work of the Mexican Nobel Laureate, Octavio Paz, especially his long poems.  Her salient contributions in the field include Octavio Paz en los debates críticos y estéticos del siglo XX (TresCTres Editores, España 2006) and journal articles on the author’s poems “Blanco,” “Piedra de sol,” and “Pasado en claro.” Her more recent scholarship focuses on decolonial cultural productions by feminists of color, a field in which she has authored Sacred Iconographies in Chicana Cultural Productions (Palgrave 2013), a number of journal articles, and co-edited the volumes Transnational Borderlands in Women’s Global Networks (Palgrave 2011), and Global, Local Geographies: The (Dis)locations of Contemporary Feminisms (Letras Femeninas 33.1, 2007). Click here to see more about Clara’s scholarly research.

Digital Initiatives Librarian at Kenyon College in Gambier, Ohio. Jenna administers Digital Kenyon (digital.kenyon.edu), oversees Kenyon’s digitization and digital editing labs, and has extensive experience in oral history project management and design. Jenna designed the digital infrastructure for this project including data management, digitization support, and digital collection design and archiving, as well as providing research support in her role as a library liaison. Click here to see more about Jenna’s scholarly research.

Ashley Butler is the Kenyon Center for Innovative Pedagogy’s Digital Media Instructional Technologist, a role that supports faculty in implementing best practices in digital media usage in the classroom.  She holds a Masters in English from Purdue University. Butler offers support in the creation of digital stories capturing the heart of the interviews.  She also supports Román-Odio in the implementation of best practices in digital media for students enrolled in SPAN 381. Click here to see more about Ashley’s scholarly research.

Olivia Geho served as the Five Colleges of Ohio Post-Baccalaureate Fellow in Digital Scholarship.  As a senior at Denison University, she conducted thirty six oral history interviews with English alumni as part of the Literature and Professional Life Digital Life Stories Archive created by Dr. Regina Martin. Since becoming a fellow with the Five Colleges of Ohio, she has assisted multiple faculty members across the five colleges with digital oral history projects and has taught herself the basics of web scraping, design, and archiving. Olivia graduated from Denison University with a degree in creative writing in 2016. Olivia completed a Master of Science in Labor Studies from the University of Massachusetts Amherst, and is currently working as Digital Media Specialist at the Virginia Education Association.

Sofía Alpízar Román ‘21 is an international student from Costa Rica. She majored in Political Science with a concentration in Latinx Studies at Kenyon College. She was one of the General Directors of A medio camino, Kenyon College’s first Spanish newspaper, for which she received The Robert Daniel Memorial Scholarship Award in 2018. Sofia also was Project Manager of the final collaborative project of Prof. Román-Odio’s Transnational Feminisms (WGS 242) course, which required her to effectively handle the logistics of a complex undertaking involving participation of twenty-three Kenyon students. Additionally, Sofia was the recipient of the 2020 Christopher E. Schmidt-Nowara Latino Studies Award. As a Digital Kenyon intern and recipient of the 2021 Digital Summer Scholar Fellowship, Sofía created digital stories and thematic videos for the oral history section, and edited all the texts produced for the project.

Scout Crowell ’20 is a Spanish and Psychology double major with a concentration in Latino Studies at Kenyon College. Recipient with Eric Thornton ’18 of the Davis Foundation Projects for Peace Award (2018), she directed the Immigrant Youth Ambassadors Program at the Immigrant Worker Project in Canton, OH. She was the president of Kenyon’s Open Doors College Preparation Program in Mount Vernon, OH, which serves at-risk and minority students to achieve at the highest level in preparation for college entry. Scout was also the recipient of the 2019 Christopher E. Schmidt-Nowara Latino Studies Award and was recently granted Kenyon’s own Franklin Miller Award for her unique work in the Kenyon Community. Scout was a writer and contributor to Borders in Play, which taught border theory to 5th graders in Mount Vernon. Her digital story, First Generation: A Story of Belonging and Becoming is published in Digital Kenyon. Scout served on the Advisory Board of the Latino Studies program and on the Kenyon College chapter of Psi Chi, the National Honor Society for Psychology.  Scout created digital stories and thematic videos for the oral history section and is currently Research Assistant at the Center for Biobehavioral Health at Nationwide Children’s Hospital in Columbus, Ohio.

Beimnet Kassaye ’23 is an international student from Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. He intends to major in Biochemistry/Molecular Biology and do a concentration in IPHS (Integrated Program in Humane Studies). He is involved in undergraduate microbiology research and is looking forward to the publication of two papers that he co-authored. He writes for Lyceum, a science-focused student magazine at Kenyon. He is also a committed contributor to The Princeton Project on the Ethiopian Miracles of the Virgin Mary (PEMM). Beimnet is also a part of Kenyon’s Swimming and Diving. Beimnet Beyene was in charge of the organization, development, and archival of microfilms

Abdul Hafeez ’24 is an international student from Lahore, Pakistan with a planned double major in Mathematics and Economics. He plans to pursue Actuarial Science independently while studying at Kenyon and aspires to become an Actuary in the future. Abdul is currently the Chaplin of Phi Kappa Tau fraternity on campus and works as the Library and Information Services Purchasing Office Assistant, and Special Collections Assistant for Special Collections and Archives at Kenyon College. He is also a part of the International Society at Kenyon (ISAK), Kenyon Asian Identities (KAI), Men of Color, Muslim Student Association, South Asian Society, and the Kenyon College Finance Club. He is as passionate about food as he is about mathematics. Abdul Hafeez worked in the digitization of periodicals and other at-risk materials.

Emma Brown is an artist and photographer from the small town of Slippery Rock, Pennsylvania, whose parents took her to too many museums as a kid. So, she has always believed that art is everywhere—it just depends on how you frame it. She graduated from Kenyon College in 2017 with a BA in Studio Art, and went on to work for the Visitor Experience department of the Columbus Museum of Art. She has also developed a deep interest in the rights of immigrants and refugees, and currently serves as a full-time volunteer for Annunciation House, a migrant solidarity organization at the US-Mexico border. Working as the webmaster for the project, Emma designed and created our webpage.

A native of Hopkinton, New Hampshire, Henry Hirschfeld ’22 is a Spanish major and an Environmental Studies and Latino/a Studies concentrator. He has worked as an Apprentice Teacher for the Spanish department, contributed to the Spanish newspaper A medio camino, and currently serves as a Community Advisor for the Office of Residential Life. Henry also volunteers at the  Open Doors College Preparation Program in Mount Vernon, OH, where he tutors local high school students. As a recipient of the 2021 Summer Scholar Fellowship, Henry did the English  translation of all of the texts produced for the project.  In his free time, Henry enjoys running, biking, and swimming.