Angel Tuninetti, associate professor of Spanish and chair of the Department of Foreign Languages at Lebanon Valley College in Pennsylvania, has been appointed chair of the Department of Foreign Languages at West Virginia University.
“I am so pleased that Dr. Tuninetti will be joining the Department of Foreign Languages as the new chair,commented Mary Ellen Mazey, dean of the Eberly College of Arts and Sciences at WVU .He has strong administrative experience and has an outstanding record of teaching and scholarship. I look forward to working with him in the coming years as we continue to build the department’s national and international reputation.”
Tuninetti earned degrees from Universidad Nacional de Cordoba in Argentina, and masters and doctorate degrees in Spanish and Latin American Literature from Washington University in St. Louis, Mo.
Tuninettis field of research includes travel literature in South America from the 18th to early 20th centuries. He has published articles in journals and books in Argentina, Colombia, Mexico and Chile. He has also written a book,Nuevas tierras con viejos ojos: Viajeros espanoles y latinoamericanos en Sudamerica, siglos XVIII y XIX ,published in Argentina in 2001.
Tuninetti has lectured at numerous international conferences in the United States, Latin America and Europe. He has experience teaching the Spanish language, Latin American culture and literature, and literary theory at several universities, including one in Argentina and one in New Zealand. He has worked at Lebanon Valley College since 1996 as associate professor and was named chair of the foreign languages department in 2001.
It is a great honor, and also a professional challenge, to have been chosen to chair the foreign languages department at a prestigious institution like WVU ,he stated.Throughout my professional life, I have developed and honed my skills in all the facets of academic life to prepare myself for a challenge like this. I feel that this new position will allow me to collaborate with my colleagues and with the WVU community in general to strengthen our departmental programs to reflect the nature of the teaching of languages, cultures and literatures in the 21st century.