About
Rhonda Dahl Buchanan joined the Department of Classical and Modern Languages in 1985 as a Spanish professor and taught until her retirement in 2022. From 2002 to 2022, she served as Director of Latin American and Latino Studies, a program that she helped to found in 2001. In 2002, she created the LALS Study Abroad Program in Panama, and directed the first program in 2003. She is the recipient of all three university-wide Distinguished Professor awards, for Teaching (2000), Service to the Community (2011), and Outstanding Scholarship, Research, and Creative Activity (2019). In 2004, she received the UofL Trustees Award, which is presented annually to one professor who has made an extraordinary impact on the lives of students. In 2011, she was named a Top 11 Faculty Favorite by UofL students, a recognition she received annually. She was the recipient of the 2015 Provost's Award for Exemplary Advising, the 2015 National Academic Advising Association (NACADA) Advising Award, and the 2016 NACADA Region III Outstanding Faculty Advisor Award for the State of Kentucky. When she retired in 2022, the Department of Classical and Modern Languages gave her the title of Professor Emerita and created a new student award in her honor, The Rhonda Dahl Buchanan Community Engagement in Spanish Award.
Dr. Buchanan is the author of numerous articles on contemporary Latin American writers from Argentina, Colombia, and Mexico, and the editor of a book of critical essays, El río de los sueños: Aproximaciones críticas a la obra de Ana María Shua. She is the recipient of a 2006 NEA Literature Fellowship for the translation of Alberto Ruy-Sánchez’s novel The Secret Gardens of Mogador: Voices of the Earth (New York: White Pine Press, 2009). For a complete list of her translations, visit her website: www.rhondadahlbuchanan.com. Her email address is: rhonda.buchanan@louisville.edu
Research Areas
Contemporary Spanish American Narrative Fiction
Narrative fiction of Spanish American Women Writers
Translations of Contemporary Spanish American Narrative authors