Sarah J. Townsend (Ph.D., New York University, 2010) has joined the
Department of Spanish and Portuguese as a teaching fellow for 2011-2013.
Winner of a prestigious postdoctoral fellowship from the American Council
of Learned Societies, Townsend is the only fellow in the field of Latin
American literature to receive the award in 2011. Despite offers from many
other universities, she chose to come to the Spanish and Portuguese
Department at UCSB for her fellowship.

A specialist in Latin American theatre and performance, her research centers on the relationship between politics and aesthetics and explores theatre's links to other media, particularly sound technologies such as radio and the phonograph. Townsend is the co-editor (with Diana Taylor) of Stages of Conflict: A Critical Anthology of Latin American Theater and Performance and has published articles in journals such as Modernism/Modernity and Revista Iberoamericana.

Townsend will present a public lecture, "Radio/Puppets, or Old New Media and the Afterlife of the Mexican Avant-Garde" at the Interdisciplinary Humanities Center at UCSB (6020 HSSB), Monday April 30 at 2:00 PM.