St. Mary’s College of Maryland Vice President for Academic Affairs and Dean of Faculty Katie Gantz has announced that faculty members Argelia González Hurtado, associate professor of Spanish and Latin American studies, and James Mantell, associate professor of psychology have been named to the College’s distinguished Aldom-Plansoen Honors College Professorship.
The Aldom-Plansoen Honors College Professorship is granted to associate professors for a two-year term. In honor of recent professional accomplishments and promising developing research, outstanding mid-career faculty are rewarded with funds to sustain and enrich their scholarly contributions. The award is generously supported by the Aldom-Plansoen Endowment established in 1999 by Jarrod Aldom ’97 and John Plansoen.
González Hurtado earned her doctorate from the University of Alberta. Her research focuses on the representation and self-representation of Indigenous communities in cinema and media throughout different periods of Latin American history. González Hurtado co-edited the 2024 book "Cinematic Landscape and Emerging Identities in Contemporary Latin American Film" and contributed an article. In 2023, she co-edited the dossier about the cinematic landscape for the online academic journal of the Interdisciplinary Center for Hispanic America Literature of the National University of Cuyo in Argentina. In 2021, she received a grant as a co-applicant from the prestigious Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada. Argelia has published five peer-reviewed journal articles, four book chapters, and two introductions for edited volumes and has numerous presentations at international congresses. She incorporates her research into her teaching where she explores topics about Indigenous and Latinx identity, new notions of femininity /masculinity, immigration, violence, and environmental issues.
Mantell has a PhD in cognitive psychology from the University at Buffalo, where he specialized in the study of perception and action processes associated with music and language behavior. He frequently presents at national academic conferences with undergraduate collaborators, and he has published two peer-reviewed journal articles with student co-authors since 2022. His current empirical work is focused on data science pedagogy, and he serves as principal investigator, along with co-PI Aileen Bailey, on a 2023-2026 National Science Foundation grant titled Developing Modernized Data Science Instruction in Psychology Curricula. His interdisciplinary teaching encompasses courses in psychology, neuroscience, and Learning through Experiential and Applied Discovery (LEAD).
