Darío Sánchez-GonzálezFaculty

To be great, be whole: donʾt exaggerate / Or leave out any part of you. / Be complete in each thing. Put all you are / Into the least of your acts. / So too in each lake, with its lofty life, / The whole moon shines.

Ricardo Reis, Fernando Pessoa’s alter ego; original Portuguese version here, English translation here

Growing up in the port city of Xixón, Asturies (Northwestern Spain), countless films, books, and video games served as a window into the world—and into myself, sometimes. So did the many conversations with people close to me. Snuggled up at home, in the movie theater (I spent many cool, rainy evenings there, quite a few in the Xixón International Film Festival), sitting with friends at a coffee house, or wherever time and money allow, stories help us recall spaces we have never been to, summon places that do not exist, recognize faces unseen, times we did not live through. In narratives, we channel dreams and nightmares of ourselves. We gather all that we rarely bring to the surface, and much of what we push down to the cellar (or up to the loft). We may lose innocence, shake our beliefs, and refashion our way of thinking, speaking, and acting. Often, we will find ourselves in the many voices we hear along this path—written, filmed, rendered, spoken.

My teaching career is deeply intertwined with all that I am, as well as to my lived experience. Teaching second languages, film, media, and literature entails giving students more ways to represent, understand representations, communicate, and negotiate meaning with the world. In my classes, I value mutual respect, creativity, authenticity, and constant questioning. I remember the best classes that I had as a student as an almost dizzying experience. Standing up and walking outside would feel eerie at times, until I had recomposed myself, gathering all the pieces, all the stories.

My research also connects directly with all the things that I am, as Portuguese poet Fernando Pessoa says—on the pen of his alter ego Ricardo Reis, truth be told. I work on the fields of Spanish literature and media through the lenses of queer and cultural studies. My most recent publications are two articles in collective volumes: the first addresses friendship in times of crisis in the coming-of-age film Nothing in Return (Daniel Guzmán, 2015), while the second focuses on gay identity in a long-lost Spanish popular movie, Gay Club (Tito Fernández, 1981). (You can learn more about these works and more at my ResearchGate or Academia.edu profiles). Both my teaching and research interests have had a comparative nature since the beginning of my academic career, when I studied Romance Languages and Literatures at the University of Oviedo (16th-century Romanian war reports, Leonese cheese lists, Galician satires, Arthurian novels—all of it). At Gustavus, I am affiliated with three programs: Gender, Women, and Sexuality Studies; Latin American, Latinx, and Caribbean Studies; and Comparative Literature. Working across disciplines and languages is both a pleasure and a necessity.

The same holds true for working beyond borders: study abroad has played a central role in my college and graduate school years. Thus, it is a key component of my students’ academic experience. At Gustavus, I have worked in different programs: a community-based learning course in Chimbote, Perú (assistant in 2016, leader in 2018), a Spanish language and culture course in Valencia, Spain (assistant in 2019, leader in 2023), and a queer history and advocacy course in Berlin and Amsterdam (leader in 2020). Study abroad gives people endless possibilities to tune in to other voices, accents, and languages, and to craft their character in unexpected ways.

Outside of my professional life, I spend most of my (properly) personal time gathering and sharing stories in Minneapolis or my seaside hometown of Xixón, Asturies.

Courses Taught