Community Engagement
The Spanish language is an important part of the Denver community, and engaging with the community is a natural fit for our students and faculty. From students completing internships with local nonprofits, to faculty partnering with an organization that provides services to immigrants recently released from immigrant detention, we're active in Denver and beyond.
Casa de Paz Learning Community
Faculty in the Department of Spanish Language, Literary and Cultural Studies partner with colleagues across the College in engaging with Casa de Paz. Casa de Paz is an Aurora nonprofit that offers housing, meals, visits and transportation to immigrants recently released from immigrant detention. Students deeply engage with Casa de Paz through service-learning in a range of courses, including sections of SPAN 2350. Along with practicing Spanish by having conversations with people detained at the GEO Detention Center, students engage with the current issues affecting the Spanish-speaking world both internationally and right in their own community.
Learn MoreCasa de Paz Cook-In
One of the early collaborations with Casa de Paz involved a group of students from DU’s Department of Sociology and Criminology and the Department of Spanish Language, Literary and Cultural Studies connecting with immigrants around food.
Students visited with formerly detained migrants, family members and those waiting on deportation orders and collected the personal stories of the immigrants, went grocery shopping with them, and prepared meals that resonated most with the immigrants’ cultures and memories.
James Beard Award-winning soul food author Adrian Miller helped the students produce the stories and recipes. Spanish students then translated the pages, which were compiled into a bilingual cookbook.
Initiating Interdisciplinary Work on Current Events
Together with colleagues across campus and across the globe, Spanish Language, Literary & Cultural Studies (SLLCS) professors use their scholarship to engage with current events. Our student and faculty community strives to better understand and contextualize issues ranging from violent extremism to peaceful protest through the lens of their language, literary and cultural research. Watch below to see a round table organized by Assistant Professor of Spanish Chad Leahy in response to the massacre in Christchurch, New Zealand.
Would you like to intern with a nonprofit organization?
The College of Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences provides grants to students who will be completing unpaid summer internships at nonprofit organizations.
