Samuel Jaffee is Associate Teaching Professor in Spanish & Portuguese Studies and teaches courses in writing, literary studies, and visual culture. He holds a Ph.D. from the University of California, Irvine, with a specialization in Andean literary and cultural studies from the colonial period through the present day, and taught in UC Irvine’s Humanities Core course, an exciting interdisciplinary humanities program for first-year students in writing and research. At UW, Jaffee has developed a design-focused Spanish writing program, many inquiry-based seminars in Latin American literature and cultures, and a practicum in community-based learning in Seattle. His courses feature the “Pre-Texts” protocol of creative readings and interactive finales: his students study course texts as great artists do—by posing creative and esoteric questions, often by applying methodologies from other disciplines that make the humanities relevant to majors in the arts and STEM fields. He presents widely on his research in Andean cultures and leads workshops for high school and college instructors on strategies for teaching classes of heritage and second-language learners, writing pedagogies, and incorporating less-commonly taught languages, such as indigenous languages, into a Spanish curriculum. As a director of programs in global education in Spain and Ecuador, he has led students to critically consider the role of colonialism in identities that endure today. He volunteers weekly at Seattle World School, the city’s dedicated public high school for recent immigrants who are English language learners, thereby aiding the newest Americans to shape their own journeys.
