The Department of Romance and Classical Studies is pleased to celebrate Ph.D. Candidate Giovanni Salazar Calvo, who has received the 2021 Varg Sullivan Graduate Award for Best Article Published by a Graduate Student in the Arts & Letters at Michigan State University.

Giovanni’s article is titled “‘Los que comen coca son hicheseros’: demonología y la coca en la obra de Guamán Poma de Ayala.” [‘Those who eat coca [leaves] are sorcerers: Demonology and the Coca Plant in the Works of Guaman Poma de Ayala]”, published in issue 133 (volume 91) of Letras in March of 2020: DOI: https://doi.org/10.30920/letras.91.133.11. Currently hosted in the College of Letters and Humanities of the Universidad Nacional Mayor de San Marcos (Perú), Letras is one of the world’s premier peer-reviewed scholarly journals in Latin American literary studies since its creation in 1929. 

Giovanni is the third graduate student from RCS/Spanish to receive the Varg-Sullivan award in the last five years. He joins Andrew Bentley who received the award for his article “Traversing the Zones: Transcending the Nonhuman: Urban Ecologies in Postward Guatemala” published in Istmo: Revista virtual de estudios literarios y culturales centroamericanos, as well as Claudia Berríos-Campos who was awarded for her article “La tentación de la legitimidad: estrategias y oscilaciones discusivas en el Manuscrito de Huarochirí” published in Revista de crítica literaria latinoamericana.