Spanish MA Student José Francisco Moreno Presents Research in Pamplona, Spain

In mid-December, 2025, Spanish MA student José Francisco Moreno traveled to Pamplona, Spain, to present his original research at the Universidad de Navarra as part of the international conference, Jóvenes Investigadores Siglo de Oro. He received travel support from a grant supplied by the Spanish MA program and from an ISU Graduate School travel grant in order to participate in person at this event.

The presentation was titled, “ Herencia Ausente: una propuesta para abordar la paucidad de antologías juveniles de obras del Siglo de Oro” and presented in the panel “Ecos áureos en los siglos XIX y XX.” A career public high school teacher, Francisco Moreno proposed creating an anthology to make Spanish Golden Age texts more accessible to Spanish language learners and heritage speakers. Courses in our department assigned readings that inspired him to consider unique ways to get the novels and dramas into the hands of his students in California.

For him, this was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.

“Being a high school Spanish teacher means that I never really got to fulfill a personal dream of being an academic or a professor," Francisco Moreno said. "I love teaching in my community, but I never thought I’d get the experience of presenting an academic paper about el Siglo de Oro in Pamplona!”

Francisco Moreno plans to continue working on this anthology and sharing the results with his students and the dual-immersion and Spanish language communities. While there are some opportunities to participate in conferences in virtual formats, he encourages ISU students to consider attending in-person events for the camaraderie and networking offered in between sessions.

For him, the best part of this experience was returning to his classroom to share pictures of the University of Navarra.

“They were so surprised to see me in a crowd of academics! I’m thankful to professors Laufenberg and Tarp whose course reading lists inspired my brainstorming. Second, the Spanish program for emailing us information about this specific conference and all of the university supports available. Finally, I wouldn’t have been able to afford this trip with the university’s financial support programs," he said.