Spanish: Poetry through the Ages, Spanish and Latin American Literary and Cultural Criticism, Relationship among the Arts, The Creative Process.
Born and raised in the Dominican Republic, Rei Berroa spent his formative years in his home country, went to Puerto Rico for his undergraduate studies, and taught Algebra, Geometry, and Trigonometry in the Dominican Republic. In 1973, he spent a year studying at Universidad Francisco Marroquín in Guatemala. At the end of that year he returned to his original country to teach History and Geography at Colegio San Antonio in Santo Domingo. That summer he went to Spain and in the fall returned to Puerto Rico to teach Ethics, Music, and Philosophy.
In summer 1975 he moved to Spain. Besides studying at the Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas and Middlebury College in Madrid, he spent four years in Spain writing poetry, researching all aspects of Spanish poetry, life, and culture and traveling from town to town with Eulalia, his guitar. In 1979, he went to Pittsburgh, PA, to complete his doctoral studies. Originally interested in the cultural myths of the Native Americans, he completed a dissertation on ideology and rhetoric in the writings of Spanish poet Miguel Hernández. Before arriving at George Mason University in the summer of 1984, he taught at Humboldt State University in California and at Blackburn College in Carlinville, Illinois.
His teaching and scholarly interests are mainly in the areas of contemporary Spanish and Latin American literature, culture, and literary theory (especially poetry). He has published more than 45 books of poetry, literary criticism, anthologies and translations in Argentina, Cuba, the Dominican Republic, Guatemala, India, Italy, Mexico, Romania, Spain, the United States, and Venezuela.
Having finished an edited volume on motherhood and poetics, Professor Berroa's research is now focused toward another new topic that has interested him for many years: the "poetics of heresy" ("poéticas heréticas" in Spanish), a research that combines literary and political theory with the historiography of dissent. That on top of his constant research on poetic expressions of all kind. At this moment there are three branches of research for his creative endeavors: the lullaby, what he calls the "bifid" expression of the dual language in which we live as bilingual individuals, and the world of aphorisms.
El cuerpo hendido: Poéticas de la m/p/aternidad. Edited with María Ángeles Pérez López, from the University of Salamanca (Essays, Forthcoming at the Autonomous University of Nuevo León, Monterrey, Mexico).
Son palomas pensajeras. Quetzaltenango, Guatemala: Metáfora Editores, 2016 (Poetry).
De quites y querencias: antojología de poemas y poéticas (1974-2014). Santo Domingo, D.R.: Publicaciones del Ministerio de Cultura, 2014. (A 557-page anthology of his poetry.)
Eufemistica per vivere tranquilli [poetry anthology]. Translated into Italian by Gaetano Longo and Daria Potok. Trieste, Italy: Franco Puzzo Editore, 2011. Premio Internazionale Trieste Poesia 2011.
Aproximaciones a la literatura dominicana. Two Volumes. Santo Domingo, RD: Ediciones del Banco Central, 2008 (Volume I) & 2009 (Volume II).
With Professor Lisa Gring-Pemble, New Century College, who directed the program in the summer 2011, Prof. Berroa directed the State Department Study of the United States Institute for Student Leaders [SUSI], Winter 2012. The program, titled: “E pluribus Unum—Out of Many, One: Contemporary United States’ Society in Context”, offered 21 students from underrepresented segments of the Bolivian, Paraguayan, and Peruvian society the unforgettable opportunity to learn and experience the history, politics, life, and culture of the United States from January 6 to February 11, 2012.
With the Alan Cheuse Center for International Writers, and with the support of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Spain, I was able to secure the presence in the department of an annual lecturer that would spend her/his time between the department and the Center. The first lecturer arrived August 2017 to the Fairfax campus.
Current
Span 484: Del siglo de las luces a las luces de este siglo: Literatura moderna y contemporánea de España [Siglos XVIII-XXI] . Undergraduate
Rei Berroa completed his undergraduate work in Philosophy at the Catholic University of Puerto Rico (Ponce, 1970) and began his graduate work at Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas in Spain (Málaga,1974; Madrid, 1976). He completed MAs in Spanish Literature at Middlebury College (1977) and the University of Pittsburgh (1979), and his Ph.D. at the University of Pittsburgh (1983).
"Miguel Hernández and Elvio Romero." VIII Symposium on the Humanities, Universidad del Norte, Asunción, Paraguay. August 7-11, 2017.
An old recording of my poetry I did in 1987 at the request of the Library of Congress was finally digitized and made available for Internet. See at: https://www.loc.gov/item/93842275/