Terrence Mannetter, Professor of Spanish

Terrence Mannetter is currently Professor of Spanish at the Modern Language Department at UW-River Falls. He teaches courses in undergraduate Spanish language, literature, and phonetics, and serves as coordinator of a the first-year Spanish language program that utilizes the Natural Approach to second language learning as well as the UWRF representative of the OPID UW-System program. He also serves as Director of the Winter Interim in Mexico program. This Academic Year (2007-2008) he is teaching courses in Beginning and Advanced Spanish language as well as Spanish Literature and Phonetics. Professor Mannetter was awarded the Outstanding Faculty Member of the Year award in the College of Arts and Sciences in 2004, and was named the 2005-2006 Wisconsin Teaching Scholar representative from UW-River Falls.

Although Professor Mannetter is a Wisconsin native, he graduated from high school in Phoenix, Arizona. He holds a B.A. with a double major in Philosophy and Spanish from UW-Stevens Point, and an M.A. and Ph.D. in Spanish from UW-Madison. His fields of specialization are Hispanic Philology, Medieval and Golden Age Spanish Literature, Peninsular Dialectology, Modern Spanish Linguistics, and Portuguese Literature and Linguistics. He also studied Classical Latin and Classical Arabic. His dissertation was the production of a new computer-assisted edition of the Leyes del estilo, a 14th-century Spanish legal code. The new edition of the code included  semi-paleographic transcriptions of all available handwritten manuscripts of the text, along with an analysis of all variant forms of the text he chose as his base text. 

While he was a graduate student at Madison, he worked as a Teaching Assistant and Lecturer in the Department of Spanish and Portuguese. He was also awarded a Research Assistantship in the Seminary of Medieval Spanish Studies at Madison under the directorship of Professors John Nitti and the late Professor Lloyd Kasten. At the Seminary he received extensive training in paleography, lexicography, and the application of the latest computer software technology to the main project of the Seminary: the Dictionary of the Old Spanish Language . This massive lexicographic project, which is now centered at the Hispanic Society of America in New York City, is an ongoing effort to document over 500 years of Old Spanish linguistic development, and has been underway since the 1930's. Among the many innovative features of this project is the inclusion of citation blocks for each vocabulary item included in the Dictionary, which provides the dictionary user with a sample of the authentic Old Spanish context of each item.

Since receiving his Ph.D. in 1991, he has been appointed Chief Editor of a new dictionary project developed in conduction with the Madison Seminary, the Dictionary of the Complete Works of Juan Manuel. This project will document a statistical sampling of the complete narrative works of the Spanish nobleman and author Juan Manuel (1282-1348), the nephew of Alphonso X the Wise (king of Spain from 1252-1284). The methodology utilized for this project generally parallels that of the DOSL project and takes advantage of sophisticated computer software developed at the Madison Seminary during the past two decades. The narrative texts of Juan Manuel to be included in the dictionary include: Libro del caballero y del escudero, Libro de las tres razones o de las armas, Libro infinido, Libro de los estados, Libro del conde Lucanor, Tratado de la asuncion, Libro de la caza, and Cronica abreviada.

Professor Mannetter has recently published the Text and Concordances of the La vida de Lazarillo de Tormes: y de sus fortunas y adversidades (New York: Hispanic Seminary of Medieval Studies, 2006) and an article entitled, "Assessing the Life-Changing Experience of a Study Abroad Program" in The Voice of WAFLT, Fall 2007.

Links

• Winter Interim in Mexico program
  
• Virtual tour of the Winter Interim in Mexico program This presentation was the result of a collaborative independent study research project undertaken by Anne Kulzer and Professor Terrence Mannetter during the 2000-2001 Academic Year.
  
• University of Wisconsin System Collaborative Language Program home page
  
• University of Wisconsin System Teaching With Technology Today electronic newsletter
  
• La Prensa de Minnesota online Spanish newspaper from the Twin Cities
  
• Spanish language radio stations on the web
  
• Wisconsin Association for Foreign Language Teachers Official Web site
  
• American Association of Teachers of Spanish and Portuguese Wisconsin Chapter Official Web site
  
• UWRF Semester Study Abroad Monterrey UWRF & ITESM (Instituto Tecnologico de Estudios Superiores de Monterrey) exchange program located in Queretaro, Mexico (ITESM web site)
  
• UWRF Semester Study Abroad Guadalajara UWRF & Autonoma University of Guadalajara Exchange Program located in Guadalajara, Mexico (UAG web site)

For more information regarding study abroad programs, please contact Professor Terrence Mannetter at 425-3121, or the Office of International Programs at the following address:

Global Connections Office
102 Hagestad Hall
410 South Third Street
River Falls, WI 54022-5001

Phone: (715) 425-4891
Fax: (715) 425-0693