Students in UNL Spanish classes can now showcase their work in an online journal.
As the director of the Spanish Tutoring and Writing Center, graduate student Jennifer Isasi was seeing essays, compositions and other assignments brought in by students and felt they deserved a wider audience.
“We’ve been having students coming to the center with amazing essays, compositions and stories,” Isasi said. “We thought about ways to show the students that their work is worth more than just being read by their instructors and professors.”
After considering several possibilities, Isasi and Spanish undergraduate adviser Lola Lorenzo decided the best and most efficient way would be an online journal. It was a good fit for Isasi, a graduate student studying Hispanic literature who is also pursuing a certificate in digital humanities.
The result is Tu Revista, which launched this semester. Isasi has begun the call for submissions with a goal of a first publication in January. The title means “Your Magazine” in Spanish.
“We were thinking about the title and I wanted it to be your magazine – yours to read, yours to publish,” Isasi said. “It won’t be something where only a few people will be published. It’s open to all Spanish students at UNL, so it’s basically the idea that it’s everyone’s magazine.”
The journal’s goals are to acknowledge the work of Spanish students and encourage Spanish beginners. Isasi said she realizes all college students write essays – but writing in a foreign language is especially challenging and should be highlighted.
“We also wanted to have something for new students and students in the lower level of coursework that says, ‘hey, look at what you can achieve if you continue studying Spanish with us,’” she said.
The guidelines for submissions are few right now; Isasi said she wants it to be open to all types of work the students are doing: short stories, poetry, essays, screenplays and so on.
The first round of submissions is due Dec. 20. Submissions can be sent to spanishtutoring@unl.edu.
She has received feedback from faculty about expanding it to include other forms of digital media, such as video. Isasi said she will let the journal grow and change along with the Spanish curriculum.
“It will change each semester with class changes,” she said. “I would like to continue to communicate with the Spanish faculty to maybe come up with topics each semester.”
