Rowena Galavitz, M.A.

About me

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Editing and translation

Once I graduated from art school, I mastered the art of typography and proofreading at type shops in New York City where I helped to create art books for museums such as the Metropolitan Museum of Art and educational works for publishers like Scholastic as I enjoyed the art and punk rock scene of the city in the 80s.

 

When I moved in the early 90s to Oaxaca, Mexico, I edited, translated, or oversaw the production of a many gorgeous coffee table art books and art catalogs for museums and galleries.

 

In Mexico City, where I lived from 2010-2014, I worked as a subtitle editor doing closed captioning for TV series and movies until I returned to graduate school in the States.

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Since then, I have focused broadly on the arts and humanities and specifically on contemporary Mexican and early modern Spanish culture, including the colonial Spanish world. I copyedit and proofread academic work, trade paperbacks, and fiction in English and Spanish.

 

I also translate scholarly work, art criticism, and literature, almost always from Spanish to English. My literary translation centers on Latin America, especially Mexico, and more specifically on women writers and writers from Oaxaca, a place near and dear to my heart.

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Teaching

After a year-long stint as a bilingual elementary school teacher in Brooklyn, my teaching career began in Mexico where I was trained as an English as a Second Language teacher and taught at two universities in Oaxaca over the course of several years.

 

When I returned to the States, I taught classes at Indiana University in English literature and composition, intermediate Spanish, religious studies, and the first-year experience. I love to teach students about how languages and literatures work, and I am particularly at ease when I teach about a wide range of texts on a single theme from different historical periods.

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Writing and research

As a scholar of literature and religion, I study literary, religious, and artistic aspects of the sixteenth and seventeenth century Spanish-speaking world, especially convent writers. My academic pursuits have entailed archival research in Mexico, Spain, and Peru where I investigated the work of two female writers. I also do research on the Spanish language.

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Art

Parallel to my editorial and educational work, I created art in a variety of media for three decades, mostly in Mexico, where I held five one-woman exhibits and participated in over 60 group shows in museums and galleries at the international level. After creating a feminist series on the Catholic women saints, I branched out into literature-inspired textiles. Because of my experience and training, I am knowledgeable about art history and a wide range of art-making techniques. Find out more about my artwork.

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Education

• Certificate, literary translation, Indiana University, (expected December 2023)

• M.A., comparative literature, Indiana University

• M.A., religious studies, Indiana University

• M.A., European studies, Indiana University

• Certificate, figurative art, New York Academy of Art

• B.S., studio art, New York University

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