Rate My Professor Robert Simon

Robert Simon is Professor of Spanish and Portuguese in the Department of World Languages and Cultures at Kennesaw State University, where he serves as Coordinator of the Spanish Program since 2024. He joined the university in 2006 as Assistant Professor of Spanish, was promoted to Associate Professor in 2011, and to full Professor in 2016. Previously, he coordinated the Portuguese Language Program from 2011 to 2024 and the Minor in Lusophone Studies from 2015 to 2024. Earlier in his career, Simon served as Assistant Instructor of Spanish and Portuguese at the University of Texas at Austin from 2000 to 2001, and as part-time Lecturer of Spanish at Suffolk University and Boston University around 2000. He holds a Ph.D. in Spanish from the University of Texas at Austin (2006), with a dissertation titled 'An Iberian Search: A Comparative Study of Sufi Mysticism’s Presence in the Postmodern Poetry of Clara Janés and Joaquim Pessoa.' He earned an M.A. and B.A. in Hispanic Languages and Literatures from Boston University (2000) through a dual-degree program. Simon is affiliated faculty with the Center for African and African Diaspora Studies, the KSU Journey Honors College, and the Latin American and Latinx Studies Program.

Simon's research specializes in Hispanic and Lusophone literatures and cultures, with a focus on transnational mystical tendencies, poetic expressions of posthumanism and existentialism in Angola, Portugal, and Spain. His scholarly books include The Purple Gladiolus and the Mystic’s Map: Mystical Symbolism and the Posthuman in the 20th and 21st Century Poetic Voice of Ana Rossetti (Lexington Books, 2019), From Post-Mortem to Post-Mystic: Blanca Andreu, Galicia, and the New Iberian Mysticism (Lexington Books, 2019), To A Nação, with Love: The Politics of Language through Angolan Poetry (Argus-a, 2017), The Modern, the Postmodern, and the Fact of Transition: The Paradigm Shift through Peninsular Literatures (University Press of America, 2011), and Understanding the Portuguese Poet Joaquim Pessoa, 1942-2007: A Study in Iberian Cultural Hybridity (Edwin Mellen Press, 2008). He has authored over forty peer-reviewed journal articles and book chapters, such as 'Studies of Fado III: Fado as Parody and Social Critique of the Contemporary Portuguese Tourist Economy' in Journal of Lusophone Studies (2026), 'The Tongue and the Bee: Ana Rossetti, Clara Janés, and the Embodied Discourse of Mystical Sexuality' in Hispanic Studies Review (2022), and 'Clepsidra’s Return: Diachronic Mysticism and Symbolic Displacement in Cleptopsydra by Vergílio Alberto Vieira' in Journal of Lusophone Studies (2020). Simon has also published ten poetry collections, including Ode to Friendship (2021), The Bridge (2019), and The Musician (2017), with poems appearing in journals in India, Portugal, and the United States. He has held leadership roles in university taskforces and committees, as well as in the South Atlantic Modern Language Association and the Modern Language Association.