Chad M. Gasta (Ph. D., Michigan State University) is Professor of Spanish and Chair of the Department of World Languages and Cultures. He also serves as Director of International Studies and Co-Director of the Languages and Cultures for Professions program. Gasta co-directs Iowa State’s largest study abroad program, the ISU on Mediterranean – Summer in Valencia, Spain, which features coursework in Spanish, engineering, business, and biology.

He teaches courses on Spanish for business and the professions, Spanish Conversation for Professionals, contemporary Spain, as well as other courses related to the literatures and cultures of early modern Spain and Latin America. Gasta’s research and speaking engagements feature transatlantic approaches to early modern literature, culture, and history of Spain and the New World, early opera and musical culture in Spain and the New World, Cervantes, the picaresque, and global education and international engagement including study abroad. He is the author of Imperial Stagings: Empire and Ideology in Transatlantic Theater of Early Modern Spain and the New World (UNC Press, 2013), Transatlantic Arias: Early Opera in Spain and the New World (Iberoamericana/Vervuert, 2013), and an annotated critical edition of Lazarillo de Tormes (Waveland, 2013). Other projects include working with a team of colleagues on a textbook, Spanish for Agriculture.