About
I am currently a full-time faculty member at Kansas State University where I teach undergraduate and graduate courses in the Dept. of Modern Languages.
I received my doctorate in Spanish from the University of California, Riverside in 2018. My dissertation was titled “An Ecocritical Approach to Mexican and Colombian Brief Fiction, 2000 to 2015.” Before that, I lived in Madrid, Spain for five years, where I completed my MA degree (2014) and stayed to teach. I look forward to an exciting career in education and research.
My areas of research are Ecocriticism, Contemporary Latin American Literature, Peninsular Literature, Microfiction, Brief Fiction, and Cuento.
Additionally, I love teaching, reading, researching, writing, traveling, and learning about new languages and cultures every day. I really love what I do and strive to be the best professor I can be, while continuing my own research and engaging my students every day. Education
Ph.D. in Spanish. Dissertation title: “An Ecocritical Approach to Mexican and Colombian Brief Fiction, 2000 to 2015.” Chancellor’s Distinguished Fellowship. University of California, Riverside (2018)
M.A. in Spanish Language and Literature. Manresa Scholarship. Saint Louis University – Madrid Campus (2014)
B.S. in Spanish Language and Literature, minor in German, Summa Cum Laude Honors and Deans List. Missouri State University (2007)
Projects
Dissertation: An Ecocritical Approach to Mexican and Colombian Brief Fiction, 2000-2015
Link: https://escholarship.org/uc/item/8pp6r2qk
Abstract: This dissertation analyzes Mexican and Colombian brief fiction published after 2000, focusing on four authors from the Generation Zero Zero, Mexican authors Alberto Chimal and Heriberto Yépez and Colombian authors María Paz Ruiz Gil and Gabriela A. Arciniegas. The Generation Zero Zero consists of Latin American authors born in the 1970s who have published their major works after 2000. Agustín Cadena, Lorena Campa Rojas, Dolores Corrales Soriano, and Lauro Zavala separate the Generation Zero Zero from the writers of the Crack and claim that the group is heterogeneous in their lived experience in a time of crisis, their dismantling of utopic ideas, and their literary creations within the fantastic, science fiction and horror genres. This dissertation analyzes four authors of this generation to identify underlying ecocritical trends, an environmental unconscious, and the representation of human and non-human characters within this group of authors. Through an ecocritical approach to their writing and an exploration of their use of brief literary forms, I analyze Chimal, Yépez, Ruiz Gil, and Arciniegas’ representation of the environment and the non-human to reveal both anthropocentric and ecocentric perspectives within their publications, demonstrating a possible divide in the Generation Zero Zero in regard to environmental discourse. Memberships
MLA, AATSP, IECA, Mexicanistas, and Colombianistas
