Dr. Anne Connor
Director – Spanish
Dr. Anne Connor is Professor of Spanish at Southern Oregon University. She began directing the Summer Language Institute for Spanish Teachers in 2007, the year of the program’s inception. She received her PhD in Spanish from Vanderbilt University. Beyond directing the SLI, she teaches intermediate through advanced Spanish courses at SOU. Her research interests include the Fantastic in Contemporary Latin American Literature and Film, U.S. Latino Literature and Culture, Women Writers of Latin America, and Music and Culture of Latin America.
Office: Central Hall 217
Phone: 541.552.6743
E-Mail: connora@sou.edu
Spanish Language Faculty
Dr. Jeremy W. Bachelor
Professor – Spanish
Dr. Jeremy W. Bachelor is Associate Professor of Spanish and the Coordinator of Modern Languages at Heartland Community College (Normal, IL). He earned an MA in Spanish with specializations in foreign language pedagogy and Hispanic cultural studies from Illinois State University and a joint PhD in Spanish Applied Linguistics/Education from UNINI–Mexico and the University of Granada–Spain. Apart from his duties at HCC, Jeremy serves as the action research thesis advisor to the SLI program. His research publications are the result of action research projects from his own classroom and center around interlanguage pragmatics and online/hybrid learning.
E-Mail: bachelorj@sou.edu
Dr. Rebecca Bender
Professor – Spanish
Dr. Rebecca Bender is an Assistant Professor of Spanish at Kansas State University, where she teaches undergraduate and graduate courses on Spanish and Spanish American literature and culture. She earned her Ph.D. in Spanish Literature from Pennsylvania State University, her MA in Hispanic Literature from the University of New Mexico, and a BA in Spanish and BS in Secondary Education from Bloomsburg University. Her current book project, Pregnant Minds and Literary Bodies: Motherhood and Feminism in Spanish Women’s Narrative (1910-1939), focuses on Spanish women’s engagement with motherhood and feminism in fiction. Dr. Bender’s various articles on early 20th century Spanish literature and visual culture examine themes such as the female body, the Avant-Garde’s fusion of fashion and fine art, and the narrative-mapping of urban spaces. Her most recent publication centers on L2 literature pedagogy and advocates for the inclusion of non-traditional texts and digital tools, such as the graphic novel and Snapchat, into the 21st century L2 classroom and curriculum.
E-Mail: rmbender@ksu.edu
Dr. Arturo Matute Castro
Associate Professor – Spanish
Arturo Matute Castro is an Associate Professor of Spanish in the Department of World Languages and Cultures, at Kennesaw State University. He received his MA and PhD in Hispanic Linguistics from the University of Pittsburgh, in addition to a MA in Hispanic Linguistics and a BA in Journalism (both at the Universidad de La Habana). From a multidisciplinary perspective, his research focuses on Cuban and Cuban American cultures and literatures, transnationalism, the Hispanic Caribbean diaspora, and Latinx postmemory narratives. His essay “(Dis)locación exílica y espacio (trans)nacional” was included in Rita Molinero and Yolanda Izquierdo’s monograph Reinaldo Arenas: La escritura como destino (2021). His scholarly work has also appeared in journals such as Forum for Contemporary Issues in Language and Literature, Cuadernos del Sur, and Gramma.
E-Mail: acastr29@kennesaw.edu
Dr. Enrique Chacón
Associate Professor – Spanish
Dr. Enrique Chacón is Associate Professor of Spanish at Southern Oregon University. His main focus is Mexican Literature and Culture. He approaches different contemporary topics from the Cultural Studies perspective as well as Critical Theory. He has studied poetry as well as narrative and contemporary intellectual production in Mexico. His current research includes the representations of violence in Latin America and US Latino Culture. In his teaching techniques, he explores the possibilities of including different cultural products to improve language learning, including music and food studies.
E-Mail: chaconl@sou.edu
Dr. Enrique E. Cortez
Professor – Spanish
Enrique E. Cortez is Professor of Latin American Literatures and Cultures at Portland State University. A native from Lima, Peru, he received his Ph.D. in Hispanic Literature and Cultural Studies from Georgetown University. His research focus includes Colonial and Postcolonial Studies, Theories of the Archive, Intellectual Andean History, Indigenismo in Literature and Painting, Iconography of the Incas, Latin American Cinema, Transatlantic Studies and Historical Fiction. His recent publications include the following books: Biografía y polémica: el Inca Garcilaso y el archivo colonial en el siglo XIX (Madrid and Frankfurt: Iberoamericana Vervuert, 2018), Incendiar el presente: la narrativa de la violencia política y el archivo (Lima: Campo Letrado, 2018), Un universo encrespado: cincuenta años de El zorro de arriba y el zorro de abajo (Lima: Horizonte, 2021), as well as articles appeared in academic journals such as Revista Iberoamericana, INTI, Modern Languages Notes, among others. Currently, he is Associate Editorof Revista de Crítica Literaria Latinoamericana and member of the interdisciplinary research group Red Vyral: Violencia y Representación en América Latina.
E-Mail: ecort2@pdx.edu
Dr. David Dalton
Professor – Spanish
Dr. David Dalton is an Assistant Professor of Spanish at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte. He has taught graduate and undergraduate classes on narco literature and culture, the post-revolutionary Mexican novel, US Latinx literature and culture, the Spanish American Boom, Science and Culture in the Hispanic world, Latin American Cinema, Latin American Thought, and Civilization and Barbary in Argentine Literature and Film. His research centers primarily on how the interfacing of technology and the body interfaces with Mexican identity.
E-Mail: ddalto14@uncc.edu
Dr. Mark Darhower
Professor – Spanish
Dr. Mark Anthony Darhower is Associate Professor of Spanish and Spanish Section Coordinator at North Carolina State University, where he teaches courses on Spanish translation and interpretation, applied linguistics, and world language teaching methods. He received his PhD in Spanish Applied Linguistics at the University of Pittsburgh. His research interests are in discursive aspects of second language instruction and learning, Integrated Performance Assessments (IPAs), and multiliteracies. He has published in journals such as CALICO, Foreign Language Annals, and Hispania and contributed a chapter to The Integrated Performance Assessment: Twenty Years and Counting. He is very active in the American Council on the Teaching of Foreign Languages (ACTFL) as an English and Spanish Oral Proficiency Interview (OPI) tester and mentor for OPI certification candidates. His current research focus is in various aspects of IPAs and IPA-informed instruction.
E-Mail: mark_darhower@ncsu.edu
Dr. Martín Gaspar
Professor – Spanish
Dr. Martín Gaspar’s research engages a wide range of fields that includes Latin American intellectual history since the 19th Century; modern Latin American fiction and contemporary film; translation studies; visibility in literature and the media; and narrative theory. He is the author of La condición traductora (Beatriz Viterbo, 2014), a historical and formal study of the rise of translator-heroes and narrators in Latin American fiction since the 1990s. His articles have appeared in the Journal of Latin American Cultural Studies, Variaciones Borges, and Latin American Literary Review, among others. He has co-authored the literary anthology Letras de hispanoamérica and the textbook Intrigas: Advanced Spanish Through Literature and Film. Currently, he is engaged in two projects: an examination of the functions of anonymity in Latin American media, literature, and film, and a social history of translation in Latin America. He is an Associate Professor at Bryn Mawr College, where he teaches courses on literature of the Americas and Latin American literature, comparative literature, translation, film, and cultural studies.
E-Mail: mgaspar@brynmawr.edu
Dr. Marta González-Lloret
Professor – Spanish
Marta González-Lloret is a Professor of Spanish and Applied Linguistics at the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa where she has been teaching for over 25 years. After her Licenciatura in English Studies in Spain, she received an MA in Theoretical Linguistics, an MA in European Languages, and a PhD in Second Language Acquisition at the University of Hawaiʻi. Her research focuses on the intersections of technology and TBLT (Task-based Language Teaching) and technology and L2 pragmatics, as well as teacher education and the uses of Conversation Analysis for L2 digital interaction. Her work has been published in journals such as Foreign Language Annals, Language Teaching, Language Learning & Technology, CALICO, Language Teaching Research, Annual Review of Applied Linguistics, and TASK. She is currently co-editor of the Task-based Language Teaching: Issues, Research and Practice book series (John Benjamins) and editor of the Pragmatics & Language Learning book series (NFLRC). In 2018 she won the University of Hawaiʻi Board of Regents’ Medal for Excellence in Teaching.
E-Mail: marta@hawaii.edu
Dr. Adriana Gordillo
Professor – Spanish
Adriana Gordillo is from Cali, Colombia, where she majored in History. She moved to the United States to complete her master’s degree in Spanish at the University of Cincinnati and then to Minnesota to earn her Ph.D. in Hispanic and Lusophone Literatures, Cultures, and Linguistics. Her research and teaching interests include twentieth and twenty-first-century Hispanic American literature and film, with an emphasis on myth, gothic, and the fantastic. Her work deals with the intersection of art, memory, and the representation of otherness. She is the coeditor of the Hispanic Issues volume Writing Monsters: Essays on Iberian and Latin American Cultures. She also has an interest in creative activities like poetry, photography, and bookmaking.
E-Mail: gordilloa@sou.edu
Dr. Eduardo Olid Guerrero
Professor – Spanish
Dr. Eduardo Olid Guerrero specializes in early modern Spain: literature, theater, history of political thought, performance theory and cultural studies. His secondary areas of specialization involve early modern relationships between England and Spain; trans-Atlantic studies and travel writing; Golden Age Spanish drama in translation; and teaching Spanish literature through performance. Besides articles in eHumanista, Cervantes and other journals, he published Del teatro a la novela: El ritual del disfraz en las Novelas ejemplares de Cervantes (Alcalá de Henares, Spain: Universidad de Alcalá) in 2016. And his edited volume The Image of Elizabeth I in Early Modern Spain (University of Nebraska Press) is now in press and it will be published in March 2019.
E-Mail: eduardoolid@muhlenberg.edu
Dr. Bonnie Holmes
Professor – Spanish
Dr. Bonnie Holmes is Associate Professor of Spanish at Southern Oregon University, where she teaches undergraduate and graduate courses in Spanish language, linguistics and teaching methodology. She received her Ph.D. in Second Language Acquisition and Teaching at the University of Arizona, as well as MAs in Spanish linguistics from Penn State University, and in Spanish language from Middlebury College.
Her research interests include cognitive aspects of second and heritage language acquisition, such as how speech is processed and sources of processing difficulty. Additionally, she looks at the impact service learning can have on language development and ways to support Spanish language maintenance and revitalization in the US. Her teaching experience spans grade school through university contexts in both traditional and dual immersion programs. She currently teaches courses in SOU’s department of World Languages and Literatures and in the Master of Arts in Teaching program.
E-Mail: holmesb2@sou.edu
Dr. Tania Leal
Professor – Spanish
Tania Leal is Assistant Professor of Spanish Linguistics at the University of Arizona. After teaching Spanish in a K-12 environment for several years, she received her Ph.D. in Second Language Acquisition at the University of Iowa, where she investigated how second language learners and heritage speakers acquire and process morphology and syntax. Her research centers on how learners acquire structures that involve so-called linguistic interfaces: those that require knowledge from more than one linguistic domain, such as pragmatics and syntax. She is also very interested in exploring the pedagogical implications of formal research in second language acquisition. At UNR, Dr. Leal directed the basic language program, where she trained new and seasoned teachers. At Arizona, she is a regular faculty member of the SLAT program (Second Language Acquisition & Teaching Graduate Interdisciplinary program.) Currently, she is working on a second book manuscript focusing on the research methodologies used in the study of the acquisition of languages beyond the first. Her work has appeared in journals such as Studies in Second Language Acquisition, Applied Linguistics and the International Journal of Bilingualism.
E-Mail: tanialeal@arizona.edu
Dr. Linda R. Lemus
Professor – Spanish
Dr. Linda R. Lemus is an Assistant Professor of Teaching and Director & Coordinator of Spanish Language Instruction at the University of California, Riverside. Linda has a PhD from the University of Arizona in Second Language Acquisition & Teaching and holds a Spanish Linguistics MA from the University of New Mexico. Linda’s Spanish teaching experience includes teaching community college and university classes in online, hybrid and face-to-face spaces. Her research interests include hybrid/online education & technology, heritage & L2 language learning (Spanish and English), identity & multilingualism, translanguaging, the hidden curriculum, and critical pedagogies.
E-Mail: lemusl@sou.edu
Dr. Chantell Smith Limerick
Professor – Spanish
Dr. Chantell Smith Limerick is an Assistant Professor of Spanish at Centre College. She received her PhD in Romance Languages with a concentration in Hispanic Studies from the University of Georgia, an M.A in Hispanic Studies at Auburn University and a B.S. in Language Arts and Spanish Secondary Education at the University of Alabama. Limerick’s research interests include Contemporary Latin American Narrative, Afro-Hispanic Studies and African Diaspora Studies. She’s particularly interested in the genre of historical fiction and compares and contrasts works of historical fiction written by women of color in the U.S. and Latin America.
E-Mail: chantell.limerick@centre.edu
Dr. Mandy Menke
Professor – Spanish
PhD, Spanish Literature, Ohio State University
Dr. Mandy Menke is an Associate Professor of Hispanic Linguistics and Director of Language Programs in the Department of Spanish and Portuguese Studies at the University of Minnesota, where she also co-directs two projects at the Center for Advanced Research on Language Acquisition (CARLA). After teaching in a Spanish immersion program, she earned her M.A. and Ph.D. from the University of Minnesota, focusing on how immersion students acquire the Spanish sound system. She has worked with both pre-service and in-service teachers in undergraduate and graduate programs and also led numerous professional development workshops. Her current research explores questions related to curriculum design, classroom instruction, and teacher learning around multiliteracies pedagogy and social justice pedagogies. She additionally researches the development of features of academic writing in both elementary immersion and university learners of Spanish. She is the co-author of Literacies in Language Education: A Guide for Teachers and Teacher Educators (Georgetown, 2023) and co-editor of Advanced in Second Language Spanish: Definitions, Challenges, and Possibilities (John Benjamins, 2021). Her work has also appeared in Foreign Language Annals, Hispania, and The Modern Language Journal.
E-Mail: menkem@umn.edu
Dr. Maria Paz Moreno
Professor – Spanish
PhD, Spanish Literature, Ohio State University
María Paz Moreno is Professor of Spanish at the University of Cincinnati. A native of Spain, she received her Licenciatura in Spanish Philology from the University of Alicante, and her PhD in Spanish Literature from The Ohio State University. Her research focuses on Contemporary Spanish Poetry, Food Studies (Gastronomy and Culinary Literature), and Spanish Women Writers. She is the author of several scholarly books and critical editions, among them El culturalismo en la poesía de Juan Gil-Albert (2000), and the definitive critical edition of Juan Gil Albert, Poesía completa (2004). She has published two monographs on the topic of food studies: De la página al plato. El libro de cocina en España (2012) and Madrid: A Culinary History (2017). Moreno is the author of nine books of poetry. Her most recently published books are Amiga del monstruo (2020) and The Belly of an Iguana/ El vientre de las iguanas (2021).
E-Mail: morenom@uc.edu
Dr. Brian Olovson
Associate Professor – Spanish
Dr. Brian Olovson is an Associate Professor of Spanish/Foreign Language Education and Coordinator of the Foreign Language Education and Alternative Teacher Preparation programs at Kennesaw State University. After working as a K-12 Spanish and ESL teacher, he earned a Ph.D. in Second Language Acquisition from the University of Iowa. At KSU he teaches courses on second language acquisition, language teaching methods, and Spanish applied linguistics. He also supervises pre-service language teachers while they complete their student teaching internships. His research focuses on issues related to peer interaction and second language learning, second language writing, and language teacher training.
E-Mail: bolovson@kennesaw.edu
Dr. María Paz Pintané
Professor – Spanish
Dr. María Paz Pintané is a Senior Lecturer and Director of Undergraduate Studies in the Department of Spanish & Portuguese at Vanderbilt University, where she has taught a wide range of courses related to the Literature and Culture of Spain and Latin America. In her theater classes, she encourages students to immerse themselves in the literature by acting out scenes or developing plays to be shown beyond the classroom. In addition, for the past six years, she has directed the Maymester course on the Camino de Santiago, a study abroad course that focuses on the history and culture of the famous medieval pilgrimage route while experiencing it in Spain. Pintané has published on Federico García Lorca and edited poetry by Emilio Prados. At present, she is working on the figure of the mother in Spanish theater and film.
E-Mail: maria.p.pintane@vanderbilt.edu
Dr. L.J. Randolph
Professor – Spanish
Dr. L. J. Randolph Jr. is an Assistant Professor of World Language Education and affiliate faculty in Second Language Acquisition at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Before working in higher education, he spent a decade as a Spanish and ESL teacher at the high school level. His research, teaching, and community engagement focus on various critical issues in language education, including teaching Spanish as a heritage/home/community language, incorporating justice-centered/anti-racist/anti-colonial pedagogies, and centering Blackness and Indigenousness. He is a co-editor of the volume How We Take Action: Social Justice in PK-16 Classrooms (Information Age Publishing, 2023). An advocate for abolitionist, liberationist, and transformative language education, he has held leadership roles in many professional language associations at the state and national level, including 2024 president of ACTFL (American Council on the Teaching of Foreign Languages).
E-Mail: lj.randolphjr@wisc.edu
Dr. Maria Julia Rossi
Professor – Spanish
María Julia Rossi is Associate Professor at John Jay College, CUNY. Her focal research interest lies at the intersections of the politics of representation in Latin American fiction and gender studies. After publishing her first monograph, Ficciones de emancipación (2020), on servants in fiction, she is now pursuing two research projects: “Not So Foreign: Translating Queer Desires in Latin America,” which analyzes a series of mid-twentieth century translations on queer topics, and “Universal Intimacies,” an examination of motherhood in contemporary literature in Spanish. She has also published several book chapters and peer-reviewed articles on her research of Latin American literature, women writers, manuscript studies, servants in fiction, and translation studies in journals such as Revista Iberoamericana, Latin American Literary Review, and Nueva Revista de Filología Hispánica.
E-mail: mrossi@jjay.cuny.edu
Dr. Brianna Janssen Sánchez
Professor – Spanish
Dr. Brianna Janssen Sánchez (Ph.D., University of Iowa) is an Assistant Professor of World Language Teacher Education in the School of Education and the School of Languages and Linguistics at Southern Illinois University. She teaches courses in methods of teaching world languages, bilingual education methods and materials, and literacies for culturally and linguistically diverse students as well as courses in applied linguistics. As the coordinator of world language teacher education at SIU she mentors all pre-service teaching candidates in Spanish and German and collaborates on the state approved curriculum for the world language teaching degree program and ESL and bilingual endorsement coursework. Her research focuses on issues related to pre-service and in-service teacher education and teacher professional development, teachers’ implementations of literacies-based pedagogies, the role of leadership, advocacy, and community in the world language teaching profession, and action research in the world language classroom.
E-Mail: janssensb@sou.edu
Dr. Rachel Shively
Professor – Spanish
Rachel Shively is a Professor of Spanish and Applied Linguistics in the Department of Languages, Literatures, and Cultures at Illinois State University. She received her MA and PhD in Hispanic Linguistics from the University of Minnesota, in addition to an MEd in Education (Minnesota) and a BA in Anthropology (University of Arizona). Shively’s teaching experience includes Spanish as a Foreign Language, English as a Second Language, and Linguistics and Applied Linguistics courses. Her research focuses on second language pragmatics, discourse analysis, and language learning during study abroad. Her work has been published in journals such as The Modern Language Journal, Foreign Language Annals, and the Journal of Pragmatics. She recently published a monograph concerning the development of second language humor during study abroad and a co-edited volume entitled New Directions in Second Language Pragmatics. Shively is currently editor of the journal Study Abroad Research in Second Language Acquisition and International Education. In 2011, she was awarded the ACTFL-MLJ Pimsleur Award for Research in Foreign Language Education.
E-Mail: rshivel@ilstu.edu
Dr. Joshua J. Thoms
Professor – Spanish
Joshua J. Thoms (PhD, University of Iowa) is an Associate Professor of Applied Linguistics and Spanish at Utah State University. He researches issues related to classroom discourse in second language literature environments, technology-enhanced language learning, and various aspects related to foreign language textbooks/materials, including open educational resources and practices. In 2013, he published a co-edited volume on hybrid language learning and teaching. In addition, he has published several articles appearing in journals such as Language Learning & Technology, System, Modern Language Journal, Canadian Modern Language Review, and Foreign Language Annals. He serves on the editorial board of Issues in Language Program Direction (AAUSC).
E-Mail: joshua.thoms@usu.edu
Dr. Julio Torres
Professor – Spanish
Professor Julio Torres (Ph.D., Georgetown University) is Professor of Spanish (Applied Linguistics and Multilingualism) in the Departments of Spanish and Portuguese with courtesy appointments in the School of Education and Department of Language Science at the University of California, Irvine. He directs the AREYTO Lab for Second Language Acquisition and Multilingualism research with a team of undergraduate and graduate students. His research interests include heritage and second language acquisition, multilingualism, cognition, and task-based language teaching. His publications have appeared in a number of edited volumes and handbooks as well as journals like Studies in Second Language Acquisition, The Modern Language Journal, Bilingualism: Language & Cognition, and Language Teaching Research among others. He is the co-editor of the 2022 volume, Aproximaciones al estudio del español como lengua de herencia with Routledge Press. Professor Torres is the recipient of the 2014 Russell Campbell’s Young Scholar Special Recognition Award (for heritage language education) as well as of the 2020 School of Humanities Teaching Award at the University of California, Irvine.
E-Mail: torresj1@sou.edu
Dr. Paul Toth
Professor – Spanish
Paul Toth is an Associate Professor of Spanish Applied Linguistics at Temple University, in Philadelphia, USA, where he teaches graduate and undergraduate courses and mentors doctoral students. Since 1991, he has taught high school and university-level Spanish, coordinated language curricula, and supervised pre-service teachers. He has published 27 research articles and book chapters on instructed second language learning and, in 2022, he edited a special issue of the journal Language Learning that brought together various approaches to research on the topic. He was twice awarded the Paul Pimsleur Award for research excellence from the American Council on the Teaching of Foreign Languages.
E-Mail: paul.toth@temple.edu
Dr. John Trimble
Professor – Spanish
Dr. John Trimble is an Associate Professor of Spanish at Weber State University where he teaches Spanish language and linguistics courses, as well as courses in language acquisition and teaching methods. He completed an MA in Teaching Spanish at Northern Arizona University before earning a PhD in Hispanic Linguistics at the University of Minnesota. His research investigates Spanish language variation and the acquisition of Spanish phonetics and phonology.
E-Mail: jtrimble@weber.edu
Luis Jasiel Ramírez
Conversation Instructor – Spanish
Luis Jasiel Ramírez graduated from the University of Guanajuato as a teacher of Spanish as a Second Language. He mainly focuses on conversation classes and immersion in Mexican culture, as well as autonomous language learning. He is the founder and director of Fénix Language School. For the past decade, Luis Jasiel has created motivating learning spaces for students from all over the world who want to improve their Spanish.
E-Mail: guadiana.jasiel@gmail.com
Contact the Summer Language Institute
SOU Summer Language Institute Program
1250 Siskiyou Blvd.
Ashland, OR 97520
Spanish: 541.552.6743
– Questions About Summer Language Institute? –