Education
Ph.D., Latin American Literature, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 2002
M.A., Spanish Literature, Michigan State University, 1994
Translation/Interpretation Certification, University of California, Los Angeles, 1992
B.A., Spanish Literature and Bilingual Education, University of California, Irvine, 1990
Courses Taught
- SPAN 337 Survey of Latin American Literature, 1492-present
- SPAN 331 Spanish Conversation and Culture
- SPAN 439 Latino Cultures in the United States
- SPAN 335 Cultures and Civilizations of Latin America
- SPAN 439 Highland Guatemala Maya-K’iche’ indigenous Colonial Texts
Membership in Professional Societies
- Midwest Modern Language Association (MMLA)
- Latin American Studies Association (LASA)
- The Conference in Latin American History (CLAH)
Research
- Latin American Colonial Literature
- The Maya-K’iche’ and the Dominican Order Colonial religious encounter
- Indigenous Colonial Texts from Highland Guatemala
- Central American Literature
- Miguel Ángel Asturias: myth and literature
- Complexities of the religious conversion process of the Maya people by the Dominican order during the colonial period
Papers Published and/or Presented
Publications
- Missionary Exegesis of the Popol Vuh: Maya-K'iche' Cultural and Religious Continuity in Colonial and Contemporary Highland Guatemala. History of Religions. Forthcoming
- El "Popol Wuj" en la versión de Francisco Ximénez (1701-1702). Biblioteca Virtual Miguel de Cervantes >>. (2012).
- Revisiting the Highland Guatemala Tίtulos: How the Maya-K'iche' Lived and Outlived the Colonial Experience. Ethnohistory. 58:2 (Spring 2011) 294-321.
- The Popol Vuh and the Dominican Religious Extirpation in Highland Guatemala: Re-contextualizing Friar Ximénez’s Text, Prologues and Annotations. The Americas: 67:4 (April 2011): 467-494.
- “Francisco Ximénez and the Popol Vuh: Text, Structure, and Ideology in a Prologue,” CLAHR: Colonial Latin American Historical Review 11:3 (2002): 279-300.
Selected Professional Presentations
- 2012: “La novelística bananera de Miguel Ángel Asturias: Viento Fuerte como registro histórico de una realidad centroamericana”. Midwest Modern Language Association (Cincinnati, Ohio)
- 2012: “Time, Historicity and the Representation of the Colonial Self: The Maya-K’iche’ of Totonicapán in Highland Guatemala”. The Central American Studies Committee of the Conference on Latin American History (Chicago, Illinois).
- 2011: “Miguel Ángel Asturias and the Value of the Word in El Señor Presidente”. The Midwest Modern Language Association (Saint Louis, Missouri).
- 2010: “El Señor Presidente, ¿Myth or Reality?: Miguel Angel Asturias, the Popol Vuh and the Mythological Emergence of the Dictator Figure in Latin America”. Latin American Studies Association or LASA (Toronto, Canada).
- 2010: “Fear of the Sacred: Friar Franciso Ximénez and the Maya-K'iche' Creation Stories”. Midwest Modern Language Association (Chicago, Illinois).
- 2009: “The Título de Totonicapán: A Syntagmatic Approach”. Annual meeting for the American Society of Ethnohistory (New Orleans, Louisiana)
- 2009: “Disseminating the Popol Vuh Narrative: Catholic and Protestant Missionaries in Colonial and Contemporary Highland Guatemala. Theological interpretation of the Maya-K'iche'.” The Midwest Working Group on Colonial Latin America, University of Notre Dame (Notre Dame, Indiana).
- 2008: “The Título de Totonicapán and the Evangelization of the Maya-K'iche' in Colonial Guatemala”. Midwest Modern Language Association (Minneapolis, Minnesota).
- 2007: “Indigenous Narratives of Highland Guatemala: The Popol Vuh,” public presentation at Monmouth College (Monmouth, Illinois).
- 2006: “Reading the "Títulos": Indigenous Self-perception and Re-definition in Colonial Guatemala”. Latin American Studies Association (San Juan, Puerto Rico).