Amber Brian, Ph.D.

Amber Brian is Associate Professor in the Department of Spanish & Portuguese. She also directs the Latin American Studies Program. Her research and teaching focus on colonial Spanish America. Her publications address the movement of cultural knowledge and historical memory among native individuals and communities as well as between those communities and the dominant political sphere in colonial Mexico. She has published widely on don Fernando de Alva Ixtlilxochitl (ca. 1578-1650), a mestizo historian connected with the Indian city of Tetzcoco who is a seminal figure in the development of Mexican history.

Horacio Castellanos

Horacio Castellanos Moya is a writer and a journalist from El Salvador. For two decades he worked as editor of news agencies, magazines and newspapers in Mexico, Guatemala and his own country. As a fiction writer, he was granted residencies in a program supported by the Frankfurt International Book Fair (2004-2006) and in the City of Asylum program in Pittsburgh (2006-2008). He has also taught in the Writing Program at the University of Pittsburgh. In 2009, he was guest researcher at the University of Tokyo with a fellowship granted by the Japan Foundation.

Roxanna Curto, Ph.D.

Roxanna Curto is Chair of the Department of French and Italian and Associate Professor of French and Spanish at the University of Iowa.

Ana Esther Fernández

Ana E. Fernández was born and raised in Spain where she received a BA in English Philology. She has an MA in Teaching English as a Second Language from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and a second MA in Hispanic Literary Studies from the University of Illinois at Chicago. She was Academic Dean of the English Summer Program at the Pontifical University of Comillas, Spain for 8 years and Chair of the Foreign Languages Department at Morgan Park Academy, Chicago for 2 years before joining the University of Iowa. Ana has been teaching at the University for more than 20 years.

Denise Filios, Ph.D.

Denise K. Filios is the Interim DEO of the Department of German, the DEO of the Department of Spanish and Portuguese, and an Associate Professor in the Department of Spanish and Portuguese at the University of Iowa. Her teaching and research interests include medieval Spanish literature, women in literature, performance, and North African-Spanish cultural contacts from 711 to the present.

Brian Gollnick, Ph.D.

Brian Gollnick works on modern Mexican and Latin American cultural history from a perspective broadly influenced by the thinking of Antonio Gramsci. He is particularly concerned with the interactions between cultures and with how cultural expression relates to social justice. These interests also influence his teaching, which aims to expose students to historical perspectives through objects of study including music, film, art, and literary texts. The study of literature forms part of a Liberal Arts education aimed at helping students find new interests and encouraging the skills and passions necessary for a life of sustained learning and development.

Becky Gonzalez, Ph.D.

Becky Gonzalez is a linguist specializing in multilingual language acquisition. She works in the area of syntax, with a focus on argument structure, and is especially interested in the factors (linguistic and non-linguistic) that influence linguistic outcomes in different types of multilinguals. Her research combines theoretical and experimental approaches and she works predominantly with speakers of Spanish, Portuguese, and English.

Alexis Jimenez, PhD

Rachel Klevar, Ph.D.

Rachel Klevar is the supervisor of the GE CLAS Core elementary Spanish courses and teaches a wide variety of Spanish classes, including Elementary Spanish I & II and Elementary Spanish Review online. She holds a Ph.D in Early Modern Spanish Literature from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Rachel's research interests include Spanish picaresque literature, cultural geography, and more recently, pedagogical best practices for flipped and online language classrooms.

Pilar Marcé, Ph.D.

Dr. Pilar Marcé is an Associate Professor of Instruction, who specializes in Spanish for Specific Purposes (SSP). She is also currently the Director of Curriculum in the Department of Spanish and Portuguese at the University of Iowa.

Luis Martín-Estudillo, Ph.D.

Luis Martín-Estudillo is Professor in the Department of Spanish and Portuguese at the University of Iowa, specializing in modern and contemporary Spanish cultural history and criticism. He has also published broadly on early modern topics and visual culture. He is Executive Editor of Hispanic Issues and Hispanic Issues Online.

Ana Merino, Ph.D.

Ana Merino is a Full Professor of Hispanic Studies and 2016 Collegiate Scholar. In 2009, Merino left her position at Dartmouth College to create the Spanish MFA program at the University of Iowa. She was its director since her foundation in March 2011 until December 2018. Between 2001-2011 she was a Member of the ICAF (International Comic Arts Forum) Executive Committee; and between 2004 and 2014 Directors Board Member at The Center for Cartoon Studies.

Kristine Muñoz, Ph.D.

Dr. Kristine Muñoz's research and theory are centered in the ethnography of speaking based on fieldwork in Colombia, England, Spain, Finland, and Texas. She has pursued issues of how to bring scholarship about Colombian culture into public digital spaces in ways that are accessible and compelling to educated lay publics and Spanish language educators.

Luis Muñoz, Ph.D.

Luis Muñoz was born in Granada, Spain. In his hometown, he directed the University of Granada’s Aula de Literatura (1992-2000), as well as the poetry magazine Hélice, from its founding until its closure (1992-2002). Between 2001 and 2012, he worked in Madrid as an advisor to the Residencia de Estudiantes.

Kathleen Newman, Ph.D.

Maricelle Pinto-Tomas, Ph.D.

Maricelle was born and raised in San José, Costa Rica. She received her Ph.D. in Spanish with a focus on Caribbean literature. She has been a lecturer in Spanish at The University of Iowa since 2019. She has taught Introduction to Reading Literature, Spanish for Heritage Speakers, Spanish Language Skills: Speaking, and Spanish Language Skills: Writing. In addition, she has taught Elementary and Intermediate Spanish at the GEP for more than a decade; recently, she has added Elementary Portuguese to her teaching repertoire.
Maricelle developed and taught Beginner, Intermediate, and Advanced Spanish for Health Professionals for medical students at the UI Carver College of Medicine. She also works as French and Spanish interpreter for the Iowa City Community School District to facilitate communication between school personnel and Latinx and Franco-African students and their parents.
One bit of wisdom that Maricelle frequently shares with her students is that the best way to understand ourselves is to study new languages and learn about their cultures.

Claudia Pozzobon Potratz

Ana M. Rodríguez-Rodríguez, Ph.D.

Ana M. Rodríguez-Rodríguez is an Associate Professor in the Department of Spanish and Portuguese at the University of Iowa, specializing in Early Modern Spanish Literature.

Christine Shea, Ph.D.

Christine Shea is interested in how age, experience and the native language sound system interact with the perception and production of a second language. Adult second language learners approach their second language with a first language already in place. She investigates how experience with a previously acquired language affects the way learners perceive and produce a second (or third) language.

Suzanne Wedeking

Suzanne has lived, worked, and studied abroad extensively. In addition to Iowa, she has lived in South America, Africa and Europe and speaks English, Spanish, Portuguese, and French, with a considerable background in Arabic as well. She is associated with the Union des Français à l’Étranger and leads a weekly French conversation group through the organization. Her passion for her UI teaching is inextricably tied to her countless international experiences and linguistic endeavors. She deeply believes in the power of language and cross-cultural experiences and brings that frame of reference to the classroom each day, while inspiring students to follow a unique path of their own.

Ruth Westfall, Ph.D.

Ruth Westfall is a lecturer in the Department of Spanish and Portuguese. Her areas of academic interest include linguistics, applied linguistics, pedagogy and course development. At Iowa, she teaches a variety of courses, including Spanish Language Skills: Writing, Spanish Language Skills: Speaking, Spanish in the U.S., and Spanish Pronunciation. She currently developing a new online version of Advanced Spanish Grammar.

Giovanni Zimotti, Ph.D.

Giovanni Zimotti is the Director of Spanish Language Instruction at the University of Iowa. His research interests include second language acquisition, technology for language acquisition, and pragmatics. He is curating various VR projects to expose students to transcultural contact. Dr. Zimotti is also a big proponent of OER (Open Educational Resources) materials to make college education more accessible and affordable. He has authored two OER textbooks for Spanish for the professions; Salón de Clase, which was released on December 3, 2021, and Maletín Médico. Dr. Zimotti is also the president of HEROE-S, an organization that brings together Spanish language educators to create, develop, and share high quality educational resources.