Cecilia Battauz, PhD, hails from Argentina, where she earned her bachelor's in teaching English as a foreign language. After several years working as a teaching assistant and co-director of the Spanish House at Macalester College in Saint Paul, Minnesota, she decided to pursue graduate studies. She earned an master's in Spanish & TESOL from West Virginia University and doctorate in Spanish Language and Literature from the University of Maryland.
The courses she teaches encompass history and culture as well as literature from Spain and Latin America. In these courses, she offers a comprehensive understanding of the topics studied and connects them to the present. Her goal is to guide students in the process of learning and to engage them in the analysis, reflection and interpretation of cultural materials from the Hispanic world, such as short stories, novels, films, comics and songs. Through the careful selection of these materials, she intends to expose students to a variety of cultural manifestations and, at the same time, acknowledge the diversity and richness of the Spanish-speaking countries.
Battauz also teaches language courses that range from elementary to higher levels, including advanced oral production and composition. She encourages her students to put their linguistic knowledge and abilities into practice in real life, focusing mainly on communication and highlighting the importance of mastering a second language in our world today. In her classes, she favors students' participation and collaborative work.
As a scholar, she is interested in popular culture from Latin America, particularly from the South Cone. Her current research focuses on the image of the “gaucho”, the cowboy of the Argentine Pampas plains who once freely roamed the countryside and disappeared around the end of the 19th Century, and how it was used by humorist Roberto Fontanarrosa in his comics Inodoro Pereyra, el renegau to deconstruct the national literary myth and to offer a postmodern approach to the foundational narratives of the nation.
Cecilia Battauz's Curriculum Vitae