María José Gutiérrez Barajas

A native from Spain, María José earned her first PhD at the Universidad de Alcalá (Spain, Madrid) in which she specialized in contemporary Peninsular literature, and conducted research in short novels and periodicals from the early Twentieth century. She completed a second Ph.D. at The Catholic University of America (Washington, DC) with a dissertation entitled “Global Utopias and Individual Nightmares: Experiences of Migration, Inequality and Solidarity in Latin American Science Fiction”. She explored the intersection between contemporary Latin American science fiction, the dynamics of globalization and the matter of visibility. Her research has resulted in a number of publications in academic journals as Hispania or Analecta Malacitana, and chapters of book. Besides her research interest in Hispanic literature and culture (migration, ecology and feminism), her teaching interest include the incorporation of the affective dimension of the students in second language acquisition. She also holds a Master degree in Teaching Spanish as a Foreign Language by the Instituto Cervantes. Before coming to United States, she taught in universities of a variety of countries such as Uzbekistan, Russia, China or Spain, and at the Instituto Cervantes in Naples, Italy.