Dr. Thania Munoz Davaslioglu
Associate Professor · Tenured
Department of Gender, Women's, and Sexuality Studies Department of Modern Languages, Linguistics & Intercultural Communication Language, Literacy and Culture
College of Arts, Humanities, and Social Sciences
She/Her/Hers/Herself
About
Thania Muñoz D. is an immigrant educator, translator, poet, and scholar. Her writing and translations have appeared in Copihue, Acentos Review, Circumference, Fence, Firmament, La Bloga, Catedral Tomada, MARLAS, The Latin American Literary Review & others. In 1998, she immigrated to Southern California from Jalisco, México and since 2015 lives in Maryland. She is an Associate Professor of Latinx and Latin American literature, Director of the M.A. Program in Intercultural Communication at UMBC, and the Managing Editor and Founder of Latin@ Literatures.
Research interests
Her teaching and academic interests center on the connection between Latin American and Latinx immigrant literature, translation, memory studies, and language rights.
Teaching interests
She focuses on the marginalization of Spanish language as a vibrant literary language in the U.S, contemporary Latin American immigrant literature, memory/ intertextuality studies, poetry + translation, to explore how these narratives negotiate belonging within the boundaries of the United States and across the Americas.
She also further explores topics of immigration, its relationship to borders and language, through her continued community-engaged and creative work. She co-leads with Dr. Tania Lizarazo the service learning and digital story project, “Intercultural Tales: Learning With Baltimore’s Immigrant Communities” and is in the Advisory Board of Moving Stories: Latinas in Baltimore. Through these projects, and related publications, Dr. Muñoz brings a much-needed discussion to community-engaged scholarship, which mostly centers work done in person and/or by bringing students to do research with communities they do not belong to rather than on their own communities. Students already belong to different communities outside the university and bring these valuable experiences to our classes. By using digital storytelling as community building tool, we can challenge the traditional directionality of teaching and learning and strengthen ties with our local communities.
Education
-
Ph D, Latino Studies, Spanish, Latin American Literature
— University of California, Irvine (2015) ¿Seré del Sur, seré del Norte?: identidad, migración y memoria narrativa en Cristina Rivera Garza, Edmundo Paz Soldán y Alberto Fuguet”
- MA, Peninsular and Latin American literature — University of California, Irvine (2011)
- BA, Spanish — California State University, Los Angeles (2007)
- Other — Rio Hondo Community College (2004)
Publications
Presentations
- “Abya Yala Casa Virtual: A Community Engaged Digital Collaboration” 2025
- “Abya Yala Casa Virtual: A Community Engaged Digital Collaboration” 2025
- “Practicing Feminists Methodologies Abroad (and at Home) 2021
- "Norte" by Edmundo Paz Soldán 2021
- "What's in a name? – the X in Latinx Studies.” 2021
- “Intercultural Tales: Learning with Baltimore’s Immigrant Communities”. 2018
Grants and Contracts
- CAHSS Dean's Big Idea Fund 2024
- CAHSS Dean’s Research Fund 2019
- Intercultural Tales: Learning With Immigrant Communities 2017
- Community-Based Teaching and Research for Immigrant Integration in the Americas
Research in Progress
- Abya Yala Project 2024
Courses Taught
- Studies In Hispanic Lit
- Studies In Spanish Lang
- Studies In Hispanic Lit
- Studies In Spanish Lang
- Advanced Spanish II
- Latinoamerica y sus culturas
- Poli Economy Of Culture
- Latinoamérica y sus culturas
- Advanced Spanish II
- The Political Economy of Culture