I am an associate professor of Latin American literature and Spanish at Florida Atlantic University. I earned a Ph.D. in Latin American Literature from the University of Maryland, College Park, where I specialized in the colonial literature of the Andes. In addition to teaching in the Latin American and Comparative Literatures graduate programs at Florida Atlantic University, I am the Associate Chair and Director of Graduate Studies for the Department of Languages and Linguistics. I am also the head of the Spanish Studies program.

I began my academic career by earning a B.A. in Spanish and Business Economics from Wofford College in South Carolina, and had my first study abroad experience as an undergraduate at the Universidad de Sevilla. After graduating from Wofford with a double major in Spanish and Business Economics, I did graduate work in international economics at the Universidad de Belgrano in Buenos Aires, Argentina as a Rotary International Fellow. I then earned an M. A. in Spanish from Middlebury College after living and studying in Madrid, Spain. Before pursuing my Ph.D., I worked in corporate and international banking.