Carolina Blázquez Gándara
Academic Director of the Department of Spanish Language Assistant Program, Visiting Assistant Professor
Biography
Carolina Blázquez Gándara was born in Mallorca (Spain). She received her Ph.D. in Hispanic Language and Literatures from Boston University, an M.A. in Spanish Literature from the University of Wisconsin–Madison, and both her D.E.A. in Spanish Linguistics and B.A. in Spanish Philology from the University of the Balearic Islands (Spain).
Her research explores the intersections of contemporary Spanish literature, memory studies, migration, and language pedagogy. Her early scholarship examined the reception of César Vallejo during the Franco dictatorship, culminating in her doctoral dissertation, Plumas de rayo y viento: César Vallejo en Blas de Otero, and the article "Tras las huellas de Vallejo" (2024). More recently, her work has expanded to investigate inclusive and socially just approaches to Spanish language teaching. She is particularly interested in heritage language education, intercultural competence, differentiated instruction, and the integration of literature, graphic novels, podcasts, and migrant narratives into the language classroom.
Her work has been presented at national and international conferences, including the Northeast Modern Language Association (NeMLA) and the Asociación para la Enseñanza del Español como Lengua Extranjera (ASELE), where she has organized workshops and roundtables on innovative and inclusive approaches to Spanish language teaching. She has also delivered invited lectures in the United States and Europe on topics ranging from Spanish poetry and historical memory to social justice in language education.
At Holy Cross, Carolina teaches courses in Spanish language, Spanish culture, heritage language education, and advanced oral communication. She has designed and redesigned several courses, including Foundations of Inclusive Spanish Language Teaching, Creative Resistance in the Spanish-Speaking World, and Aspects of Spanish Culture, integrating themes of migration, identity, diversity, and civic engagement throughout the curriculum. She is also the recipient of a Distinguished Visiting Practitioner Grant, which supported the collaboration with Spanish artist and activist Quan Zhou in her teaching. As Academic Director of the Spanish Language Assistants Program, she mentors and supervises international language assistants while promoting reflective, student-centered, and inclusive pedagogical practices.
Publications
Blázquez Gándara, Carolina. “Escuchar la migración: pódcast y pedagogía crítica en el aula de herencia”. Forthcoming.
Blázquez Gándara, C. "Reimaginando la enseñanza de ELE: hacia una perspectiva inclusiva y socialmente justa." Multimodalidad, interlengua y transdisciplinariedad en la enseñanza del español LE/L2/LH. Soler Montes, C., Del Pozo García, A., Gutiérrez-González, I. y Lázaro Ruiz, H. (Eds.). Tarragona: Publicacions URV, 2026, pp. 395-414.
“Tras las huellas de Vallejo”. Archivo Vallejo, vol. 7, nº 14, octubre de 2024, pp. 107-34. Doi:10.59885/archivoVallejo.2024.v7n14.04
Review of Una trilogía rural. Ilustrado por Ilu Ros. by Federico García Lorca. Estreno. Cuadernos del teatro español contemporáneo, vol. 49, 2023, pp. 135-136.
Transcription of La vida e historia del rey Apolonio, in Corpus of Hispanic Chivalric Romances: Texts and Concordances (vol. 2), coord. Ivy Corfis, New York, Hispanic Seminary of Medieval Studies, 2014. https://textred.spanport.lss.wisc.edu/chivalric/texts.html