Welcome!

Meet your Instructor

(Cuba, 2017)

Dr. Ericka Parra’s pronouns are (she, her/ella)

Fall 2022 CELT Facilitator: “Inclusive Learning that Matters”

GA Governor’s Teaching Fellow (Summer Symposium, 2021) 

Dr. Parra will be your instructor for this semester. She found her passion in teaching Spanish as a foreign language in two important moments. First, when she embarked on a journey to Chiapas, Mexico. After experiencing the conflict on the border, she realized that the learning and teaching of languages would be a way to communicate better among cultures. Then, when she taught Spanish in Taxco, Mexico, where many people from different cultures configurate a diverse class. This way diversity will be a reality.

She grew up in Mexico City. She graduated from Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México (UNAM), where she finished her undergraduate and a Masters in Latin American Studies. Then, she moved to Normal, Illinois, where she obtained her Masters. Today, she holds a PhD from the University of Florida in Gainesville, Florida.

She has organized and led Study Abroad Programs to various countries in Latin America. Those Latin American countries included Mexico, Argentina, and the 2017 summer she led the first Study Abroad to Cuba. As a graduate student, she led the Study Abroad to Santander, Spain.

Dr. Parra is a Professor of Spanish and Latin American Literatures at Valdosta State University. She is the author of book chapters and academic articles on Latin-American women writers, published in Encuentros, Istmo, Brújula, Olhar and The Latin Americanist. Her current book manuscript is Más allá de las fronteras narrativas: escritoras cubanas y su desterritorialización/Beyond the Narrative Frontiers: Cuban Writers and their deterritorialization discusses the topic of crossing borders in testimonies, historical, fantastic, and detective narratives by three women writers.