Professors

Marta Fairclough, Ph.D.

Director of the Online Graduate Certificate Program

Marta Fairclough is a Professor of Spanish linguistics and Director of Heritage
Language Education in the Department of Hispanic Studies at the University of Houston.
She previously served as Department Chair and Director of Undergraduate Studies. Her research focuses on heritage language education, language acquisition and sociolinguistics, with an emphasis on U.S. Spanish. She published "Spanish and Heritage Language Education in the United States: Struggling with Hypotheticals" (Iberoamericana, 2005) and co-edited, "Spanish as a Heritage Language in the United States: State of the Field" (Georgetown UP, 2012), as well as numerous book chapters and articles in journals. A second volume, entitled, "Innovative Strategies in HL Teaching: A Practical Guide for the Classroom," was published by Georgetown in 2016. In 2012, Fairclough received the Provost Group Teaching Excellence Award (group leader) as director of the Spanish Heritage Language Program at the University of Houston.

Manuel J. Gutiérrez, Ph.D.

Manuel Gutiérrez is Professor of Spanish linguistics with many years of experience in academia, creating curricula and administering master's and Ph.D. programs. He served as interim chair of the Department of Hispanic Studies in the College of Liberal Arts and Social Sciences from 2009 to 2010 and as the Director of Graduate Studies three times for a total of 8 years (1995-99, 2002-04 and 2007-09). He also served as chair of the department of modern and classical languages in the College of Liberal Arts and Social Sciences from 1998 to 2001. Gutiérrez conducts research on the phenomena of linguistic change in several dialects of the Spanish-speaking world, particularly on the processes of language change in Spanish spoken in the United States due to its contact with English. His research uses real data produced by Spanish speakers in the Houston area. He has published numerous articles about Spanish linguistic changes in academic journals in the United States, Europe and Latin America, as well as the book, "Ser y estar en el habla de Michoacán, México." He has also spoken about the topic of Spanish in contact situations with English and other languages at numerous international conferences. In 2012 and 2013, Gutiérrez was the director of the STARTALK Texas Teacher Program at the University of Houston for teachers of Chinese.

Nicolás Kanellos, Ph.D.

Nicolás Kanellos has been a professor at the University of Houston since 1980. He is founding publisher of the noted Hispanic literary journal The Americas Review (formerly Revista Chicano-Riqueña) and the nation’s oldest and most esteemed Hispanic publishing house, Arte Público Press. Arte Público Press is the largest, non-profit publisher of literature in the United States. Recognized for his scholarly achievement, Professor Kanellos is the recipient of the 1996 Denali Press Award of the American Library Association, the 1989 American Book Award—Publisher/Editor Category, and the 1988 Hispanic Heritage Award for Literature presented by the White House, as well as various fellowships and other recognitions. His monograph, "A History of Hispanic Theater in the United States: Origins to 1940" (1990), received three book awards, including that of the Southwest Council on Latin American Studies. His latest book, "Hispanic Immigrant Literature: El Sueño del Retorno" (2011), won the PEN Southwest Award for Non-Fiction. Kanellos is the director of a major national research program, Recovering the U.S. Hispanic Heritage of the United States, whose objective is to identify, preserve, study and make accessible hundreds of thousands of documents written in those regions that have become the United States from the colonial period to 1960. In 1994, President Bill Clinton appointed him to the National Council on the Humanities. In 1996, he became the first Brown Foundation Professor of Hispanic Studies at the University of Houston. In 2008, he was elected to the Spanish American Royal Academy of Literature, Arts, and Sciences.

Gabriela Baeza Ventura, Ph.D.

Gabriela Baeza Ventura is an Associate Professor of Hispanic Literature. She serves the Department of Hispanic Studies as the Director of Graduate Studies in addition to teaching. She is the creator and principal professor of the course on U.S. Hispanic Culture and Civilization, which she teaches on the graduate and undergraduate levels. Her interests are women in literature and the way they are presented in various literary genres by both male and female authors. While this interest has occupied most of her earlier studies, her graduate work with the Recovering the US Hispanic Literary Heritage Project provided the foundation for a new interest: literature of immigration. In her book "La imagen de la mujer en las crónicas del 'México de afuera',” she combined both interests by discussing crónicas (short satirical commentaries) published in Spanish newspapers in the United States. She edited two anthologies, U.S. Latino Literature Today (Longman Press 2005); Con otra mirada: Cuentos hispanos de los Estados Unidos (Editorial Popular, 2005) and and has published several articles in journals. Baeza Ventura also works as Executive Editor for Arte Público Press, supervising the production of over 30 titles a year that include adult, young adult and bilingual children’s books.