Joan Marx

Joan F. Marx

Professor of Spanish
Director of the Spanish Program
Ettinger 102B
Office: 484-664-3343
Fax: 484-664-3722
[email protected]

Background
B.A., Spanish and Political Science, Muhlenberg College, 1977
M.A. in Romance Languages, Ohio University, 1980
Ph.D. in Spanish Literature, Rutgers, The State University, 1985
Dissertation Title: Aztec Imagery in the Narrative of Elena Garro:
A Thematic Approach

Dr. Joan F. Marx is Professor of Spanish and Director of the Spanish Program. She specializes in contemporary Latin American literature, specifically, the Mexican and Mexican-American narrative. Her professional work includes scholarly publications in national and international literary journals as well as presentations of her work at national and international literary meetings. In addition, she has presented scholarly papers on the use of foreign language technology in the classroom as part of her work on the Mellon Project at national and international meetings.

A graduate of the class of 1977, Dr. Marx has been a member of the faculty at Muhlenberg College since 1984. She received the Christian R. and Mary F. Lindback Foundation Award for Distinguished Teaching at Muhlenberg College (1991), the Louis Bevier Graduate Fellowship at Rutgers University (1983-84), and the Phi Sigma Iota Romance Language Award when she was a student at Muhlenberg College (1977).

Dr. Marx teaches courses from the beginning to the advanced levels, which include Intermediate Spanish I and II, The Literature of Conquest and Colonization in Spanish America, Postcolonial Realities in Spanish American Literature, Border Literature, Human Rights Literature in the Americas, and the Capstone Seminar, Writing the Jewish Diaspora from Spain to the Americas. Over the years, she has brought to campus a number of speakers for public talks and participation in departmental Student Symposiums, such as Salvadoran writer and human rights activist Mario Bencastro, documentary filmmaker Peter Sanders (The Disappeared), Chilean poet and human rights activist, Marjorie Agosín, and Chicana writer and activist, Helena María Viramontes.

From 1991-93, Dr. Marx served as Assistant Dean of the College and, from 1993-97, as Head of the department of Foreign Languages and Literatures. During her first term as Head of the department, she designed and implemented the $300,000 Mellon Grant for the Development of Foreign Language Multimedia Computer Programs, in which all full-time department members of every language program participated in the design and development of multimedia software. The Mellon Project Software, a series of grammar-based and cultural programs, is housed in the LC Commons and is incorporated into the department’s language-level classes along with other technology-based applications. She has served two terms as Chair of the Department of Languages, Literatures and Cultures, the second from 2005 to 2014.

She has been a member of the Modern Language Association (MLA), the American Association of Teachers of Spanish and Portuguese, the American Council on the Teaching of Foreign Languages (ACTFL), and of the Middle Atlantic Council for Latin American Studies (MACLAS). She currently serves on the Scholarship Committee of  Phi Sigma Iota, the International Foreign Language Honor Society, and she represents Muhlenberg College on the Board of Advisors of CC-CS the Center for Cross-Cultural Studies.

Courses taught in Spanish by Dr. Marx