Dr. Meloddye Carpio Rios is an Assistant Professor of Spanish at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County (UMBC). She received her Ph.D. in Hispanic Literary and Cultural Studies, with a concentration in Gender and Women’s Studies, from the University of Illinois, Chicago, in 2022. She received her M.A. in Latin American Literatures from the University of California, Davis, and her B.A. in Spanish Language and Literatures from California State Polytechnic University, Pomona.
Her research interests include critical language awareness approaches to heritage language and culture teaching, decolonial studies, queer/Marica methodologies, as well as transfeminist approaches to cultural, popular, and visual productions in Latin America and U.S. Latine communities through an interdisciplinary and collaborative approach.
Dr. Carpio Rios is working on her first book project, tentatively titled Corporeal Excesses, Joyful Fluidity, and Indigenous Knowledges: Unruly Masculinities in Peruvian Visual Productions.
The project explores representations of what she recognizes as unruly and undisciplined male bodies, emotions, and practices in the visual arts that question conventional assumptions about masculinity. Focusing on the writings of Latin American scholars and activists, she starts from the concept of a macho masculinity as a result of colonization. She works towards understanding masculinities as evolving, multidimensional identities that reflect the complexities of gender, race, indigeneity, and history.
She also shares a passion for working with Latine and heritage students. Her approach to teaching Spanish as a Heritage Language explores how language intersects with social and political issues, focusing on the intersections between language and race in the heritage language classroom. Her teaching and research also center on how language functions and conditions the lives of Latine people inside and outside of the classroom while advocating for respect for Latine communities, their language practices, and rights.
Dr. Carpio Rios is a first-generation graduate who advocates for diversity, equity, and inclusion in higher education. She has written and curated a digital library to help faculty identify strategies and course components that support inclusivity, sustain community, and promote a sense of belonging for online and in-person course instruction. She aims to support the academic success of first-generation college, immigrant, low-income, and transfer students in higher education.
Dr. Carpio Rios migrated from Perú to the U.S. as a teenager, has familial ties to México, and considers herself “de aquí, de allá y de por allá.”
COURSES
Spanish for Heritage Speakers
Historias, culturas y políticas de Latinoamérica