Skip to main content

Katelyn Smith

Ph.D. Candidate
Spanish

At UNC since 2019
Advised by Professor Oswaldo Estrada
Dey Hall 301

Education

B.A. Meredith College, 2016

M.A. North Carolina State University, 2019

About Katelyn

Katelyn is a PhD candidate specializing in 20th- and 21st-century Latin American narratives. Her research topics include Mexican, Chicanx, LatinX, and Yucatec Maya Literature. She is also interested in Latin American Studies as well as Women's & Gender Studies.

Her dissertation Poca madre: Deconstructing the Good/Bad Mother(ing) Binary in Contemporary Mexican and Chicanx Narratives includes a corpus of texts in Spanish and English published from 1990-2020s set in what is now Mexico and the South West of the United States.

Katelyn was awarded a Foreign Language and Area Studies (FLAS) Fellowship for Yucatec Maya for Summer 2020, Summer 2021, and Summer 2022. She has taught Yucatec Maya language courses at the introductory level at UNC since 2023.

Katelyn has taught Spanish language courses at UNC since 2019 and at NCSU during her Master's Program from 2017-2019.

Katelyn serves as the President of the department’s Graduate Romance Association (GRA) student organization (2024-2025). Previously, she served as Secretary (2023-2024) and Social Chair (2020-2021) of the GRA.

Publications

Polifonía de voces y narración fragmentaria en Texas (2012) de Carmen Boullosa. Artículos iMex, vol. 4, 9 abril 2024, 1-16.

Book Reviews

Adapting Gender: Mexican Feminisms from Literature to Film by Ilana Dann Luna. A Contracorriente , Spring 2020.

Translations

"The Song” by Bárbara Darder, International Poetry Review, vol. 44, 2021, 56-57.

“The Traffic Light Epiphany” and "Venetian Coffee" by Rafael Núñez, International Poetry Review, vol. 44, 2021, 90-93.

Awards & Honors

Guthrie-Buchan Summer Fellowship, 2024

Foreign Language and Area Studies Summer Fellowship, 2020,2021, 2022

Fulbright- COMEXUS English Teaching Assistantship, 2016-2017

Typical Courses Taught

SPAN 101: Elementary Spanish I

SPAN 102: Elementary Spanish II

SPAN 105: Spanish for High Beginners

SPAN 203: Intermediate Spanish I

SPAN 204: Intermediate Spanish II

SPAN 261: Advanced Spanish in Context

SPAN 416: Introduction to Yucatec Maya I

SPAN 417: Introduction to Yucatec Maya II

LTAM 291: The Latino Experience in the United States

Teaching Assistant:

Interdisciplinary Studies: 117 Experiencing Latina/o America: Bodies, Belonging and Nature