María A. Ruiz García

Visiting Assistant Teaching Professor of Spanish

Education

Master of Arts: Linguistics, Universität Konstanz, Germany (2023)
Master of Arts: Languages, Literatures and Cultures; Colorado State University (2012)
Certificate Program in Management of Artistic and Cultural Activities; Universidad Blas Pascal, Argentina (2005)
Bachelor of Fine Arts; Universidad Nacional de Tucumán, Argentina (2004)

Research and Teaching Interests

Adult 2nd (3rd,…) Language Acquisition and Teaching, Diachronic semantic changes in Spanish, (socio)Linguistic variants, Heritage speakers. Literature, 20th Century Literary Criticism, Modernist and Contemporary Poetry, Prose and Visual Arts. Argentinean literature: Alejandra Pizarnik.

Biography

I have been teaching Spanish as a foreign language for the last fourteen years. I’ve taught in the US, Germany and now, once again, here in the US. I love what I do. Having taught students from various cultural backgrounds inspires me to always rethink effective ways to create a rich, engaging context for them to learn the language.

I was born and raised in Tucumán, Argentina. I grew up in Chuscha, a northern rural area where I attended a school in a community which included Bolivian children who spoke, beside Spanish, their native languages Quechua and Aimara. Early on, I learned the world is one, but not the same for everybody.

I graduated as a Fine Arts Teacher in 1999 from a high school that belongs to the National University of Tucumán and provides an art-oriented education. I continued my studies in Fine Arts, specializing in painting and contemporary art. As an undergraduate, I learned about Latin American art history and cultural heritage, and became aware of the imprint culture has on art. Later on, I became aware of the needs for making visible the contemporary local art production, and, in 2005 after graduation in 2004, I focused on a cultural activities management program. This resulted in my interests expanding to include language-based art practices bridging to the fields of literature and linguistics.

Before I could begin my graduate studies in the US, I needed to gain proficiency in English. This undertaking is what sparked my interest in language in general. In 2012, I earned a Masters in Languages, Literatures, and Cultures at Colorado State University where I focused my interest on the Art-Literature interface by exploring the literary and visual work of the 20th century Argentinean writer Alejandra Pizarnik.

As a Graduate Teaching Assistant at CSU, I discovered the joy of teaching my native language, and became more attentive regarding teaching methodologies. After relocating overseas, my work as a Spanish instructor in Konstanz, Germany, as well as the personal challenge of learning my second foreign language as an adult, brought me closer and closer to the field of Linguistics. My goal was to have a better grasp of the intersection between second language acquisition research and pedagogy. Thus, I began to pursue my second Masters in General Linguistics, which I finished in February 2023 with a thesis on Spanish diachronic semantic change. I analyzed an Argentinian linguistic phenomenon that consists in the use of saber ‘to know’ + infinitival V(erb) as a habitual aspectual periphrasis with the meaning ‘used to V’ or ‘usually V’ in certain Spanish variants in South America, particularly in the Spanish of Río de la Plata, which includes areas of Argentina, Uruguay and Paraguay.

Representative Publications

Thesis: Diachronic Semantic Change: The Case Of The Spanish Frequentative Aspect Marker Saber ‘to know’
Thesis: “Re-Removal of the Stone of Folly: Analysis of Pizarnik’s Drawings”