Ellen Mayock
Professor of Spanish
Washington and Lee University
Ellen Mayock is a Professor in the Department of Romance Languages at Washington and Lee University, where she has taught since 1997. She specializes in Spanish language, literatures, and cultures, also serving as a core faculty member in the Women’s and Gender Studies Program and the Latin American and Caribbean Studies Program.
Dr. Mayock’s research focuses on the novel of 20th-century Spain and Latin America, women writers, and Latinas/os in the United States. Mayock has published broadly on the contemporary novel, literary naturalism, and feminist and gender theory. Her 2004 book is titled The Strange Girl in Twentieth-Century Spanish Novels Written by Women (UP of the South), and this year McFarland will publish her co-edited collection titled Ruptured Selves, Resisting Bodies. Feminist Activism in the Academy. Mayock’s current project is an examination of the “neo-naturalists” of contemporary Spain.
Dr. Mayock teaches courses on Spain, Latin America, and Latinos in the United States, and on several occasions she has taught the introductory course for Women’s and Gender Studies. Dr. Mayock promotes global learning both through study-abroad in Spain and Latin America and through community-based learning. In addition, Dr. Mayock advises Washington and Lee’s English for Speakers of Other Languages (ESOL), a student volunteer organization that has provided free teaching and language services in the Rockbridge County community for eight years. ESOL student volunteers and Dr. Mayock have won several grants to fund the organization’s operations.
Dr. Mayock is Vice President of the Hispanic Association for the Humanities (Asociacion Hispanica de Humanidades). In the summer of 2009, she directed the Association’s Fifth International Conference in Seville, Spain. Dr. Mayock serves on several editorial boards, including that of the AHH.
Dr. Mayock holds a Ph.D. in Hispanic Literature from the University of Texas at Austin, an M.A. in Spanish from Middlebury College, and a B.A. in French and Spanish from the University of Virginia. She is originally from the Philadelphia area, but after living 17 years in the Commonwealth, by now might officially be considered a Virginian.
"The Spanish language has always been a way I connect to my community, my students, my profession, and myself. It allows me a whole world of expression outside of my upbringing, a way to understand more of the world, and a consciousness about the beauty of language.