Biography
Dr. Karina Zelaya, is a Salvadoran immigrant who arrived in Los Angeles in the early nineteen nineties. She earned a B.A. in English with an emphasis in Cultural Studies from the University of California, Santa Cruz. She holds a M.A. in Spanish (Literature) and a PhD in Spanish focused on Central American- Salvadoran literature and cultural production from the University of California, Davis.
Dr Zelaya’s teaching career expands over two decades. She has taught at the high school, college and at the graduate level. Throughout the years teaching, she has developed, adapted, and incorporated various methods, new technologies and strategies to teach courses in Spanish language, culture and literature as well as first year university writing. Overall Dr. Zelaya’s teaching philosophy is rooted in principles of accessibility and commitment to ignite critical thinking. It is defined by the practice of engaged pedagogy. She is committed to making knowledge accessible to her students, and to provide them with the analytical skills necessary to succeed in academia, always guiding and encouraging students to critical reflection and to participate in group discussions flavored with passion, motivation and drive to excel.
As a researcher, Dr. Zelaya has developed a strong track record in collaboration and research in the international realm for her work related to Central American Studies, cultural production, literature, and cultural identity as well as “gestion cultural” or community outreach. Her research focuses on various forms of cultural production- literature, painting, and political essays to understand the definitions, adoption and reconstitution of a given individual and, or collective cultural and national identity. Her earlier work focused on literary representations of popular myth and cultural identity in El Salvador. This work led to various international conference presentations and to the publication of articles in reputable peer-reviewed Central American journals like Istmo and Revista Estudios as well as U.S. a chapter published in the MLA Series in Pedagogy. In addition to research articles, she has co-edited with Keith Moser a collection of essays published as a book in The Metaphor of the Monster (Bloomsbury Press, 2020), and guest edited and coordinated the ninth volume issue of the Californian literary studies journal, Brújula, 2012. This issued focused on The Origins of Central American Narrative Literature, and it remains to this date one of the very few comprehensive collections published on the subject.