DEPARTMENT OF SPANISH & PORTUGUESE

Marta Agüero Guerra holds a PhD in Hispanic Applied Linguistics from the University of Salamanca and a PhD in Hispanic Literary and Cultural Studies from the University of Iowa. Her research bridges language, literature, and culture, with interests in humor studies, multimodality, pragmatics, and second/foreign language pedagogy. She examines how comics, graphic novels, and other multimodal narratives engage with contemporary social and political issues in the Spanish-speaking world. She has published in national and international journals, presented her research at conferences throughout the United States and Europe, and contributed to the field through numerous scholarly articles, an open educational resources chapter, and the monograph Representaciones de la infancia en el cómic: de la nostalgia al compromiso social (University of León Press, 2023).

Before joining Northwestern University, she taught Spanish in Spain and at several institutions across the United States. Her teaching spans all levels of the language curriculum and includes undergraduate courses in sociolinguistics, Spanish literature, and community-engaged learning, as well as graduate seminars on pragmatics, graphic novels, and humor. Her commitment to inclusive and innovative teaching has been recognized with the Champion for Student Success Award, the Career Champion Award, and the 2025 Iowa Open Educator Award.

At Northwestern, she has contributed to language assessment, professional development, mentoring, and curricular innovation. She currently co-coordinates the Spanish Writing Center and is an active member of the Council on Language Instruction and the department’s research community. Working closely with the coordinator of Spanish 204, she has helped integrate Hispanic and Latinx multimodal narratives into the curriculum and develop a service-learning component in partnership with a local elementary school. This work was supported by a Hewlett Fund for Curricular Innovation award for the project Using Social Comics and Graphic Novels to Foster Critical Thinking and Intercultural Competence in Spanish Language Courses and has resulted in several conference presentations and forthcoming publications. Through her teaching, research, and service, she advances innovative approaches to language education that foster critical thinking, intercultural competence, and meaningful community engagement.