Department of Languages, Literatures & Cultures

Language(s) taught

Spanish

Teaching/Research

Spanish, Latin American Literatures and Cultures, Global Indigenous Literatures

Degrees/Certifications

PhD, Comparative Literature, University of North Carolina – Chapel Hill  

MA, Poetry, The Writing Seminars at Johns Hopkins University 

BA, Romance Languages, University of North Carolina - Chapel Hill   

Personal Bio

Paul M. Worley is a settler scholar from Charleston, SC. He is Professor of Spanish at Appalachian State University, where he serves as Chair of the Department of Languages, Literatures, and Cultures. Co-written with Rita M. Palacios, his most recent book, Unwriting Maya Literature: Ts’íib as Recorded Knowledge (2019), was given an honorable mention for Best Book in the Humanities by LASA’s Mexico Section. He is also the author of Telling and Being Told: Storytelling and Cultural Control in Contemporary Yucatec Maya Literatures (2013; oral performances recorded as part of this book project are available at tsikbalichmaya.org), and a Fulbright Scholar. Together with Melissa D. Birkhofer, he is co-translator of Miguel Rocha Vivas’s Word Mingas (2021), whose Spanish edition won Cuba’s Casa de las Américas Prize in 2016. He has also translated selected works by Indigenous authors such as Hubert Matiúwàa (Mè’phàà), Celerina Sánchez, Manuel Tzoc (K’iche’), and Ruperta Bautista (Tsotsil).