Melissa Venegas
She/her/ella
mvenegas (at) ric (dot) edu
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Welcome! ¡Bienvenidxs!
I am currently an Assistant Professor of World Languages Education at Rhode Island College*. My research focuses on raciolinguistic ideologies of U.S. Spanish and critical approaches to Spanish language pedagogy. I am interested in locally based approaches to language teaching that promote community engagement and sociolinguistic justice for U.S. multilingual communities.
I earned my B.A. in Spanish and Anthropology from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. I then attained my post-baccalaureate teaching certificate for Spanish K-12 and my M.Ed in Elementary Education from the University of Missouri-St. Louis. I completed my M.A. and PhD in Hispanic Studies at the University of California, Riverside.
Rhode Island College (RIC) acknowledges it sits on the ancestral lands of the Narragansett and Wampanoag peoples, recognizing their deep history and stewardship, with acknowledgments also extending to the Niantic, Nipmuc, and other regional Indigenous nations, honoring their resilience, sovereignty, and ongoing connection to this land while confronting colonial histories of displacement and violence. RIC's commitment involves educating its community about this history and building respectful relationships with Native American tribes, as detailed in their DEI commitment.
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