Amparo Alpanes, Ph. D.

Amparo Alpañés is an associate professor of Spanish in the Department of Modern Languages.

Her interests not only include Spanish language, literature, and culture, but also Spanish Cinema, Gender Studies and the 20th-century history of Spain, particularly the Spanish Civil War (1936-1939) and the contemporary social and financial struggle.

Dr. Alpañés has created the Handbook on Writing Techniques for Students of Spanish to assist students in their improvement of writing skills. This work is now a learning tool used in all W&J Spanish classes. The Handbook was co-created in 2010 with then-student Joshua Deckman, who is now an Assistant Professor of Spanish at Marywood University.

In the Gender Studies field, Dr. Alpañés published an article in Letras Femeninas (August 2010)—”A mi madre le gustan las mujeres: la familia y la visibilidad lésbica en el siglo XXI”– about a Spanish contemporary movie and the way cinema portrays lesbian visibility.

In 2011 her Ph.D. dissertation on cinema adaptation and contemporary Spanish literature was published. Dos miradas, una historia reviews the process of adapting a best-seller Spanish contemporary novel (El Club Dumas by Arturo Pérez Reverte) into a movie (The Ninth Gate by Roman Polanski).

She has given several lectures in academic conferences in the United States on the topic of the Spanish Civil War; a topic she brought to the classroom when she taught The Spanish Civil War in Film course at W&J (Spring 2012).

She published an article in Agentes de cambio: Perspectivas cinematográficas de España y Latinoamérica en el siglo XXI. Ed. Fatima Serra de Renobales and Helena Talaya-Manso. Madrid: Pliegos (2014) 21-45 entitled “No somos antisistema: el sistema es antinosotros. Agentes de cambio y nuevas estructuras de poder en Celda 211 y La voz dormida”. The article examines two contemporary Spanish movies and the way they reflect the change in power structure in the Spanish contemporary society.

Most recently, she published “La España oculta: una mirada honesta a las penurias actuales de España en Ayer no termina nunca y Techo y comida.” in El cine de la crisis. Respuestas cinematográficas a la crisis económica española en el siglo XXI. Ed. María José Hellín García and Helena Talaya-Manso, Editorial UOC, 2018, pp.37-52