Luciano Martinez
Professor
On Leave - Academic Year
Spanish
Contact
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Affiliations: Spanish, Gender & Sexuality Studies, Latin American and Latino Studies, Gender & Sexuality Center
Interests: Higher education leadership and administration; internationalization and English-medium instruction (EMI); Spanish-language and literary pedagogy; Latin American literatures and cultures.
Luciano Martínez is Professor of Spanish at Swarthmore College and a 2025–26 Fulbright U.S. Scholar at National Cheng Kung University in Tainan, Taiwan. A scholar of contemporary Latin American literature, literary pedagogy, and Spanish-language education, he is also an experienced educator and academic leader.
Martínez brings extensive administrative and curricular leadership experience to his work. At Swarthmore, he has served as Chair of the Division of Arts and Humanities, Chair of the Department of Spanish, and Coordinator of the Latin American and Latino Studies and Gender and Sexuality Studies programs. Building on this record, he serves as a consultant for higher education institutions, advising on internationalization, curriculum design, English-medium instruction (EMI), program assessment, and strategic development in the liberal arts.
His publications include Escritoras latinoamericanas del siglo XXI [21st-Century Latin American Women Writers] (Liverpool University Press, 2023); Pedro Lemebel, belleza indómita [Pedro Lemebel, Savage Beauty] (Serie ACP / IILI, 2022); and “Who We Really Are? Disciplinary Struggles and the Role of Literature in Language Departments” (ADFL Bulletin, MLA, 2022). He is also co-author of Miguel Briante, genealogía de un olvido (Beatriz Viterbo, 2001). His work on literary and language pedagogy includes an essay in Approaches to Teaching the Works of Jorge Luis Borges (MLA, 2024), which advances curricular and theoretical frameworks for effectively teaching Borges and related texts, and “Finding Our Voices in EMI Humanities: Confidence, Agency, and AI in Two Latin American Courses in Taiwan” (Fulbright Taiwan Research & Reflections, 2026), which examines confidence-building, student agency, and responsible AI use in English-medium humanities instruction.
Martínez earned his Ph.D. and M.A. in Spanish and Latin American Literatures from the University of Pittsburgh, where he held an Andrew Mellon Predoctoral Fellowship and received the Elizabeth Baranger Award for Excellence in Teaching. In Argentina, he earned three degrees—“Profesor de Castellano y Literatura” (Instituto San José) and “Profesor en Letras” and “Licenciado en Letras” (National University of Mar del Plata)—and was honored with multiple academic prizes, including the Academia Argentina de Letras award for the country’s most outstanding literature graduate.
At Swarthmore, Martínez teaches courses in both Spanish and English on Latin American literature and culture, with particular emphasis on Jorge Luis Borges, Gabriel García Márquez, literary theory, and the short story. He has served as an elected delegate to the Modern Language Association Assembly and is an external reviewer and consultant for higher education institutions, advising on departmental reviews, curriculum design, and program assessment.
