Ph.D., Spanish, University of California, Irvine, 2009
M.A., Spanish, University of California, Irvine, 2005
B.A., Philosophy and Spanish, University of Texas at El Paso, 2003

My full name is Judith Iliana Villanueva Chávez, but my friends and family call me Iliana, which is my middle name. I have been a full-time Spanish instructor at Highline since 2017.

I have twenty years of experience teaching at various colleges around the country, including Bellevue, Seattle Central, South Seattle, the University of Washington and the University of California, Irvine. I have taught all levels of Spanish: everything from introductory language courses to Mexican and Southern Cone literature, with composition, conversation, culture, critical theory, and literary analysis in between.

I am a literary scholar by training. I am proud of having attended community colleges in both California and Texas because that’s where my academic journey began. I then earned a BA in philosophy and Spanish from the University of Texas at El Paso. I went on to complete a PhD in Latin American literature from the University of California, Irvine. My research focuses on the areas of post-dictatorship poetry in the Southern Cone and post-revolutionary Mexican fiction and poetry.

My interest in learning and teaching languages came from my passion for literature. I am Mexican, so Spanish is my native language. I have spent much of my life as a student of other languages such as English, French and Portuguese.