Patricia Catoira joined the University of Georgia in fall 2026 as a Clinical Assistant Professor of Spanish. Her work at UGA focuses on experiential, applied, practice-based, and career-oriented instruction for Spanish students and students in other fields for whom Spanish supports their professional goals. 

In addition to teaching all levels of Spanish, she teaches Medical Spanish and Introduction to Translation. Using a task-based, communicative approach and authentic cultural content, she helps students develop linguistic proficiency, intercultural competence, critical thinking, and an understanding of diverse perspectives.

She has led numerous student groups throughout Latin America, particularly in Cuba and Nicaragua. She created a six-week summer program in León, Nicaragua, in collaboration with a local language school, clinic, and youth center, where students lived with host families, received individualized language instruction, and gained hands-on experience shadowing healthcare providers or teaching English and extracurricular subjects. Her faculty-led trips to Cuba, developed as part of her course on Cuba, explored the island’s cultural and political context.

Before joining UGA, she was Associate Professor of Spanish and Latin American Studies at Montana State University, where she taught Spanish at all levels and upper-division courses on Latin America. She held leadership positions in Women’s and Gender Studies, Hispanic Studies, and Latin American Studies and most recently served as Director of Language Learning, overseeing curriculum, assessment, ACTFL alignment, placement, scheduling, and hiring for the Spanish language program.

Throughout her career, she has taught Latin American culture and literature and interdisciplinary courses in Women’s and Gender Studies and the Honors College. She has received numerous teaching awards, most recently the 2025 Excellence in Teaching Award for Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion from the MSU College of Letters and Science.

She taught for a semester at the Universidad de las Américas in Puebla, Mexico, and has traveled extensively throughout Latin America and Spain.

Research interests:

Representations of Healthcare in Latin American literature and film

Teaching Spanish for the Professions 

Crime Fiction in Latin America

Selected publications:

“The Legacy of Sinful Ignorance in John Sayles’s Men with Guns.” Special Issue “Representations of Resistance in Literature and Film” of Polifonía: Revista de estudios hispánicos. Vol. XV, no. 1, 2025, pp. 137-149.

“El Chapo for President: An Examination of Leadership through Mexico’s Narcoculture.” Co-authored with Virginia Bratton. In Leadership, Popular Culture and Social Change. Kristin Bezio and Kim Yost (eds.). Northampton, Mass: Edward Elgar, 2018. 91-106.

“Carmen’s Final Problem: Contesting Crime Fiction and Gender Roles in Marcela Serrano’s Nuestra Señora de la Soledad.” In The Domestic Noir: The New Face of 21^st Century Crime Fiction. Laura Joyce and Henry Sutton (eds.). London, UK: Palgrave Macmillan, 2018. 261-79. 

“Héctor Belascoarán Shayne.” In Sleuths, Private Eyes, and Policemen: An International Compendium of the 100 Greatest Literary Detectives. Eric Sandberg (ed). Lanham, Maryland: Rowman & Littlefield, 2018. 16-17.

“Neither Here nor There: Fluid Identities and Exile in Jesús Díaz’s Dime Algo Sobre Cuba (Tell Me Something About Cuba).” Special Issue “Transnationalism” of North Dakota Quarterly, vol. 84, no. 1/2, 2017, pp. 150-163.

“Political and Market Forces in the Cuban Short Story.” In The Caribbean Short Story: Critical Perspectives. Lucy Evans, Mark McWatt and Emma Smith (eds). Leeds, UK: Peepal Tree, 2011. 77-92.