Francisca Paredes Méndez is a native of Galicia, Spain, where she lived until she completed her degrees in teaching and English at the Universidad de Santiago de Compostela. She then moved the states, where she attended the University of Kansas, where she finished a Master´s degree and a PhD in Spanish literature. She now teaches in the Department of Modern and Classical Languages at Western Washington University, in beautiful Bellingham, Washington. Her research focuses on early twentieth century Spanish literature and cultural studies, as well as late 20th and 21st century Spanish literature. Many of her publications focus on visual culture and national identity, specifically, on how visual culture--movies, caricatures, textbooks--impacted the creation of a model citizen in Spain. She has published works in Hispania, Hispanófila and Anales de la Literatura Española Contemporánea, among others.
Her love of teaching and her interest in bringing cultural content into the language classroom, has also led her to contribute with interactive content for Temas and Plazas, both first year Spanish textbooks published by Thomson Heinle. She is the author (with José Ballesteros and Mark Harpring) of Voces de España (Thomson Heinle, 2004 and 2013), a textbook geared towards upper division survey courses of Spanish literature. Voces brings a cultural studies approach to the traditional literature survey course.