Paola Calahorrano
استادیار · Contemporary Latin American women's writing
University of Pittsburghمعرفی
Dr. Paola Calahorrano serves as a Teaching Assistant Professor in the Department of Spanish and Portuguese at the University of Pittsburgh, where she has been a faculty member since 2018. She teaches over 25 course sections spanning advanced language instruction, literature, and culture studies in Spanish, while advising undergraduate Minors and the Pitt Club de Español.
Her academic credentials include:
- PhD in Hispanic Languages and Literatures from Boston University
- MA in Hispanic Literatures and Cultures from the University of Arizona
- BA in Journalism and Literatures from Pontificia Universidad Católica del Ecuador
Calahorrano's research interrogates the female body as a racialized and sexualized construct within Hispanic cultures, focusing on intersections between medical institutions and gender representation. Her scholarship bridges contemporary Latin American women's writing, visual culture analysis, feminist pedagogy, and health humanities, with particular emphasis on reproductive rights and disability narratives. This interdisciplinary approach manifests in courses like Mapping the Female Body and Disruptive Bodies, which examine menstruation, pregnancy, illness, and disability through cultural lenses.
Her publication trajectory (2010-2025) reveals consistent engagement with feminist health humanities, evolving from analyses of poetic bodies (Pizarnik, Olin) toward contemporary critiques of medical institutions and reproductive politics. Recent works demonstrate increasing focus on amplifying marginalized narratives through literary and cinematic frameworks, connecting historical gender constructs to current health justice movements.
As an academic advisor for Spanish/Portuguese Minors and faculty lead for the Pitt Club de Español, Calahorrano integrates mentorship with curriculum innovation. Her redesign of 8+ courses—including professional communication, film studies, and women's narratives—establishes interdisciplinary pathways connecting language instruction to social justice themes.
She spearheads content-based course development that merges literary analysis with health humanities, notably creating Mapping the Female Body (exploring cultural dimensions of women's health) and Disruptive Bodies (centering illness/disability narratives), while restructuring film and literature courses around gender and identity frameworks.
