Office: Ettinger 104A
Phone: 484-664-3343
Fax: 484-664-3722
E-mail: marx@muhlenberg.edu

Dr. Joan F. Marx is Professor of Spanish, Director of the Spanish Program and Head of the Department of Languages, Literatures & Cultures. She specializes in contemporary Latin American literature, specifically, the Mexican and Mexican-American narrative. Her professional work includes scholarly publications in national and international literary journals as well as presentations of her work at national and international literary meetings. In addition, she has presented scholarly papers on the use of foreign language technology in the classroom as part of her work on the Mellon Project at national and international meetings.

A graduate of the class of 1977, Dr. Marx has been a member of the faculty at Muhlenberg College since 1984. She teaches courses from the beginning to the advanced levels, which include Intermediate Spanish I and II, Medieval and Renaissance Spanish Literature, Spanish-American Literature I & II, Border Literature and the First Year Seminar, The Americas in Crisis: Tales of Human Rights in Film and Literature.

Dr. Marx has received the Christian R. and Mary F. Lindback Foundation Award for Distinguished Teaching at Muhlenberg College (1991), the Louis Bevier Graduate Fellowship at Rutgers University (1983-84), and the Phi Sigma Iota Romance Language Award when she was a student at Muhlenberg College (1977).

From 1991-93, Dr. Marx served as Assistant Dean of the College and, from 1993-97, she served as Head of the department from 1993-97. During her term as Head of the Department, she designed and implemented the $300,000 Mellon Grant for the Development of Foreign Language Multimedia Computer Programs, in which all full-time department members of every language program participated in the design and development of multimedia software. The Mellon Project Software, a series of grammar-based and cultural programs, is housed in the Language Learning Center and is incorporated into the department’s language-level classes along with other technology-based applications.

She is a member of the Modern Language Association (MLA), the American Association of Teachers of Spanish and Portuguese, the American Council on the Teaching of Foreign Languages (ACTFL), and of the Middle Atlantic Council for Latin American Studies (MACLAS). She also serves as the Managing Editor on the MACLAS Journal: Latin American Essays (2006-2009) MACLAS.