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Faculty Profile: Maria Pao
AssociateProfessorMariaPao
Dr.Maria Pao
In the 1920s, how did the novel experience of riding in a car change people’s conception and understanding of visual perception and language? Maria Pao, Associate Professor of Spanish, once wrote an article exploring the attempts of some Spanish authors to reproduce the experience of traveling by automobile. Pao’s specialty is Spanish Peninsular literature and poetry of the early 20th century, which was a period of immense change and transformation in the Western world and in Spain in particular. “Having lost the remains of its empire in the 1898 war against the United States,Spain was wrestling with identity issues: What happened to its glory days? Where did things go wrong? How should it approach its future? So I’m interested in seeing how the literature of the period reflected those complex, exciting, and also anxiety-producing times," said Pao. "Sometimes the tone of the works is grave and philosophic, but other times it’s playful and silly. What I try to do in my work is to show how texts produce their effect.”

 

Pao teaches numerous courses at Illinois State including Advanced Composition, Advanced Grammar in Spanish, Introduction to Hispanic Literature, Survey of Spanish Literature, and Modern Peninsular Literature. “I try to keep a balance between a solid base in literary history and helping students find in critical reading a source of challenge and pleasure,” said Pao. “I remind students of the lyric roots in their everyday lives—like the ballad tradition still living in popular music, listening for different kinds of rhyme in songs on the radio, seeing music sampling as a practice handed down from the historical avant-garde, or thinking of text-messaging as a kind of poetry.” Pao works hard to assist her students in becoming sophisticated and thoughtful readers. 

Pao’s current research project focuses on the play Doña Rosita the Spinster, or The Language of Flowers by major figure Federico Garcia Lorca. “I’m trying to see how Lorca treats the visual language of objects, like flowers, where each one means something specific—amorousness, unavailability, and so on—and what this implies about rhetoric, writing, and everyday conversation, at least as far as Lorca conceived it.” Pao is also interested in expanding the Spanish literary canon and recovering Spain’s place in discussions of European modernism and the avant-garde: “So poet and playwright Federico García Lorca might be mentioned with, say, Yeats. Or Ramon Gómex de la Serna, one of the most highly regarded, witty, and inventive writers in avant-garde Spain, with people like Dadaist Tristan Tzara or surrealist Benjamin Péret.”  

When she is not researching and preparing for classes, Pao engages in an activity that counts as both work and play: reading. She also enjoys riding her bike, hunting for good deals at thrift stores, and listening to live music.   

Pao earned her Ph.D. in Romance Languages with a concentration in Spanish from the University of Michigan. She holds an M.A. in Spanish Literature from University of California at Santa Barbara. Pao also holds a B.A. in Spanish Language and Literature and a B.A. in English Literature from the University of Puget Sound. Before joining the faculty of Illinois State in 1999, Pao taught at the University of Iowa.

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