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Wanalee Romero

Wanalee Romero, Ph.D.

Clinical Associate Professor in the First-Year Seminar Program and Literature,
College of Human Sciences and Humanities

Contact number: 281-283-3423
Email: romero@uhcl.edu
Office: Bayou 2529

Biography

Dr. Wanalee Romero is Clinical Associate Professor in the First-Year Seminar Program and Literature. She also teaches in the Humanities and Women's and Gender Studies programs. She enjoys teaching and writing about belonging, assimilation, communication, and citizenship—crucial notions for those beginning university study, particularly first-generation students. Before coming to UHCL, Dr. Romero taught and earned her doctorate in American literature at Northwestern University. She also studied literature and history at University of Texas at Austin, where she earned her bachelor's degree. UHCL honored Dr. Romero, in spring of 2019, as the University's nomination for the Minnie Stevens Piper teaching award, and her article, "Abolishing the Language of Slavery: Critical Pedagogy for Anti-Racist Conversations," published in Teaching American Literature: A Journal of Theory and Practice won the "Scholarship to Improve Higher Education" award from the UHCL Center for Faculty Development in 2024. UHCL selected her as Outstanding Lecturer in 2024.
 
Dr. Romero's current research also reimagines early Mexican American literature's place within the American literary canon, by showing how, well before mid-twentieth-century identity movements, traditional sentimental and gothic elements elicited Anglo readers' sympathy for Mexicans and their haunting relationship with U.S. dominant culture. Dr. Romero's article "The blood is in me, but not the feel of the country": Belongingness and the Mexican (and) American Gothic Sentimental in Josefina Niggli's Step Down, Elder Brother," published in the Journal of Ethnic American Literature explores the ways that US and Mexican history both inform belongingness in Gothic Latine literature. She also won the Mieszkuc Professorship in Women’s Studies in 2021.

Areas of Expertise

Critical Thinking, Pedagogy for students in transition, American literature, Chicane and US Latines literatures, comparative ethnic literature, American cultural studies, women’s and gender studies, composition, American Gothic and sentimental literatures, and horror.

Publications

  • "The blood is in me, but not the feel of the country": Belongingness and the Mexican (and) American Gothic Sentimental in Josefina Niggli’s Step Down, Elder Brother.” Journal of Ethnic American Literature. 2023.
  • "Abolishing the Language of Slavery: Critical Pedagogy for Anti-Racist Conversations." Teaching American Literature: A Journal of Theory and Practice, 13.2, 2023, pp. 19-29.
  • "'What if we do this, instead?': Realtime Collaborative Crisis Course Development." Textshop Experiments. “Pedagogy Pop Up.” 7.5 (2020)
  • "Structured Reading Groups for Critical Thinking, Belongingness, and Civil Discourse in the First Year Classroom." Edited Collection on Inclusion & Diversity in Higher Education, Conference Proceedings.
  • "Mexican (and) American Gothic: Xtabay and the Dark Side of U.S./Mexico Relations in Josefina Niggli’s Step Down, Elder Brother (1947)." Coloquio Internacional Gótico V & VI: La Pluralidad Gótica. Samsara Editorial.
  • Review of Border Renaissance: The Texas Centennial and the Emergence of Mexican American Literature (2009) by John Morán González. MELUS (Spring 2011): 218-21.

Courses (Current Academic Year)

  • PSYC 1300 "Learning Frameworks" First-Year Seminar
  • PSYC 1100 "Learning Frameworks" First-Year Seminar
  • LITR 4326 "American Women's Literature"
  • WGST 4372 "Seminar in Women's and Gender Studies"
  • HUMN 3374 "Critical Inquiry"
  • HUMN 3375 "Ideas in Transition: Race and Racism" and "Ideas in Transition: Gothic"
  • WGST 5732 "Graduate Seminar in Women and Gender Studies"
  • LITR 5431 "American Literature Gothic and Horror" graduate
  • HUMN 5130 "Graduate Seminar in Humanities: Gothic"

Awards and Accomplishments

  • 2024 Outstanding Lecturer, University of Houston-Clear Lake
  • 2024 Scholarship to Improve Higher Education, UHCL Center for Faculty Development
  • 2020-2021 Mieszkuc Professorship in Women's Studies
  • 2018 Piper Professor Award, University of Houston-Clear Lake Nominee
  • 2016-2020 Faculty Fellow, Office of New Student Programming
  • 2015 Excellence in Teaching, National Society of Leadership and Success, UHCL's chapter of the student leadership honor society