Isabel Velázquez

Graduate Chair, Professor of Spanish Modern Languages & Literatures University of Nebraska-Lincoln

Address: OLDH 1127
Lincoln NE 68588-0315
Phone: 402-472-9821 On-campus 2-9821
Email: mvelazquez2@unl.edu

Isabel Velázquez (Ph.D. University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign), is Harold E. Spencer Professor in Modern Languages and Literatures. Her area of research includes sociolinguistic variation, Hispanic linguistics, bilingualism and language acquisition, heritage speaker pedagogy, language contact on the U.S./Mexico border, and the role of language in identity formations of US Latin@s. Her current research focuses on linguistic maintenance and loss among Latinx families in the Midwest.

Dr. Velázquez is the director of Cartas a la Familia/Family Letters. On the Migration from Jesusita to Jane a digital archive that preserves, digitizes, analyzes and makes public a collection of the correspondence and other personal documents of a Mexican American family that migrated from the state of Zacatecas, Mexico, to the states of Colorado and Nebraska during the first half of the twentieth century.

Her current Ph.D. students are:

Marcus Vinícius Barbosa
Luisa Carolina Julio Gómez
Elliott Jacobson
Josefa Samper Suárez

Publications

Velázquez, I. (2018). Household perspectives on minority language maintenance and loss: Language in the small spaces. Multilingual Matters.
Velasco, J. I., Velázquez, I., & Avelar, J. (2018). From Jesusita to Jane: Personal names, self-presentation and digital preservation of Mexican American experience in the US Midwest. Revista de Humanidades Digitales, 2, 49-76.
Velázquez, I. (2019). Memory, Language and Healing, in Art from Trauma: Genocide and Healing Beyond Rwanda. Essays in Honor of Prof. Chantal Kalisa. University of Nebraska Press.
Velázquez, I. (2015). Reported literacy, media consumption and social media use as measures of relevance of Spanish as a heritage language. International Journal of Bilingualism, 1367006915596377
Velázquez, I., Garrido, M., & Millán, M. (2014). Heritage speakers of Spanish in the US Midwest: reported interlocutors as a measure of family language relevance. Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development, (ahead of print), 1-18.
Velázquez, I. (2014). Maternal attitudes toward Spanish transmission in the US Midwest: a necessary but insufficient condition for success. Sociolinguistic Studies, 7(3), 225‐248.
Velázquez, I. (2014). Maternal perceptions of agency in intergenerational transmission of Spanish: The case of Latinos in the US Midwest. Journal of Language, Identity & Education. 13(3), 135-152.
Velázquez, I. (2013) Getting It: Sociolinguistic Research and the Teaching on U.S. Spanish. Critical Inquiry in Language Studies. 10 (3). 191-214. DOI: 10.1080/15427587.2013.816826.
Velázquez, I. (2013). Individual discourse, language ideology and Spanish transmission in El Paso, Texas. Critical Discourse Studies. DOI: 10.1080/17405904.2013.789975
Velázquez, I. (2012). Mother's social network and family language maintenance. Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development. 2012, 1-14. DOI:10.1080/01434632.2012.720984
Velázquez, I. (2010). ¿Sólo una vida traducida? Dislocación, diáspora y perviviencia cultural en la experiencia Mexicana en Estados Unidos. Conciencia Mexicana: Bicentenario de la Independencia y Centenario de la Revolución. Rodrigo Pereyra, Ed. Lubbock, TX: Céfiro Press. 201-208.
Velázquez, I. (2009). Intergenerational Spanish transmission in El Paso, Texas: Parental perceptions of cost/benefit.Spanish in Context
Interview
Sobre el español en Estados Unidos redEle Revista Electrónica de Didáctica del Español como Lengua Extranjera Número 24. 2012

Courses

Graduate

SPAN 491/891 Spanish in Contact with Other Languages
SPAN 486/886 Spanish in the US: Variation and Contact
SPAN 491/891 Heritage Speaker Pedagogy
TEAC 815J Teaching Spanish in the Content Areas

Undergraduate

SPAN 304 Advanced Writing
SPAN 300A Advanced Writing and Reading for heritage speakers of Spanish

Ongoing Research

Family Letters: Digitization and Analysis of the Personal Correspondence of a Mexican American Family in Western CO and Eastern NE in the First Half of the 20th Century
Heritage Speakers in the Midwest Project
Patterns of Spanish Maintenance and Loss among Latino Families in Lincoln, NE

Affiliations

Outreach

Faculty 101: The Power of Language
Mexican American Family Stories. History Nebraska Brown Bag Lecture.

Digital archive

Cartas a la Familia/Family Letters

Featured book

Household Perspectives on Minority Language Maintenance and Loss: Language in the Small Spaces