Monica Ayuso, PHD

BIOGRAPHY

Born and raised in a small city near Bahía Blanca, Argentina, Dr. Mónica G. Ayuso emigrated to the U.S. in 1980 to pursue graduate work in English. From 1978 to the time she left her native country, she taught advanced English classes to English as a Second Language students of various populations. Prominent among those were professionals seeking to pass qualifying exams like TOEFL and the Cambridge Certificates as well as English as a Second Language teachers training for positions in high-schools and private language learning institutions like the British Cultural Institute.

Mónica won a full-ride scholarship to support her first master’s degree at the University of North Florida in a cultural exchange program for college professors of the Sister Cities of Bahía Blanca, Argentina, and Jacksonville, Florida.  After completing that degree, Mónica enrolled in a second master’s in English literature at the University of Florida, Gainsville, where she proceeded to complete it and immediately start a Ph.D.  Throughout these years, Mónica supported herself through teaching assistantships and fellowships at the institutions she was registered in as an international student. In addition, before leaving Florida, Mónica had a one-year visiting professorship at the Florida State College in Jacksonville.  Teaching is the only profession she has ever known.

Mónica joined the Department of English at California State University in 1995. At the start of her tenure, she taught Twentieth-Century British literature, comparative world literature (Spanish and English), and the undergraduate course in literary theory and criticism.   During three decades at CSUB, Mónica developed wide-ranging courses in general ethnicity now mandatory to English majors in both tracks of the program.  She was also faculty advisor of Calliope, the English Department literary journal, for six consecutive years. Her publications have appeared in refereed journals like Woolf Studies Annual, The Journal of Haitian Studies, The Afro-Latin American Review, Studies in Translation and Interpreting, and The Journal of the Fantastic in the Arts. These publications are a testament to her evolving research interests in literature and culture published both in English and in Spanish.