Assistant Professor of Spanish
Areas of Expertise: Hispanic Studies, Cuban and Caribbean cultural production, Latin American film and media, women’s cinema, digital humanities, intermediality, performance studies, and second-language pedagogy
Maybel Mesa Morales is Assistant Professor of Spanish in the Department of Modern Language Studies at Lycoming College. Her work in Hispanic Studies encompasses Latin American literature, culture, film, and language pedagogy, with concentrations in Cuban and Caribbean cultural production, women’s cinema, intermediality, and digital humanities. Her research focuses on contemporary Cuban audiovisual production, particularly films directed by women. She directs Emerging from the Shadows: Cuban Women Filmmakers in Contemporary Cinema, a collaborative digital humanities project integrating scholarly research, filmmaker interviews, undergraduate mentorship, and teaching resources.
Before joining Lycoming College, she taught at Providence College for three years. Her international teaching experience spans Cuba, Greece, and the United States. In her native Cuba, she taught at the University of Havana and worked at the prestigious Centro de Estudios Martianos (CEM) as a Research Associate in the Department of Critical Editions, where she contributed to the critical edition of José Martí’s complete works.
At Lycoming College, Mesa Morales teaches across the Spanish curriculum, from introductory and intermediate language courses to eight 300- and 400-level special topics courses she has designed and developed on Latin American literature, cinema, visual culture, gastronomy, memory, gender, dictatorship, and cultural representation.
Mesa Morales has presented her research throughout the United States and internationally in Cuba, Mexico, Colombia, Spain, and Canada. Her international scholarly engagement also includes participation in collaborative research groups and digital initiatives devoted to women filmmakers, and Latin American film. Her scholarship has appeared in peer-reviewed journals, edited volumes, digital humanities projects, and open-access pedagogical platforms. In 2025, Mesa Morales received the Learner International Award for Excellence for her co-authored study of digital multimodal composition in beginning Spanish courses. Since 2021, she has served on the Executive Committee of the Modern Language Association (MLA) Forum on Cuba and the Cuban Diaspora, holding leadership roles as secretary and chair.
Selected Publications
Mesa Morales, Maybel. “Dissident Visions: Cuban Women Filmmakers Rewriting History through Gender and Race Perspectives.” Dissident Identities: Afro-Queer New Media, Visual Arts, and Performance in the Hispanic Caribbean and Its Diasporas, edited by Rosita Scerbo and Anastasia Valecce, University Press of Florida, forthcoming Spring 2027.
Mesa Morales, Maybel. “Crossing Boundaries: Intermediality in Cuban-American Performance.” Media, Migrants, and U.S. Border(s), edited by R. Rocha de Luna and J. Bañuelos Capistrán, Springer Nature, 2026, pp. 55–75. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-032-00465-9_4
Mesa Morales, Maybel. “Landscapes of Haptic Visuality and Affects: A Conversation with Cuban Filmmaker Patricia Ramos.” Cinematic Landscape and Emerging Identities in Contemporary Latin American Film, edited by María Soledad Paz-Mackay and Argelia González Hurtado, Lexington Books, 2024, pp. 203–213. https://doi.org/10.5040/9798216432081.ch-12
Mesa Morales, Maybel, and Gabriela C. Zapata. “Digital Multimodal Composing in Beginning L2 Spanish Classes: Student-Created Children’s Books.” The International Journal of Literacies, vol. 31, no. 2, 2024, pp. 57–76. Recipient of the 2025 Learner International Award for Excellence. https://doi.org/10.18848/2327-0136/CGP/v31i02/57-76
Mesa Morales, Maybel. “Cocinar y castigar: recetarios de torturas en Cocinando con Elisa de Lucía Laragione.” Latin American Theatre Review, vol. 51, no. 2, 2018, pp. 193–205. https://doi.org/10.17161/latr.v51i2.7679