Jacob C. Brown

Jacob C. Brown received his M.A. and Ph.D. in Spanish and Portuguese in 2022 with graduate certificates in Latin American Studies, College Teaching, and Second Language Studies. He applies his ongoing study of these areas toward designing lessons that spark students’ curiosity and challenge them to think critically about language and culture.

Jacob’s teaching is student-centered and draws from current methods in second language studies. The main objective of his courses is to foster both language acquisition and intercultural competence. To this end, students build their communicative language skills through task-based activities and make connections and comparisons between their own communities and communities throughout the Spanish-speaking world. Jacob’s research on Afro-Latin American literature shapes his approach to teaching Hispanic culture through an intersectional antiracist lens.

He defended his dissertation, entitled “Writing for the Silenced: Slavery, Memory, Politics, and Justice in Afro-Latin American Literary Narrative,” with honors in 2022. He designed and taught a special topics in Hispanic literature course on 20th and 21st century Afro-Latin American literature and culture in 2020-2021, presented research on antiracist language teaching at the AATSP Annual Conference in 2021, designed an original social media project and managed events as a Graduate Fellow at the Center for Languages in 2018-2019, and was awarded the E. Inman Fox Award for Excellence in Teaching in 2018. He also conducted dissertation research in Brazil and assisted a study abroad program in Spain.

As a Lecturer of Spanish at Northwestern, Jacob teaches various sections of Intermediate Spanish and is continuing his research on Afro-Hispanic literature and culture, antiracism, and language pedagogy. His work has appeared in The Oxford Encyclopedia of Latina and Latino Literature, Estudos de Literatura Brasileira Contemporânea, Alambique: Revista académica de ciencia ficción y fantasía, and The Afro-Hispanic Review.

Outside of teaching and research, Jacob enjoys mentoring students during office hours, collaborating with colleagues, and contributing to the Department’s extracurricular activities.