About me
In my spare time, you can find me hiking outside on a trail, journaling at a local coffee shop, hanging out with my pets (2 dogs and 1 cat), playing volleyball or taking art classes through the city of Tallahassee. I’m grateful to be surrounded by a community of local visionaries that inspire me on the daily, and to be deeply involved with the student organizations in my program at FSU.
Research
My dissertation research examines the sound patterns and stress systems of Mam, an indigenous Mayan language, and Guatemalan Spanish, an understudied dialect. I will use Metrical Stress Theory within an Optimality Theoretic Framework to explore how stress influences the production of consonants in both languages.
Throughout my time as a graduate student, I have been involved in various collaborations/groups led by FSU Faculty: namely, Dr. Carolina González (my main advisor) and Dr. Antje Muntendam (co-director of my M.A. Thesis).
The D(emonstrative)-construction: a newly identified left-dislocated configuration in Spanish
Phonation Patterns in Spanish Vowels: Spectral and Spectrographic Analysis
UMA-to-IPA Transcription Tool for K’iche’ (Maya) (FSU Libraries’ 2022-2023 PEN & Inc cohort)
Teaching
Graduate Students in the Spanish Program within the Department of Modern Languages & Linguistics receive tuition waivers in exchange for graduate teaching-assistantships. We typically serve as the Instructor of Record for 2 sections of Basic Spanish (SPN1120, SPN1121, SPN2220) per semester, any other courses are not offered to all TAs.
Basic Spanish Track
I have taught all three levels of Basic Spanish since I entered the M.A. program in 2018.
Spanish Heritage Track
During the 2022-2023 Academic Year, I served as the Lead TA for the Spanish Heritage Track at FSU. I re-vamped SPN2340 (Basic Spanish for Heritage Bilinguals/Learners) based on Conversaciones escritas, and was the first heritage speaker of Spanish to teach for the heritage track at FSU.
Course Coordination
For the 2020-2021 Academic Year (during COVID19), I was the course coordinator for Elementary Spanish II: the one tasked with digitizing our in-person curriculum and re-fitting the material for remote instruction via Canvas and Zoom.
Gabrielle Isgar 