Susan Larson , Ph.D. Qualia Professor of Spanish

Susan Larson is the Charles B. Qualia Endowed Professor of Romance Languages at Texas Tech University, editor of the Romance Quarterly, and co-editor (with Benjamin Fraser) of Palgrave Macmillan’s Hispanic Urban Studies books series. Her interdisciplinary teaching and research draw on Literary and Urban Studies, Cultural Geography and spatial theory to shed light on the competing discourses of modernity in Spain since 1898, and the reciprocal relationship between culture and social space.

Education

• Ph.D., University of Arizona

Research

Urban Studies, Cultural Geography and Spatial Theory, the Historical Avant-Garde, Spanish Film, Contemporary Spanish Literature

Accolades & Awards

• François Chevalier Research Fellow, Casa de Velázquez (Madrid), 2022

• Fulbright U.S. Senior Scholar in Spain, 2021
• Barney E. Rushing Faculty Distinguished Research Award, Texas Tech University, 2020
• Phi Beta Kappa Influential Professor Award, Texas Tech University, 2019                                            
• Favorite Professor - Academic TECHSPY Awards, Texas Tech University, 2017

Courses Commonly Taught

Modernism / Modernity; Cultural Resistance in Social Space; The Death of the Novel in the Age of the Internet; The 'Other' Generation of 27; Advanced Readings in Critical Theory; Hispanic Cities; Spanish Cinema; U.S. Latino Politics and Culture; Space, Place and Culture; Language, Image, Power

Texas Tech Dissertations, MA Theses and Current MA & PhD Advisees

• Abdullah Al Saki (2025, MA thesis)
  Spectrality, Nostalgia and Historical Reimagination in !García¡ from Graphic Novel to Screen
  https://hdl.handle.net/2346/103241
• Andrew J. Cosper (2024)
  Gender, Non-Human Agency and New Ruralism in Contemporary Iberian Fiction and Nonfiction
  University School of Nashville
  https://ttu-ir.tdl.org/items/eddc4f5c-f8dc-4e66-aeb2-6ebc6a3bf091
• Gema Vela (2022) 
  Familias en streaming:  
  Discursos domésticos glocales en las series españolas de la post-televisión
  Assistant Professor of Spanish (tenure-track) Middle Tennessee State University, 
  https://ttu-ir.tdl.org/handle/2346/90271
• David S. Foshee (2021)
  Childhood and the Urban in Spanish Film of the 1950s
  Assistant Professor of Spanish (tenure-track) Simpson College
  https://ttu-ir.tdl.org/handle/2346/88666
• Current Advisees: Isabel Almeida Trigo, Gadiel Góngora, Esperanza González Moreno, Abdullah Al Saki, and Jorge Téllez

Recent Publications

• 'Roundtable: The Spatial Politics of Everyday Life,' with Megan Saltzman and Enric Bou. Journal of Spanish Cultural Studies, vol. 27, no 1, 2026, pp. 61-83.
• “Cultural Geographies in Spain: Landscape, Place and Space.” In The Routledge Companion to Twentieth and Twenty-First Century Spain: Ideas, Practices, Imaginings. L. Elena Delgado and Eduardo Ledesma, eds. April 2025.
• “Lo privado, lo público y el ‘confort’ en la novela social española de finales de 1950: Entre visillos (Carmen Martín Gaite, 1958) y La piqueta (Antonio Ferres, 1959).” Tropelías: Revista deTeoría de la Literatura y Literatura Comparada 10 (2024): 127-137.
•  “Comfort, Consumerism and Domestic Space in the Late 1950s: The Role of Popular Cinema in Spain’s Environmental Cultural History.” In Ciudad y naturaleza. Aproximaciones desde la Historia medioambiental, Eduardo Prieto and Guiomar Martín, eds. Madrid: Ediciones Asimétricas, 2024. 68-79.
• Comfort and Domestic Space in Modern Spain. University of Toronto Press, 2024
• Language, Image and Power in Luso-Hispanic Cultural Studies: Theory and Practice. Routledge, 2021.
• Architecture and the Urban in Spanish Film. Intellect Books, 2021.
• “Nature, the Monumental and Urban Technological Networks in Víctor Moreno’s Edificio España (2012) and La ciudad oculta (2018) / Naturaleza, lo monumental y las redes tecnológicas urbanas en Edificio España(2012) y La ciudad oculta (2018) de Víctor Moreno.” ZARCH: Journal in Interdisciplinary Studies in Architecture and Urbanism 16 (2021): 12-31.
• “La vanguardia en la arquitectura española (1920-1936):¿pro­yecto inacabado o proyecto indefinido?” In Las dos modernidades: Edad de Plata y Transición en España. Jordi Gracia and Domingo Ródenas de Moya, eds. Madrid: Visor Libros, 2021. 165-191.

Editorial Positions

• Romance Quarterly
  Executive Editor
• Hispanic Urban Studies
  Palgrave-Macmillan Book Series Co-Editor

Funding

In the Fall of 2021 Professor Susan Larson was a Fulbright Senior Scholar in Spain. In the Spring of 2022 she held a residential fellowship at the Madrid Institute for Advanced Studies, an international research center of the Universidad Autónoma of Madrid and the Casa de Velázquez, the Madrid branch of the Écoles Françaises à L'Étranger. Her research has also been funded by the National Endowment for the Humanities, HISPANEX (the Program for Cultural Cooperation Between the Spanish Ministry of Education, Culture and Sports and United States Universities), and the Charles B. Qualia Endowment of Texas Tech University.

External Links

• Personal Website 

• MLA Commons

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  Google Scholar Profile

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  Academia Profile

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  ORCID ID