She teaches Spanish language and Latin American Literature and Film. Her primary research areas range from cultural products on (il)legal immigration to the study of bandits in Latin American literature and film representations of said figures. She recently published an article about the construction of identity through violence taking as a point of reference the famous Mexican corrido in honor of Joaquín Murrieta. She obtained her doctoral degree from the University of California, Berkeley, and she joined Seattle University in 2009. She was part of the organizing committee for the PAMLA 2012 conference held at her institution.