Dr. Granja is a Leadership Board Fellow and Undergraduate Director, and also works closely with the Artificial Intelligence Teaching Enhancement Initiative. His research interests focus on Gender Studies as well as 17th and early 18th-century Spanish peninsular literature. He specializes in Early Modern Spanish literature through a lens of societal gender dynamics and the cultural tensions they produce. His work often deals with masculine identities in the Golden Age, specifically analyzing the literary and sociopolitical motivations and implications of masculine identity formation as exposed by both male and female writers. He is also engaged in research that focuses on variations in didactic literature from mid to late 17th century Spain, observing and contrasting how writers employ discourses of religion and traditional moral values to chastise what they consider irregularities in the coetaneous aristocracy. This investigative work also leads his work to look at early 18th-century women writers, as the result of the impact of 17th-century cultural changes that begin to form literary evidence of the beginnings of a pre-illustration period proto-feminism.

In addition to teaching and research on gender studies, early modern literature, women writers, and social justice & equity, Dr. Granja works on archival recovery and analysis of historical judicial documents involving gender violence and political/religious representation of minority groups. His courses deal with all the cultural, gender, and literary issues raised above. When offering grammar courses, his classes include strong service-learning components that link his teaching to the needs of the Tuscaloosa community, often via student-led translations of documents from English into Spanish for local non-profit organizations such as such as Alabama Coalition Against Domestic Violence, Alabama Museum of Natural History, Good Samaritan Clinic, One Roof, Schoolyard Roots, Turning Point, Tuscaloosa SAFE Center, and United Way of West Alabama.

Courses taught:

SP 594: Early Modern Identities
SP 590: Protecting the code: A deconstruction of courtly honor
SP 540: Honor in Hispanic Societies
SP 537: Gender in Hispanic Works
SP 527: Spanish Women Writers
SP 491: Cervantes and Don Quijote
SP 488: Special Topics: Early Modern Peninsular Literature
SP 437: Social Justice in the Hispanic World
SP 390: Spanish in the Community
SP 375: Latin American Literatures and Cultures until 1900
SP 371: Literatures and Cultures of Spain until 1800
SP 366: Cultures of Latin America
SP 364: Cultures of Spain
SP 356 SL: Advanced Grammar and Composition through Service Learning
SP 355: Spanish for Native and Heritage Speakers
SP 353: Spanish Conversation
SP 337: Cultural Equity in Hispanic Societies
UH 400: Nicaragua Clinical Experience

MONOGRAPHS

• Granja Ibarreche, Xabier. Protecting the Spanish Woman: Gender Identity and Empowerment in María de Zayas’s Works. University of Nevada Press, 2023.
• Granja Ibarreche, Xabier. Grotesque Tales: Transgressions and Ruptured bodies in Early Modern Spain. (In progress)

ARTICLES AND BOOK CHAPTERS

• “Justicia sangrienta: la función literario-legal de la efusión sanguínea en las novelas de María de Zayas.” (Submitted)
• “Sesgos políticos: violencia de género, justicia social y acceso a representación jurídica en el renacimiento español.” (Submitted)
• “Dilemas patriarcales: autoridad social y evasión legal en el teatro del Siglo de Oro.” (In-Progress)
• Drewelow, Isabelle and Xabier Granja Ibarreche. “Grit and resilience in WLSPs: The potential when blending translation and indirect service learning.” Global Advances in Business Global Advances in Business Communication, vol. 10, 2022, pp. 1-11.
• Granja Ibarreche, Xabier. “Towards an Enlightened Disillusionment: Renaissance Moralistic Treatises and the Adulteration of Spanish Noble Values.” Dieciocho, vol. 44, no. 2, 2021, pp. 227-248.
• Drewelow, Isabelle and Xabier Granja Ibarreche. “Developing Students’ Solidarity Disposition: A Case for Translation in Community-Based Service Learning.” Foreign Language Annals, vol. 54, 2021, pp. 800-822.
• Granja Ibarreche, Xabier. “When Honor is Not Enough: Masculine Power and Uxoricide in Calderón de la Barca.” Anagnórisis, vol. 22, 2020, pp. 7-31.
• Granja Ibarreche, Xabier. “Happily Ever After? Marriage, Honor and Feminism in Two Novelas ejemplares.” eHumanista, vol. 46, 2020, pp. 1-12.
• Granja Ibarreche, Xabier. “La democratizacion del privilegio social en España y sus representaciones en Don Quijote.” Laberinto vol. 12, 2019, pp. 117-139.
• Granja Ibarreche, Xabier. “Woman Reclaimed: Subverting Feminine Exclusion in the Works of Maria de Zayas”. Handbook on Women and the Ideology of Political Exclusion: 2500 Years edited by Tatiana Tsakiropoulou-Summers and Katerina Kitsi. Routledge, 2019, pp. 234-246.
• Granja Ibarreche, Xabier. “La visión exculpatoria de la feminidad en Lágrimas de la nobleza de Luisa de Padilla.” Revista de Estudios de Género y Sexualidades vol. 44, no. 2, 2018, pp. 37-47.
• Granja Ibarreche, Xabier. “Unsettling courage: Warriors, social authority and gender transgression”. Displacement in Language, Literature and Culture edited by Silvia Arroyo and Karina Zelaya. EDA Libros, 2018, pp. 207-228.
• Granja Ibarreche, Xabier. “Refashioning Early Modern masculine performance through manuales de conducta.” Bulletin of Spanish Studies, vol. 95, no. 4, 2018, pp. 219-241.
• Granja Ibarreche, Xabier. “Esencia de hombre en envase de mujer: Desplazamiento de la Virtud y Construcción de la Identidad Femenina Nacional en el Siglo de Oro Español“. El Cid, vol. 24 (Summer, 2014), pp. 72-90.
• Contributions to Kim Potowski’s Conversaciones escritas: Lectura y redacción en contexto. John Wiley & Sons, 2011.
• “The Latin-American detective: a centrifugal evolution.” LASA2009: Rethinking Inequalities. Latin American Studies Association.

BOOK REVIEWS

• Review of “Ni distancias que estorben, ni mares que impidan”: globalización y la temprana modernidad hispánica. (Forthcoming 2024)
• Review of María de Zayas y la imaginación crítica. Bibliografía razonada y comentada by Enrique García Santo-Tomás. Bulletin of Spanish Studies, vol. 100, no. 6, 2023, pp. 929-930.
• Review of Bibliophiles, Murderous Bookmen, and Mad Librarians by Robert Richmond Ellis. Hispanófila vol. 197, 2023, pp. 153-155.
• Review of Signos vitales. Procreación e imagen en la narrativa áurea by Enrique García Santo-Tomás. Hispanófila vol. 192, 2021, pp. 214-216.
• Review of María Lorenza de los Ríos, Marquesa de Fuerte-Híjar: Vida y obra de una escritora del Siglo de las Luces by Elisa Martín-Valdepeñas and Catherine M. Jaffe. Revista de Estudios de Género y Sexualidades vol. 47, no. 2, 2021, pp. 192-195.
• Review of Arte y artificio de la vida en común: los modelos de comportamiento y sus tensiones en el Siglo de las Luces by Mónica Bolufer Peruga. Bulletin of Spanish Studies vol. 97, no. 2, 2020, pp. 275-276.
• Review of Celos, amor y venganza, o no hay mal que por bien no venga by Luis Vélez de Guevara, edited by William R. Manson & C. George Peale. Hispanófila vol. 187, 2019, pp. 180-182.
• Review of Doce cuentos ejemplares y otros documentos cervantinos by Frederick A. De Armas and Antonio Sánchez Jiménez. Hispanófila, vol. 181, 2018, pp. 193-194.