Dr. Julie Sellers

Julie Sellers

Position Title: Chair and Professor
Department: World and Classical Languages and Cultures
Office: St. Benedict Hall 316
Phone: 913.360.7544
Contact Dr. Julie Sellers


A native of Kansas, Dr. Julie A. Sellers earned bachelor’s degrees in Spanish and French and a Master’s in Spanish Literature from Kansas State University, and a master’s in International Studies and a doctorate in Education from the University of Wyoming. She is also a Federally Certified Court Interpreter and a state certified court interpreter (Spanish <> English).

Dr. Sellers was the Kansas World Language Association’s Teacher of the Year in 2017, and the West Virginia Foreign Language Teacher of the Year (Post-Secondary) in 2013.

Dr. Sellers’s research interests include Caribbean popular culture and identity, adult second language acquisition, and interpreter training. She has published in all of these fields, including three books on Dominican music and identity: Merengue and Dominican Identity: Music as National Unifier (2004), the bilingual text, Bachata and Dominican Identity / La bachata y la identidad dominicana (2014), and The Modern Bachateros: 27 Interviews (2017). In 2018, Dr. Sellers coauthored and published Intermediarios: Introduction to Spanish<>English Community and Legal Translation and Interpreting with Laura Kanost (New Prairie Press).

Dr. Sellers’s recent work in adult second language acquisition focuses on active discussion and alternative assessments. Her chapter “Using Alternative Assessments to Teach and Assess for Proficiency in the Experience Age” appears in Global Perspectives on Language Teacher Identity (2023). Another chapter, “Active Discussion Approaches for the Synchronous Online World Language Classroom” was published in Handbook of Research on Effective Online Language Teaching in a Disruptive Environment (2022).

Dr. Sellers’s article, “From Radio Guarachita to El Tieto eShow: Bachata’s Imagined Communities,” was published in Latin American Research Review (2022). Her earlier paper on this topic was awarded Honorable Mention in the Guy Alexandre Paper Prize by the Latin American Studies Association Haiti Dominican Republic Section in 2020.

In addition to these topics, Dr. Sellers has applied her work in literature and identity to studies in the interdisciplinary field of L. M. Montgomery studies. Her peer-reviewed article on Anne of Green Gables as a quixotic novel was published in Journal of L. M. Montgomery Studies. Her chapter, “‘Just as if I Was a Heroine in a Book’: Quixotic Identification in and with Anne of Green Gables” appears in Kindred Spirits: Reflections on Our Relationship with Anne of Green Gables,” edited by Nike Sulay and Jess Carniel.

Prior to coming to Benedictine College, Dr. Sellers taught at Fairmont State University (Fairmont, WV), Laramie County Community College and the University of Wyoming (Laramie, WY). She also served as the Foreign Language Training and Content Specialist for Wyoming Department of Education. She has worked as a freelance court interpreter, and as a freelance contributing writer, copyeditor, and editor for McGraw-Hill Higher Education.

Dr. Sellers is a Professor and Chair of the Department of World and Classical Languages, Coordinator of the first-year Spanish sequence and the Department Assessment Coordinator.

DEGREES

Ph.D. in Education

University of Wyoming

M.A. in International Studies

University of Wyoming

M.A. in Spanish Literature

Kansas State University

B.A. in French, Spanish 

Kansas State University

Federally Certified Court Interpreter

English<>Spanish

Location