Maria Rippon grew up in the suburbs of New York City with a passion for reading, writing, and languages. She graduated summa cum laude from Mount Saint Mary’s College in Emmitsburg, MD and received her M.A. and Ph.D. in Comparative Literature from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. She began teaching Spanish language and literature classes as a graduate student while specializing in nineteenth-century novels and philosophy. After leaving Chapel Hill in 1997, she taught at Gannon University and Cabrini College in Pennsylvania before moving to the Charleston area to teach at The Citadel. She has been teaching language, literature, civilization, and first-year writing classes at Furman since 2005. Since 2013, she has been teaching, with her sister the surgical oncologist, a May X class entitled Beginner Medical Spanish, which led her to develop a four-credit, semester-long class on Medical Spanish (SPN 302). She has been researching, presenting, and authoring articles on the novels of Mercedes Salisachs since 2008 and has translated one of her novels to English. While she enjoys all great books, her recent work has focused on metafictional novels, historical fiction, and utopian literature.

Education

• Ph.D., University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
• M.A., University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
• B.A., Mount Saint Mary's College