Millie Gimmel

Dr. Gimmel hails from Louisville, Kentucky and completed her undergraduate work summa cum laude at Murray State University in Spanish, English and Secondary Education. While studying at MSU, she spent a year in Arequipa, Peru as a Rotary Scholar where she studied Hispanic literature and Quechua. She also spent a summer in Madrid, Spain, and continues to travel frequently to Latin America. After graduation Dr. Gimmel taught high school Spanish and English for six years before attending graduate school at Indiana University. At IU she completed a Masters in Spanish and a PhD in Spanish, specializing in Colonial Latin America, with a minor in History of Science. In 2002 she joined the department of Modern Foreign Languages and Literatures at the University of Tennessee.

Dr. Gimmel’s work is inherently interdisciplinary combining literature, Latin American history, Mesoamerican studies and the history of science. Currently Dr. Gimmel is working on several projects concerning natural history and medicine in colonial Mexico. She studies the interplay between European and indigenous ways of writing and thinking about the world and how that contact plays out in natural historical texts. Currently she has articles in press in Hispania, The Journal of the History of Ideas, and in other venues. She received a Professional Development Award to study Nahuatl and do research on colonial medical texts during the summer of 2006. She is also working on an article examining the presence of indigenous medicine in U. S. Latino works and hopes to continue her research in bicultural literature with an in-depth study of Chicano fiction. A passionate teacher, Dr. Gimmel teaches courses introductory courses in literature and upper-level and graduate courses in topics relating to colonial Latin America and bicultural literature. She was awarded an Alumni Association Outstanding Teacher Award and is also the recipient of a College of Arts and Sciences Faculty Advising Service Award.

Contact Information

Millie Gimmel
Assistant Professor
Ph.D., Indiana University
611 McClung Tower
University of Tennessee
Knoxville , TN 37996

Phone: (865) 974-7097
E-Mail: mgimmel@utk.edu