Anton and Erin Garcia-Fernandez are a teaching team on campus.
If you do not notice them it is because they are fairly new to the Martin area.
These two are an interesting couple and seem to work very well with each other and also seem to be very excited to have been welcomed in such a warm environment that Martin has given them.
Anton Garcia-Fernandez is from Vigo which is in the Northwest of Spain. He has always been interested in languages. Among Spanish and English, he speaks French, Portuguese, and Galician.
His undergraduate major was in English Philology at the University of Vigo. After being an exchange student for a year at the University of South Dakota in Vermillion, South Dakota, Fernandez returned to the United States for Graduate School at Vanderbilt University in Nashville.
There he earned his Ph.D. in Spanish Language and Literature. His dissertation was titled “Rogues in Dialogue: The Literature of Roguery in Spain and England in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries” and explored the interplay between Spanish and English literature about criminals (rogues) in the early modern period.
Erin Garcia-Fernandez was born in Nashville but moved quite a bit around the country growing up. She graduated from Rhodes College in Memphis, where her major was poetry.
Then, she worked as a magazine editor in Atlanta for several years before going back to school to pursue graduate studies in English at Vanderbilt University. She is currently working on her Ph.D. dissertation, which deals with narrative modes in Victorial fiction and periodicals.
The Garcia-Fernandezs’ met at Vanderbilt in a graduate class about British romantic literature that they took together.
The Garcia-Fernandez’s married a couple of years ago in Nashville at the Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum, and the ceremony was conducted in both Spanish and English.
For several years, they hosted a classic country radio show entitled “Music City USA” on station WRVU of Nashville. The purpose of the show was to give some airplay to both hits and forgotten recordings in the history of country music.
Now that they are in Martin, they would love to put a similar show on the air for the surrounding area, with a mixture of some old country, vintage, pop and jazz.
In their free time, they enjoy watching old movies, collecting antique books and old records, and spending time with their rescue dog Cary, named after Cary Grant, one of their favorite actors. Anton is a big fan of the great crooner Bing Crosby, and Erin believes that Fred Astaire was the greatest entertainer that ever lived.
Anton Fernandez is currently teaching three courses for elementary Spanish and also an upper division Spanish course.
He also referees the soccer intramural games. Erin Fernandez is currently teaching in the English department; she teaches a composition course and also British Literature.
They are both very grateful for the positions that they have achieved from the university. They also are as involved with UTM and the community as much as they can be.
They also like that UTM is a smaller school because they like being able to help students. They are very pleased with the diversity of Martin and the many interesting students that they have come across. Individually, they try their best to relate to their students and help them out.
