BOONE, N.C. — The College of Arts and Sciences (CAS) at Appalachian State University is pleased to announce that Dr. Paul Worley has been appointed associate dean of CAS, effective October 1, 2026.
A settler scholar from Charleston, SC, Worley joined Appalachian State University in 2022 as chair of the Department of Languages, Literatures, and Cultures. Prior to joining App State, Worley served on the faculty at Western Carolina University, where he held roles as assistant department head and graduate director in the Department of English. He also spent five years in the Department of Modern and Classical Languages and Literatures at the University of North Dakota, where he directed the International Studies program.
Worley is a professor of Spanish with research interests in Latin American literatures and cultures and global Indigenous literatures. Worley's scholarship centers on contemporary Indigenous literatures of Abya Yala (the Americas), with a particular focus on the Maya region. His work examines Indigenous textual traditions, multimodal literacies, and the ways Indigenous authors adapt Euro‑Western notions of writing to their own aesthetic and cultural frameworks. He is the author of Telling and Being Told: Storytelling and Cultural Control in Contemporary Yucatec Maya Literatures (2013) and co‑author of Unwriting Maya Literature: Ts'íib as Recorded Knowledge (2019), which received an Honorable Mention for Best Book in the Humanities from the Latin American Studies Association's Mexico Section.
Worley is a Fulbright Scholar who has translated works by numerous Indigenous authors — including Hubert Matiúwàa (Mè'phàà), Celerina Sánchez (Mixtec), Manuel Tzoc (K'iche'), and Ruperta Bautista (Tsotsil) — and served as co‑translator of Miguel Rocha Vivas's Word Mingas.
In 2025, Worley co‑edited Teresa Martín & Luisa Menéndez: Indigenous Women from Appalachia in the Spanish Colonial Record, which recently received an Honorable Mention from the Association for the Study of American Indian Literatures. The collection recovers and contextualizes the 1600 testimonies of two Indigenous women from La Florida, offering new insights into early colonial encounters in the southeastern United States.
Worley holds a B.A. in Romance Languages from UNC Chapel Hill, an M.A. in Poetry from the Writing Seminars at Johns Hopkins University, and a Ph.D. in Comparative Literature from UNC Chapel Hill.
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About the Department of Languages, Literatures, and Cultures
The Department of Languages, Literatures, and Cultures offers courses that enhance students' understanding of other cultures and languages as well as their own, making them prepared for lifelong learning in a multicultural world. Learn more about the Department of Languages, Literatures, and Cultures
About the College of Arts and Sciences
The College of Arts and Sciences (CAS) at Appalachian State University is home to 17 academic departments, two centers, and one residential college. These units span the humanities and the social, mathematical, and natural sciences. CAS aims to develop a distinctive identity built upon our university's strengths, traditions, and locations. The college's values lie not only in service to the university and local community, but through inspiring, training, educating, and sustaining the development of its students as global citizens. More than 6,800 student majors are enrolled in the college. As the college is also largely responsible for implementing App State's general education curriculum, it is heavily involved in the education of all students at the university, including those pursuing majors in other colleges. Learn more about CAS
By Lauren Gibbs
September 25, 2026
BOONE, N.C.
Man with glasses and curly hair wearing a tan blazer, blue shirt, and cream scarf standing outside near a brick building.
Dr. Paul Worley has been appointed associate dean of the College of Arts and Sciences, effective October 1, 2026.