Patrick Duffey (PhD, UT-Austin, 1994) joined Austin College in the fall of 1994. One of his primary areas of research has been 20th-century Mexican prose fiction and the relationship between film and Hispanic literature. Currently, he is writing about the impact of silent film on Hispanic writers of the 20s and 30s. He is also interested in Latin American poetry, Vanguard literature, and women's writing. He teaches a wide variety of courses in both language and Latin American literature (e.g., "Cinelandia: El impacto del cine mudo en las literaturas española y latinoamericana de los años veinte y treinta," "Cinematic and Literary Narrative in Contemporary Latin America," "Introduction to Latin American Music and Dance," "History, Literature, and Revolution in Contemporary Mexico," "La Poesía Hispanoamericana del Siglo XX," "La voz indígena.").

From 2008-2014 he was Dean of Humanities.  In past years, he has been Chair of the Department of Classical and Modern Languages, Co-Director of the Austin College Center for Southwestern and Mexican Studies, Chair of the Internationalization Committee, Chair of the Mellon Summer Research Program, Acting Director of the Latin American Studies Program, and director of the Spanish Language House on many occasions. He has led January Term courses to Oaxaca, Sevilla, Valparaíso, Cuzco, Buenos Aires, and Santo Domingo/Punta Cana  where students studied Spanish language and culture.   Another Janterm was a course on silent film in which students created their own films, incorporating ideas from the classic works of Keaton, Chaplin, Eisenstein, and others.