Monica Leoni
Spanish theatre of the Golden Age, novella, testimonial literature produced by the marginalized early modern female writer.
In terms of my research, I specialize in the literature of the Spanish Golden Age. Don Quijote is one of the most fascinating books I have ever read! The theatre is intriguing, and the women writers inspiring. The Golden Age is considered to be a period in which both arts and literature flourished. Indeed, I love the endless perspectives with which the literary and artistic productions provide us. Much time has passed but our relationship to the art remains vibrant and important. Looking back ultimately helps us to understand the present, I think, and hopefully will help us to move, in an enlightened fashion, toward the future. My research focuses on the various rhetorical strategies employed by women to overcome, or least challenge, the oppressive reality under which they lived. The exploration of the themes of love, sexuality, commitment, inclusion, exclusion, all of these are pertinent to our world today, and for me it is exciting to consider the relationship between the past and the present from these angles.
María del Carmen Sillato
Latin American poetry; historical novel; testimonial discourse; critical theory.
I am presently exploring interdisciplinary connections between literary and historical representation; specifically, my research examines these complex connections in the context of Argentina and its troubled history. My goal is to conduct a critical analysis of a body of literary texts in which the representation of history functions as a way of contributing to the preservation and reconstruction of historical memory in Argentina. I argue that the reading and re-writing of history in Argentine literature of the last thirty years provides an important avenue for telling, integrating, and preventing future repetitions of the dramatic events of those years of military dictatorship and the devastating socio-economic consequences that ensued.
Previous research:
I have done extensive research on the poetry of Juan Gelman, the universally acclaimed contemporary poet in the Spanish language. I have published a book and numerous articles on his work, and have presented papers at national and international congresses. I have also done research and published articles on the representation of Eva Perón in literature.
Annik Bilodeau
Contemporary Spanish American literature and art, Street art, and Teaching Spanish as as Second/Foreign Language
Street art studies: My current research concentrates on political street art (graffiti, murals, stencils, tags) in contemporary Mexico, more specifically the work of various collectives of artivists that use street art as a form of political activism. My investigation assesses the relationship between street art, social mobilization, and memory building. Through a close examination of street art created since 2014, I demonstrate how social movements are shaped by visual culture, and how visual culture shapes social movements in contemporary Mexico, more specifically social movements related to violence against post-secondary student activists and women.
Follow my project on Instagram: @annikbilodeauphd
Contemporary Spanish American literature: I am the author of Belonging Beyond Border – Cosmopolitan Affiliations in Contemporary Spanish American Narrative. My book maps the evolution of cosmopolitanism in Spanish American narrative through a generational lens. Drawing on a new theoretical framework that blends intellectual studies and literary history with integrated approaches to Spanish American narrative, I trace the evolution from aesthetic cosmopolitanism through anti-colonial nationalism to modern political cosmopolitanism. I use the notion of ‘rooted cosmopolitanism’ to show how contemporary authors have developed new literary recourses to discuss global citizenship and global politics.
Teaching Spanish as as Second/Foreign Language: I am currently developing a new research program to look at the issue of time management in our second and third year Spanish language courses.
Mario Boido
Hispanic visual culture, word/image studies, contemporary Latin American literature and art, and critical theory.
My research explores Hispanic visual culture, with a particular emphasis on the confluence of visual and verbal representation. I am the author of De límites y convergencias: la relación palabra/imagen en la cultura visual latinoamericana del siglo xx. I am currently writing a book on the role of literature, film, and the visual arts in the construction of recent historical memory in Argentina.
David Rozotto
Central American narrative.
My research concentrates on Central American narrative. Currently, I am conducting research on Guatemalan testimonial literature, more specifically the manner in which Indigenous women’s testimonies, narrated as fiction, provide alternative perspectives on the objectives and mechanisms of State persecution. I am also exploring Central American post-war narrative by women, for which I am conducting preliminary analyses on the short stories of writers from El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras. My next major research project is the study of several novels produced between the Tehuantepec and the Panama isthmuses, and how such fictional narratives recreate national histories within the context of a territory that includes eight nations with historically overlapping physical boundaries and political fragmentation. The objective is to examine how the regional history is ambivalently re-told in order to postulate the nation as part of, yet distinct from, the rest of the region.