Santiago Morales-RiveraAssistant Professor, Spanish and Portuguese |
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Research Interests |
Modern and Contemporary Spanish Literature; 20th-Century Latin American Narrative; Critical Theory and Literary History; Ressentiment, Melancholy, and Guilt; Hermetism, and Black Humor | |
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Research Abstract |
I teach modern and contemporary Spanish literature and culture. I received my Ph.D. in Romance Languages and Literatures from Harvard University and my Licenciatura in Hispanic Philology from the University of Zaragoza. Before coming to UC-Irvine, I was a Visiting Assistant Professor at Cornell University and taught in both New York University’s and Boston University’s Study Abroad Programs in Madrid. I am interested in the crossovers between affect and literature, especially in new literary forms associated with conditions of affliction in the Spain of late modernity. I am currently writing a book on the literary representations of a modern notion of “guilt” inflected by the tensions between chance (fortuity, accident), and answerability. I trace this redefinition –which links guilt to regret and melancholy, rather than to ressentiment— in the novels of four Spanish contemporary writers: Javier Marías, Juan José Millás, Pilar Pedraza, and Soledad Puértolas. While I anchor my research in the particular historical context of the so-called Post-Francoist era, I am interested in supplementing the current cultural approaches to the literature of this period with modes of analysis that are informed by a broader set of analytical tools. Thus, I examine contemporary Spanish texts as they relate both to continental intellectual history as well as literary traditions that more intimately have dealt with feelings of affliction in and outside Spain, especially with regard to such topics as tragedy, autobiography, hermetism, and black humor. Ultimately, I investigate the ways in which contemporary Spanish writers respond to the ongoing debates on trauma, memory, and disenchantment, appraising the way they simultaneously reflect upon and resist the supposed affliction of their epoch, and the narcissism that appears to loom behind it. |
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| Link to this profile | http://www.faculty.uci.edu/profile.cfm?faculty_id=5559 | |
| Last updated | 02/22/2009 | |