Brief Description
of My Research Interests:
For the past few years, I have been
conducting research on nineteenth and twentieth-century Spanish Caribbean
literature and its connection to border or frontier theories. That is,
I am currently exploring how Caribbean traditional modes of representation
have been shattered, and later restructured due to significant changes
in cultural, literary, and historical contexts. My focus is on studying
how marginal groups view themselves (Caribbean male intellectuals and women
writers) within those borders, and devise new representational structures
for their survival or enfranchisement under threatening conditions.
Among the
topics of interest to my research are:
-
Modernity and modernization
-
The genders of modernity
-
Literary strategies used in the construction
of a national and personal subjectivity
-
The role of the intellectual and its
relationship to literature
-
Caribbean literatures in general
-
Travel literatures in the context of
the Caribbean
-
Vodoo and Literature
-
The Witch in Literature
-
Travestism and strategies of representation
-
Consumer cultures
-
Nationalism and literary discourses
Among the
authors I have studied are:
-
Carmela Eulate Sanjurjo (Puerto Rico)
-
Alejandro Tapia y Rivera (Puerto Rico)
-
Gertrudis Gómez de Avellaneda
(Cuba)
-
Carlos Varo (Spain-Puerto Rico)
-
Eugenio María de Hostos (Puerto
Rico)
-
Mayra Montero (Cuba-Puerto Rico)
-
Rosario Ferré (Puerto Rico)
-
Marta Aponte Alsina (Puerto Rico)
-
Salomé Ureña de Henríquez
(Dominican Republic)
-
Mayra Santos (Puerto Rico)