Department & University: Departament de Filologia Anglesa i Germanística, Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona
Brief summary of research interests: Natàlia Vila is a PhD Student currently writing her thesis on the work of British author Pat Barker and her First World War fiction under the guidance of Dr David Owen and Dr Cristina Pividori, within the research group Beyond Postmemory: English Perspectives on War and Memory in the (Post)Postmodern Era at the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona (UAB).
She completed her BA degree in English Studies at the UAB, with a specialisation in English Literature and Culture. Her BA dissertation was on Hanya Yanagihara’s A Little Life and explored the effects of trauma on masculinity. She followed this with the exploration of hegemonic masculinities, class disparity and war trauma in her MA dissertation on Peaky Blinders, returning to the UAB to undertake doctoral studies on the writings of war, trauma and memory. In her doctoral thesis, she explores the transition of Pat Barker’s First World War writing from historiographic metafiction to Neo-Historical fiction. This transition is marked through form and genre that discloses the imperative need to be more ethically engaged with the Great War and its legacy.
Selected Publications:
2024. ““I am my own revolution”: A Mythocritique on Thomas Shelby’s Hegemonic Masculinity in Steven Knight’s Peaky Blinders.” Universitat de Barcelona. 2024. 84 pag. MA Thesis. Supervised by Dr Dolors Ortega (UB) and Dr David Owen (UAB). https://hdl.handle.net/2445/220520
2023. ““The person I was will always be the person I am”: The Axiom of Equality in Hanya Yanagihara’s A Little Life. Bellaterra: Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, 2023. 39 pag. BA Thesis. Supervised by Dr David Owen. https://ddd.uab.cat/record/279336