The new book I present today, Exploring Reproduction and Gender in Contemporary Feminist Speculative Fiction: Mothers Out of this World, is a collective volume that I have co-edited with Jessica Aliaga-Lavrijsen, of the University of Zaragoza. This is the end of a long collaboration, initiated by Jessica herself, which has lasted about two years, perhaps […]
I was going to start writing my projected book on secondary characters, but then I realized that since it is not exclusively focused on English-language literature but on a selection of European novels in different languages, I might have problems presenting it in my next research assessment exercise (the board might value negatively my straying […]
In his famous, but rather absurd, essay “The Death of the Author” (1968), Roland Barthes ranted about the impending dismissal of authors from literary criticism, to be replaced by a sort of totally objective super-reader that would focus on the text as if sprung from language itself, with no active mediation from the author. The […]
It’s not at all usual for me to abandon an article at the writing stage, but today I’m giving myself permission. I’m sharing this misadventure in case you’ve also fallen down a rabbit hole and can’t climb out. Forgive me in advance for the long tale, I’m sort of exorcising this unfinished article from my […]
As I have mentioned I’ll be soon teaching an elective subject on autobiographies and memoirs (in English). In preparation, I’ve been putting together a list of 100 remarkable pre-21st century texts in those genres, apart from the list of 21st century books my students need to read (each student chooses four from this list). This […]
I read in one sitting on January 1st Caroline Darian’s memoirs (in Spanish translation by Lydia Vázquez) Y dejé de llamarte papa (2025, Et j’ai cessé de t’appeler Papa). Caroline’s actual surname is Pelicot, but she is using a mixture of her brothers’ names (David and Florian) for her penname. In this touching book she […]
I attended yesterday the talk at Barcelona’s Festival 42 by US horror author Grady Hendrix, a man who looks disconcertingly like actor Brady Cooper’s brother or cousin. Hendrix has made a name for himself as an author who combines the gruesome, the shocking, and the humorous in his novels, though I must confess that I […]
A week ago, the research group I currently belong to, Beyond Postmemory, held the seminar “Nature Remembers: War, Trauma and Environmental Postmemory,” in which we discussed how not only human beings but also nature can suffer, so to speak, from PTSD and show signs of trauma long after a conflict. Postmemory, a concept coined by […]
Today I’m shamelessly piggybacking, this time using The Atlantic’s wonderful selection of 65 outstanding US picture books for infant and toddler ‘readers’ to fill in this blog entry. The piece is not signed, but you can find for each book a comment by the person who chose it (authors, librarians and other experts). The […]
Happy new academic year! May it brings plenty of positive energy for teachers and students, and the thorough defeat of patriarchal darkness in all fronts and nations (yes, I’m thinking of those awful guys). I’ll begin my sixteenth year as a blogger (how time passes!!), with a reminder that the all the yearly volumes can […]