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Cherilyn Elston

Research

Cherilyn Elston's doctoral thesis looked at Colombian women’s literary production, feminist thought and the women’s movement from 1975-2015. Analyzing women’s narrative, testimonio and poetry, the thesis explored the symbolic construction of gender and sexuality in relation to Colombian political violence. Her research interests include the history of women’s writing and non-canonical literature and poetry from Latin America, postcolonial feminisms, and the contemporary feminist and women’s social movements in the region. Before beginning postgraduate study at Cambridge, she completed a degree in Modern History and English at the University of Oxford and lived and worked in Bogotá.

She is also the editor of Palabras Errantes, a collaborative online project dedicated to publishing contemporary Latin American literature in translation. She has translated essays, poems and narrative by writers from Mexico, Colombia, Venezuela, Argentina and Uruguay, and has led a series of cultural events to promote translation and Latin American literature in the UK.

Conference Papers

  • ‘Me habita otra mujer. / Una extraña, una intrusa/ que no alcanzo a entender: The Poetry of Clemencia Tariffa’ (Symposium: Contemporary Latin American Women Writers, Artists and Filmmakers,University of Stirling, 2012)
  • ‘Poetry and Women’s Social Movements in Colombia: Piedad Morales and la razón poética’ (Society of Latin American Studies, University of Manchester, 2013)
  • ‘“Ni Engels, ni Freud, ni Reich”: interpretando las estructuras ideológicas de la modernidad y la sexualidad en la obra En diciembre llegaban las brisas de Marvel Moreno’ (Asociación de Colombianistas, ‘La mujer en Colombia’, Regis College, Boston, 2013)

Teaching

Cherie supervised undergraduates on twentieth century Latin American literature and culture and translation for the department of Modern and Medieval Languages, has supervised undergraduate year abroad dissertations on Colombian literature and given field work workshops for MPhil students in the Centre of Latin American Studies.