Elsa M. Treviño

Elsa M. Treviño

About my research

My doctoral researched focused on Mexican literary fiction of the past two decades and the role that changing spatial understandings play in the construction and representation of contemporary subjectivities. It considered the way literary spaces dialogue with the fluidity, velocity and virtuality of the contemporary human experience and how the literary practice itself becomes a space of belonging and unbelonging. In my dissertation I analysed the works of the transitional generation of authors born in the late 1960s in order to explore the formal, thematic and aesthetic transformations in the Mexican novel and its multiple engagements with spatiality from 1996 to 2009. Specifically, I explored the novels of Álvaro Enrigue, Ignacio Padilla and Jorge Volpi. In my study I proposed a charting of the multifarious tensions between traditional cultural affiliations, territorial determinations and the dissolving sense of anchorage and situation that seems to be crafting the human experience of late modernity in the literary fiction of these authors.

Academic publications

  • Forthcoming: “Esos otros lugares: espacio, historia e identidad en Oscuro bosque oscuro de Jorge Volpi”. Actas del XVIII Congreso de la Asociación Internacional de Hispanistas. Buenos Aires: Asociación Internacional de Hispanistas.
  • “Mínima textual y máxima semántica: brevedad y espacios literarios en la obra de Alberto Chimal”. Les Ateliers du SAL. Vol. 3. Pp. 80-94. 2013.
  • “Diablo Guardián: un acercamiento literario al problema de la mujer y la diferencia”. Narraciones éticas desde la modernidad y la postmodernidad. Rafael M. De Gasperín y José C. Vázquez (eds.) Plaza y Valdés. Mexico. 2013.
  • “La tradición hermenéutica en la sociología contemporánea”. Revista de Humanidades. Pp: 233- 237. México. Octubre 2008.

Conference papers

  • “Esos otros lugares: espacio, historia e identidad en Oscuro bosque oscuro de Jorge Volpi”. XVIII Congreso de la Asociación Internacional de Hispanistas. Buenos Aires: Asociación Internacional de Hispanistas. 16 July 2013.
  • “Ambiguous Attachments: Identity and Belonging in the Fiction of Jorge Volpi”. Arts and Belonging in the AmericasToday. London: Queen Mary University of London. 12 April 2013.
  • “Me acuerdo, no me acuerdo: Memory, history and identity in Las batallas en el desierto and Vidas perpendiculares”. SLAS 2013 Annual Conference. Manchester: Society for Latin American Studies. 11 April 2013.
  • “Mínima textual y máxima semántica: brevedad y espacios literarios en la obra de Alberto Chimal”. Journée d'études interuniversitaire par visioconférence ‘La pluralidad de la novísima literatura mexicana’. Paris: Université Paris-Sorbonne. 15 Februrary 2013.
  • “Dios, las putas y los locos en la literatura mexicana reciente: mito, identidad y subversión del espacio religioso en El cementerio de las sillas de Álvaro Enrigue y Diablo guardián de Xavier Velasco”. International Symposium on Ideology, Politics & Demands in Spanish Language, Literature and Film Conference. Santander: UNED y Universidad de Cantabria. 5 July 2012.
  • “‘Cronotopo cero’: the politics of space and place in the fiction of Ignacio Padilla”. Postgraduates in Latin American Studies Annual Conference (PILAS). Oxford: University of Oxford. 26 June 2012.
  • “A Critique of Mexican Cyberculture Visualised through Cybercomics: Questioning Internet Usage in Jorge Pinto’s Bunsen”. International Conference on Latin American Cybercultural Studies: Exploring New Paradigms and Analytical Approaches. Liverpool: University of Liverpool. 19 May 2011.

Teaching

  • Sp12: Latin American Culture (Juan Rulfo, poesía de vanguardia, representing the city)
  • Sp5: Topics in Latin American Culture (nation and narration, charting revolution)
  • Latin American literature and World literature (high school level)