Team

Eva Darias Beautell  |   Principal Investigator

Eva Darias-Beautell (BA, MA, PhD) is a Professor of Canadian Literature at the University of La Laguna (Canary Islands, Spain). She was a pre-doctoral Government of Canada Award holder between 1992 and 1993 (U. of Toronto) and has since received several research grants from the governments of Canada and Spain. Darias-Beautell has been a visiting scholar at the universities of Toronto, Ottawa, British Columbia, Berkeley, London and Masaryk. She has published widely on contemporary Canadian literatures in English and her books include Shifting Sands: Literary Theory and Contemporary Canadian Fiction (Mellen, 2000) and Graphies and Grafts: (Con)Texts and (Inter)Texts in the Fictions of Four Canadian Women Writers (Peter Lang, 2001). She has also co-edited (with María Jesús Hernáez) Canon Disorders: Gendered Perspectives on Literature and Film in Canada and the United States (U. of La Rioja, 2007) and edited Unruly Penelopes and the Ghosts: Narratives of English Canada (Wilfrid Laurier UP, 2012) and The Urban Condition: Literary Trajectories through Canada’s Postmetropolis (Vernon Press, 2019). Darias-Beautell has directed seven fully-funded international research projects on Canadian and American literatures, drawing on critical and affect theories, critical race studies, spatial studies of literature, gender and canon studies. Her present project is The Premise of Happiness: The Function of Feelings in North American Narratives (PID2020-113190GB-C21) and she also currently leads the international research network TransCanadian Networks: Excellence and Transversality from Spain about Canada towards Europe (FFI2015-71921-REDT + RED2018-102643-T). Her most recent line of research focuses on the confluence between urban studies and affect theory. At present, she is at the early stages of planning a monographic book about the representations of (un)happiness in contemporary Vancouver writing.

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Research page(s)

Professional social media accounts:

Facebook: Eva Darias Beautell

Twitter: @EDariasBeautell

Instagram: @evadariasbeautell

Isabel González Díaz

Isabel González Díaz is a Ph.D. lecturer at the University of La Laguna, where she teaches U.S. literature. Her research interests include gender, literature, and cultural studies, with a special focus on life narratives. She has published various articles on life writing and gender, on feminism and cultural studies, and on transgender narratives. She is a member of the research group “NARRA-Narrative Spaces: USA and Canada,” and of the “Instituto Universitario de Estudios de las Mujeres”, both from the University of La Laguna. She was a member of the research projects “The City, Urban Cultures and Sustainable Literatures: Representations of the Anglo-Canadian Post-Metropolis,” and «Justice, Citizenship and Vulnerability: Precarious Narratives and Intersectional Approaches.» She has co-directed three doctoral theses and is currently directing one and co-directing three PhD theses.

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ResearchGate

María Jesús Llarena-Ascanio

Fabián Orán Llarena

Silvia Caporale-Bizzini

Silvia Caporale-Bizzini is Professor of English Studies at the University of Alicante in Spain where she teaches 19^th-Century British Literature and British Cultural History. She has edited and co-edited Reconstructing Foucault: Essays in the Wake of the 80s (Rodopi: 1994), We, the “Other Victorians”. Considering the Heritage of 19^th-Century Thought (Alicante, 2003), Narrating Motherhoods, Breaking the Silence: Other Mothers, Other Voices (Peter Lang, 2006), with Melita Richter Teaching Subjectivity. Travelling Selves for Feminist Pedagogy (Stockholm University, 2009), and with Andrea O’Really From the Personal to the Political. Toward a New Theory of Maternal Narrative (Susquehanna University Press, 2009). She has also published in Anglia, Critical Quarterly, Woman: a Cultural Review, English Studies, Contemporary Women’s Writing and The Journal of Commonwealth Literature, among other journals. Her research topics include the literary representation of disposability and neoliberal violence in British and Canadian fiction.

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Academia

Nieves Pascual Soler

Nieves Pascual Soler, PhD, teaches pedagogy of modern languages at Valencian International University, Spain. Among her research interests are: cultural studies, feminism, and contemporary narratives in English. Her publications include Food and Masculinity in Contemporary Autobiographies: Cast-Iron Man (Palgrave-Macmillan, 2018), and the co-edited collectionTraces of Aging: Old Age and Memory in Contemporary Narrative (Transcript Verlag, 2016). Her research has been published in journals such as: Food, Culture and Society, Latin American Research Review, Animals & Society, and The European Legacy.

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ResearchGate

Aritha van Herk

Aritha van Herk is a professor in the Department of English at the University of Calgary, where she teaches Canadian Literature and Creative Writing. She is the author of five novels, Judith, The Tent Peg, No Fixed Address, Places Far From Ellesmere, and Restlessness. Her irreverent but relevant history, Mavericks: An Incorrigible History of Alberta framed a major exhibition on southern Alberta at the Glenbow Museum in Calgary. With George Webber she has published In This Place: Calgary 2004-2011 and Prairie Gothic (Photographs by George Webber, Words by Aritha van Herk), both books that develop the idea of geographical and historical temperament as tonal accompaniment to landscape. Her work negotiates multiple genres and areas of exploration, with a focus on the west, on women’s voices, and on place. Most recently, she published Stampede and the Westness of West (2016), prose-poetry which subverts the mythology of the carnivalesque stampede. She has published hundreds of stories, articles, reviews, and essays. She is a Member of the Order of Canada, a member of the Alberta Order of Excellence, a Fellow of the Glenbow Museum, and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada. She is recipient of the Royal Society’s Lorne Pierce Medal (awarded to recognize achievement in imaginative or critical literature in Canada), and of the Lt. Governor of Alberta Arts Award. She was awarded a Killam Annual Professorship in 2020.

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Professional social media accounts:

Twitter: @maverickcalgary

Kit Dobson

Kit Dobson is a Professor in the Department of English at the University of Calgary. His most recent book is Malled: Deciphering Shopping in Canada (Wolsak & Wynn, 2017). He is the author, editor, or co-editor of an additional six books with Canadian university presses. His most recent work lies at the intersections of affect and environment and he is completing a non-fiction manuscript about the landscapes of northern Alberta.

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Martina Horáková

Martina Horakova is Assistant Professor in the Department of English and American Studies at Masaryk University, Czech Republic. In her teaching and research, she focuses on contemporary Australian and Canadian literatures, particularly on Indigenous cultural production and theories of settler colonialism. She authored Inscribing Difference and Resistance: Indigenous Women’s Personal Non-fiction and Life Writing in Australia and Canada (MUNI Press, 2017) and co-authored Alternatives in Biography: Writing Lives in Diverse English-language Contexts (MUNI Press, 2011). Among others, she published book chapters in Handbook of Autobiography/Autofiction (De Gruyter, 2019), A Companion to Australian Aboriginal Literature (Camden House, 2013), Postcolonial Issues in Australian Literature (Cambria Press, 2010), as well as journal articles in Journal of Commonwealth literature, Journal of Postcolonial Writing, Life Writing, Antipodes, JEASA or Zeitschrift für Australienstudien/Australian Studies Journal. She is currently working on a project related to memoirs of postcolonial settler belonging in Australia. From 2016 to 2021 she was the general editor of JEASA, Journal of the European Association for Studies of Australia. She is an active member of CEACS (Central European Association of Canadian Studies) and EASA (European Association for Studies of Australia).

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Coral Anaid Díaz Cano

Coral Anaid Díaz Cano is a researcher at the University of La Laguna. She holds an English Studies Degree and a Master’s degree in Gender Studies and Equality Policies, both from the University of La Laguna. In 2021 she received her PhD with a Thesis on the representations of disability and illness in North American graphic narratives. She was a beneficiary of the Grant of the Program for the Professional Training of University Lecturers (FPU) of the Spanish Ministry of Science, Innovation and Universities. Her PhD Thesis was  carried out within the framework of the research project “Justice, Citizenship and Vulnerability: Precarious Narratives and Intersectional Approaches” (FFI2015- 63895-C2-1-R). It also became part of the present project, “The Premise of Happiness: The Function of Feelings in North American Narratives” (PID2020-113190GB-C21). Her research interests include contemporary North American graphic narratives, disability studies, and crip theory.

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Twitter

Myriam Hernández Domínguez

Myriam Hernández Domínguez is a PhD Candidate and researcher at Universidad de La Laguna, Spain. She holds a BA and MA in Philosophy. Her research interests are feminist philosophy, critical posthumanism, ecofeminism, and technology and science studies. She has developed research stays at Utrecht University, Kassel University, and the University of Graz, where she analyzed possible intersections between posthumanism and vulnerability studies. Her publications engage ecofeminism, posthumanism and spinozist and deleuzian philosophy.

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María Jennifer Estévez Yanes

María Jennifer Estévez Yanes is a researcher in Philological, Literary and Cultural Studies at the University of La Laguna. She received her PhD with a Thesis on vulnerability, hospitality and postmemory in migrant narratives. She is currently part of the research group NARRA (Narrative Spaces: United States and Canada) that developed from the project “Justice, Citizenship and Vulnerability” FFI2015-63895-C2-1-R and that now collaborates in the project «The Premise of Happiness: The Function of Feelings in North American Narratives» PID2020-113190GB-C21. She holds a BA in English Studies from the University of La Laguna and a master’s degree in English Literature and Culture from UNED. Her research interests include: migrant narratives, vulnerability, and cultural studies.

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Claudia Miller

Claudia Miller (BA, MA) is an Early-Career Researcher (Investigator Predoctoral) at the University of La Laguna working on the representations of Arctic climate change in Inuit memoirs for her doctoral dissertation under the auspices of a Predoctoral Contract of the Gobierno de Canarias, Consejería de Economía Conocimiento y Empleo with funding from the Social European Fund.

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Professional social media accounts:

Twitter: (@claumiller15)

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Sheila Hernández González

After having earned a BA in English Studies and a MA in History of Art and Cultural Management, both at the University of La Laguna, Sheila Hernández is currently a PhD candidate and holds a Santander-ULL pre-doctoral contract as researcher and lecturer. Her research is framed in the Art and Humanities PhD program at the University of La Laguna and her lines of study include Asian Canadian speculative fiction, affect theory, and posthumanism. Her focus is on female and queer authors, and she pays special attention to monstrosity, transformation, and the representation of bodies.

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José Ventura Alegría

José V. Alegría is a PhD candidate at the University of La Laguna. He also holds a BA in English Studies from the University of La Laguna, and an MA in Comparative Literature from the University of Amsterdam. His PhD dissertation focuses on the representation of (un)happiness in Indigenous speculative short fiction, for which he has been granted a pre-doctoral contract (FPI) which is funded by the Ministry of Science and Innovation and the research network “TransCanadian Networks” (RED2018-102643-T).

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