Miriam Fernández-Santiago (University of Granada)
is a senior lecturer and Head of the English and German Department of the University of Granada, where she currently teaches literary theory, and the cultures and literatures of English-Speaking countries. She graduated in English in 1997 at the University of Huelva, where she started teaching in 1998 as she completed her M.A. on Thomas Pynchon. In 1999, she was granted a fellowship by the University of Cornell to participate in the Summer Courses of the School of Criticism and Theory and worked as Visiting Instructor at Duke University in 1999 and 2000. In 2001 she was granted a fellowship to carry out doctoral research at the Universities of Huelva and Seville and two years later, she completed her PhD on the role of humor in postmodernity from the perspective of critical theory. From 2004 to 2007, she taught several courses on writing and English/American Literatures at the Universities of Seville, Pablo de Olavide and Sweet Briar College. Since 2007, she teaches at the University of Granada. In 2004, Dr. Fernandez-Santiago joined Research Group “North American Studies” (HUM488) at the University of Seville, and became a member of the Editorial Board of Revista de EstudiosNorteamericanos of the Spanish Association of American Studies. At present, she is the secretary of both, the journal and the association.Since 2019, Dr. Fernández-Santiago is the main researcher of Research Group GRACO: “Studies in Literature, Criticism and Culture.” Her early research interests range from Cultural and Intercultural Studies, Critical Theory, and North American Literature, including volumes such as The (I)logics of Postmodern Humor (2003), The Voice and the Void (2005), Map of Good Intercultural Practices (2009), book chapters like “Warped Discourses: The Logic of Absence in Democratic Discourse” (2011), “EstudioComparativo del Uso del DobleLiterarioen las obras de Umberto Eco y E. A. Poe” (2011) and articles such as “Unreliable Homodiegesis and the Trace of Influence: the Work of E.A. Poe” (2010), “Revisiting Untraded Paths. Literary Revisions of Eighteenth-Century Exploration Journals” (2011), “Poe’s Play-Full Narratives. His Use of Dramatic Devices in Short Fiction.” (2011), «Edgar Allan Poe’s Narrative Use of Literary Doubling» (2013), and “Divination and Comparison: The Dialogical Tension between Self-Reflective Aesthetics and Sensational Motifs in Edgar Allan Poe’s Dupin Series” (2016). She has also conducted extensive research on the teaching of English as a Foreign Language , with volumes such as Integración de Estrategias de Aprendizaje Cooperativo en el Aula Bilingüe (2015); Integración de Contenidos e Idiomas en Educación Superior (2010), Autonomous Reading Skills in Academic English (2010), and Guía para la Integración de las TIC en el Aula de Idiomas ( 2006); as well as manuals on the literatures and cultures of Spanish and English-speaking countries, like North American Poetry.A Student Guide (2021), Key Texts. Verse, Epics and Drama in English (2019), Literary Minorities in English. Student Guide (2019), Literatura Inglesa I (2018), Cultures in English (2015), Uses and Varieties of the English Language(2014) and Spanish Civilization and Culture (2007). In 2016, she joined Dr. Francisco Collado-Rodríguez’s team for Research Project “Trauma, Culture and Posthumanity: The Definition of Being in Current North American Narrative” (FFI2015-63506P), which currently branches into Research Project “Contemporary North American Narrative and the Fourth Industrial Revolution: Posthumanity, Privation and Social Change” (2020-2023: PID2019-106855GB-I00) led by Dr. Sonia Baelo-Allué and Dr. MónicaCalvoPascual; as well as Research Project “Interfaces: Representing Human Vulnerability in the Fourth Industrial Revolution” (P20_00008). Within the frame of these projects, she has published articles like “Of Language and Music. A Neo-Baroque, Environmental Approach to the Human, Infrahuman and Superhuman in Richard Powers’ Orfeo.” (2019), “Accountable Metaphors. Transhuman Poetics of Failure in Tao Lin’s Taipei.” (2021), “Agential Materialism and the Feminist Paradigm. A Posthumanist Approach”(2021) and “Post-postmodernist Aesthetics of Irrelevance: Textual Disability as Narrative Prosthesis (The Lin/Wallace Connection)” (Forthcoming 2022); and book chapters such as “ Memoria (in)mediática y trauma continuado. Identidad nacional bajo el prisma femenino en Al Límite, de T.R. Pynchon” (2019) , “Narrative Exhaustion And The Posthuman Narrative Self In Tao Lin’s Taipei.” (2019), “Where Else but Reading? Blending Genres in Jasper Fforde’s Nursery Crime Series” (2020), “Split. A Dystopian Vision of Transhuman Enhancement. Speciesist and Political Issues Intersecting Trauma and Disability”(2021). Other titles such as “Female Ageing and Technological Reproduction .Feminist Transhuman Embodiments in Jasper Fforde’s The Woman Who Died A Lot,” “Orfeo: A Posthuman Modern Prometheus. Uncommon Powers of Musical Imagination,” “Vulnerable: Intersecting Disability and Precarity in the Fourth Industrial Revolution. The Case of Mr. Robot (2015-2019)” and “Pretty Dolls Don’t Play Dice: The Calculated Vulnerabilities of Jennifer Egan’s Manhattan Beach” are expected before the end of 2021 or in 2022.
Cristina M. Gámez-Fernández (University of Córdoba)
is a Senior Lecturer in the Department of English and German at the University of Córdoba (UCO), where she currently teaches cultural studies and intercultural communication both to undergraduate and postgraduate students. In 1999 she graduated in English Studies at the University of Córdoba, where she started teaching in 2000 as part of the requirements of a research fellowship that she was granted by the Regional Government of Andalusia to carry out her PhD thesis. During this period, she was a Visiting Scholar at Stanford University in 2001 and 2002, where she conducted archival research at the Denise Levertov Papers. She completed her PhD on the role of perception in Denise Levertov’s poetry in 2005 and became a lecturer at the Department of English and German (UCO) where she has been working since then. Her main teaching interests both at undergraduate and postgraduate level diverge into two separate areas. On the one hand, cultural studies and literature written in English, with courses that range from Shakespeare, short story fiction, American Literature, or Postcolonial studies, among others. On the other, English for academic and professional purposes in its fruitful overlapping with Bilingualism and CLIL methodology. Apart from that, she has also taught extracurricular courses of English for Business and Economics students (2006 and 2007) and English for Veterinary Science students (2008). She has been an invited speaker to Master’s courses at the University of Las Palmas de Gran Canaria (2014), the University of Oviedo (2021) and the University of Granada (2021). She has delivered courses on English and CLIL to teaching staff at the University of Córdoba between 2006 and 2009, as well as to in-service Primary and Secondary education teachers (2018, 2021). From 2006 to 2011 she was responsible for the teaching innovation project devoted to the progressive implementation of bilingual experiences in the classrooms of the university of Córdoba, prior to the creation of the official bilingual project at the UCO. In addition to that, she has extensive experience in leading and contributing to university teaching projects. From 2000, Dr. Gámez-Fernández joined the Research Group “Research in English and Related Literature” (HUM682) until in 2019 she became a member of the research group “Studies in Literature, Criticism and Culture (GRACO)”(HUM676). Her research interests range from American poetry, Anglo-Indian literature, ecocriticism, cultural studies to postcolonial studies, with a focus on issues of perception, belonging and precarity. In 2009, she was awarded the Leocadio Martín Mingorance prize, granted by the University of Córdoba for her article on the religious poetry of Denise Levertov (2007) published at the journal Renascence: Essays on Literature, Ethics, Spirituality and Religion. Apart from her research periods at Stanford University, she has also been a Visiting Scholar at Wheaton College (USA) and Trinity College Dublin (Ireland). She was one of the Founders of AEEII (Spanish Association for India Studies) in 2007, also serving as Secretary-Treasurer from 2007-2009. She was also a founding member of the Challenging Precarity: A Global Network in 2018, to which she currently serves as Membership Secretary. Dr. Gámez-Fernández has organized and participated in numerous national, International Conferences. She became a member of the Editorial Board of Revista de Estudios Norteamericanos of the Spanish Association of American Studies in 2021. She was a member of the National Research Project funded by the Spanish Ministry of Industry, Economy and Competitivity (MINECO) entitled ‘BESOC’ (Ref. No. EDU2017-84800R). She is currently a member of the European project entitled “Teachers, Culture, Pluri (TEACUP)”, reference number 2019-1-ES01-KA203-064412, as well as of the European project “Quality in Language Learning (QuILL)” reference number 2020-1-PT01-KA226-HE-094809. She is a member of the Research Project “Interfaces: Representing Human Vulnerability in the Fourth Industrial Revolution” (P20_00008) and leading Researcher together with Dr. Fernández-Santiago of the Research project “Representations of vulnerability as exclusion or social cohesion: precarity and disability in fiction discourses in English (20th and 21st century), reference number A-HUM-22-UGR20. Within the frame of these projects, she is co-editing two publishing projects with Routledge. She is also preparing two publishing projects with Peter Lang.
Susana Nicolás Román (University of Almería)
is Senior Lecturer in the English Department of the University of Almería where she currently teaches British and North-American contemporary literatures. She graduated in English in 2002 at the University of Almería. In 2003, she was granted a fellowship by Junta de Andalucía (FPI program) to carry out doctoral research. She started teaching in 2003 as she completed her M.A on Edward Bond. During this period, she was visiting PhD at the Universities of London, Cambridge and Montpellier. In 2008, she finished her PhD on the female characters of Edward Bond’s plays. She received the extraordinary award for her dissertation and best academic record at the Faculty of Humanities. Since 2003, she teaches at the University of Almeria. She was the Director of ODISEA from 2014 to 2016. At present, she is member of the Editorial Board of ODISEA, Journal of Business and Education and IGI Global Publishing. She is also an active member of the Challenging Precarity Global Network. Her research interests range from Contemporary British and North American Theatre, the role of women, violence and Sociocultural Studies, including volumes such as Estudios de Literatura Norteamericana: Nabokov y otros autores contemporáneos (2008), Revisiting Evil: Power, Purity and Desireabout the interpretation of female evils through film/stage and other literary forms (2017) and Women in Edward Bond (2018); book chapters like “‘She Sleeps inside like a Lion and a Lamb and a Child’: Revisiting Shakespeare’s Female Evil through Edward Bond’s Lear” (2017), “The Revolutionary Woman in Human Cannon” (2018), “Sexo y Transgresión en el Teatro ‘in-yer-face’: Sarah Kane y Mark Ravenhill” (2014) and articles such as “When Violence on Stage becomes Real: My Name is Rachel Corrie” (2011), “A Challenge for Educational Theatre: Directing Edward Bond’s The Children” (2010) and “The Trigger of Truth is in your hands: Conversations with Edward Bond” (2016). She has also developed research on drama as a resource for the innovative teaching of English as a Foreign Language with volumes such as Drama and CLIL (2015) and La Dramatización como Recurso Educativo a nivel Universitario (2020) and articles like “Promoting Reading Skills in CLIL” (2016), “NuevasTendencias en la Didáctica de las Lenguas Extranjeras aplicadas al Entorno Profesional: la Grabación Audiovisual con Enfoque Interdisciplinar” (2016), “Autonomous Learning and Self-Assessment through the European Language Portfolio: A Pilot Study on Primary Education” (2015), “Students’ Production of Podcasts as an Innovative Resource to promote Communicative Competence in English” (2015), “El Teatro como Recurso Didáctico en la Metodología CLIL: un Enfoque Competencial” (2011). She has extensively participated in international conferences since 2003. Actively involved in innovative methodologies, she has coordinated different groups and participated in the CEIA3 project “Fomento del Aprendizaje Autónomo en Lenguas Extranjeras a través del E-Pel y Materiales Audiovisuales” with the Universities of Huelva and Jaén (2012-2013). She is also the director of the English drama group “Waiting for Theatre” since 2015. In 2019, she received the DOCENTIA Excellence Award. At present, she is a member of the Research Project “Interfaces: Representing Human Vulnerability in the Fourth Industrial Revolution” (P20_00008).Within the frame of this project, titles such as “Vulnerability on Contemporary Stage: Transversing Gendered Precarity in Gary Owen’s Iphigenia in Splott (2015) and In The Pipeline (2010), “Trascending Vulnerability and Resilience: Bondian Female Youth in the Big Brum Plays” and “Precarity and Climate Change on Stage: Educating the Future Generation” are expected in 2022.
Ana Chapman (University of Málaga)
is currently working as a lecturer in the English, French and German Department at the University of Málaga, where she teaches English and linguistics. She graduated in English in 2003 at the University of Málaga. She holds an M.A. in American Literature from the University of Sheffield in 2008. She received a “Cum Laude” for her PhD on David Foster Wallace’s novel Infinite Jest andneuroscienceat the University of Seville in 2016. She taught Critical Theory at the University of Seville in 2017 andsince 2012 she has been teaching courses on literature and linguistics at the University of Málaga. In 2010 She joined the Research Group HUM-399 “Discursos de la Postmodernidad” at the University of Seville up to the year 2021 when she joined her current Research Group GRACO: “Studies in Literature, Criticism and Culture.” She is currently the editorial assistant and book reviewer for ESSE Messenger. Dr Chapman has published three articles on Infinite Jest; “Piecing Together: Body Control, Mutability and Entertainment Technology in Infinite Jest” (2019), “Jaded Selves and Body Distance: A Case Study of Cotard’s Syndrome in Infinite Jest.”(2020) and“Bodies in Infinite Jest” (2021). Her main research interests are the depictions of body and mind in contemporary English literature, neuroscience in literature (in particular cognitive sciences), and the effects of the media and technology on society, 4th Industrial Revolution, subjectivity and vulnerability theories. She is co-author for the forthcoming article “Narrative Prosthesis (The Lin/Wallace Connection)”.
Lucía Bennett Ortega (University of Granada)
graduated in English Studies from the University of Granada and received the Extraordinary End-of-Degree Award (2020). She was awarded with a 2020/2021 Departmental Collaborative Grant (Beca de Colaboración) funded by the Spanish Ministry of Education and has recently completed her MA in English Literature and Linguistics. Her main research interests include postcolonial studies, vulnerability studies, feminist criticism and critical posthumanism. She is currently a PhD candidate in North American Literature and has been granted a Spanish Competitive PhD grant (FPU) by the Spanish Ministry of Education to carry out her doctoral research on Richard Powers’ fiction at the University of Granada. Lucía also recently co-organised the I International Postgraduate Seminar in English Literature and Linguistics (IPSELL), which took place on October 1, 2021, and was organised in collaboration with the Department of English and German Philology at the University of Granada. She is at present the SAAS (Spanish Association of American Studies) Young Scholars Newsletter Coordinator and she is the co-author of the forthcoming book chapter “Estudio empírico sobre la influencia del confinamiento por la COVID19 en la enseñanza de lenguas extranjeras en la Universidad de Granada” which will be included in the monographic publication of the I Simposio Internacional sobre la Enseñanza de Lenguas Extranjeras en la Educación Superior: Analizar y Actuar (2021). Presently, Lucía is a member of the Research Project “Interfaces: Representing Human Vulnerability in the Fourth Industrial Revolution” (P20_00008).
Carmen Hidalgo-Varo (University of Granada)
is a third year PhD student on Science Fiction and Social Engagement at the University of Granada, Spain. She has been awarded with an Arqus European University Alliance scholarship to carry out a research stay at the University of Graz (Austria), where she stayed until February 2022. She has also carried out another research stay at Swansea University, Wales (UK). Her main research interests include Science Fiction, Speculative Fiction, Postmodernism, Posthumanism, Social Engagement and Popular Literature. She is at present the co-moderator of the Writing Group of SAAS (Spanish Association of American Studies) Young Scholars, member of the research group GRACO: Studies in Literature, Criticism and Culture (HUM676), research project “VEC22” (A-HUM22-UGR-20) and researcher within the research project “Interfaces: Representations of Human Vulnerability in the Fourth Industial Revolution” (P20_00008).
Javier Martín Párraga (University of Córdoba)
is an associate professor at the Department of English and German Studies, University of Córdoba, Spain, where he obtained his PhD degree. His main fields of research focus on American literature, films, and cultural studies. He has been a visiting scholar at Wheaton College, United States, Louisiana School for Math, Science, and the Arts, United States, the University of Toronto, Canada, and several Polish universities. Martín-Párraga has presented papers in more than fifty international conferences and seminars. His academic publications include five books and more than thirty book chapters and articles in peer-reviewed academic journals. He is also the editor of two journals.