Date range: December 2024 – November 2025
PhD in Hispanic Studies
Jennifer Nagtegaal
Expanded comics : multimediality, performance, and extra multimodality under post-postmodernism
Abstract: This dissertation expands the already explosive field of comics studies by examining the recent concept of expanded comics to which relatively little attention has been paid. Drawing on definitions of expanded cinema, I define the term “expanded comics” as a spatial metaphor which characterizes the spreading out of comics from its conventional core in the culture industry to the realm of the art world where we find unconventional, often interdisciplinary forms. Taking a transatlantic perspective, and through qualitative analysis, I offer textual and contextual readings of case studies created between the years 2010 and 2021, stemming from Spain as well as Latin America (specifically, Argentina), two loci for the expanded comics movement. I comparatively analyze these with other cases from North America that have cropped up within the same time frame. Case studies include the music-comics object (a multimedia pairing of musical tracks that accompany the same number of comics narratives in one material or digitally packaged product), operatized comics (a performance blending a visual comics narrative with operatic music and often operatic voice through the use of digital technologies and projection), sculpture and design comics (three-dimensional comics in which, speaking from a semiotic perspective, the host medium, signs and/or content are made of sculptural materials and designed for installation), and exhibition comics (site-specific, large-scale narrative comics specifically commissioned for the art gallery or museum). Furthermore, I theorize how expanded comics propel the medium beyond aesthetic paradigms of modernism and postmodernism to which they have historically been tied. I contribute to debates on art after postmodernism by theorizing expanded comics through metamodernism, which reconfigures taste hierarchies to bridge mass and high culture in renewed, sincere bids for meaning. I conclude that for key principles such as interdisciplinarity, collaboration, and a focus on the creative process, as well as common narrative features such as a quirky tone, the figure of impossibly possible utopias and a meaningful use of materials, expanded comics are made possible under the metamodern paradigm and meanwhile exist as an additional and overlooked object of inquiry which allows us to increase our awareness of this cultural logic.
Mirta Roncagalli
Abstract: My dissertation, Neohumanismo: una propuesta de regeneración ética y sociopolítica en el ensayo español del siglo XXI (Neohumanism: A Proposal for an Ethical and Sociopolitical Regeneration in the 21st-Century Spanish Essay), studies the writing of four Spanish authors: Javier Sádaba, Adela Cortina, Elizabeth Duval, and Jesús Mosterín. Through a close reading analysis of selected texts, I explore and establish the connection between the essayists’ ethical and political views and a new humanist thought. This thought is a revision and redefinition of what being human means, and a response to the problems of our neoliberal and capitalist society. More specifically, I show how these thinkers regenerate the concept of an ethical self along with its role in our society; a reconditioning that can be described as horizontal and interrelational, and that has already changed the Spanish socio-political practice of the XXI century.
MA in French Studies
Katherine Marchant
Abstract: Ce mémoire porte sur des éléments de métafiction, de métanarration et les indices de fictionnalité dans Dora Bruder (1997) de Patrick Modiano et HHhH (2010) de Laurent Binet. Les deux récits, qui combinent l’Histoire et la fiction, tentent de mettre en récit la vie d’individus impliqués dans la Seconde Guerre mondiale à travers des documents d’archives. En même temps, les narrateurs problématisent la possibilité de raconter fidèlement un événement historique et critiquent leur propre écriture. L’objectif principal du mémoire est de déterminer comment ces récits autoréflexifs influencent notre compréhension et notre réception de l’Histoire. Le mémoire examine également l’impact de l’inclusion des documents d’archives dans le récit ainsi que les manières dont les narrateurs établissent une relation de confiance avec le lecteur. Une analyse comparative de Dora Bruder et HHhH révèle des tendances communes et des éléments propres à chaque œuvre littéraire. Les deux narrateurs apprennent au lecteur à s’interroger sur les voix qui façonnent les textes historiques et sur leur crédibilité : il est préférable de considérer plusieurs perspectives d’un événement historique afin de réduire le nombre de héros et de victimes oubliés.
MA in Hispanic Studies
Daniel Pazmiño
Abstract: The following thesis explores the role of melancholy in the context of the Hispanic Monarchy, particularly the period between the last decades of the 16th century to mid-17th century, from the end of Phillip II’s reign to the death of Phillip IV. This was an era characterized by economic troubles, political upheaval, attempts by some provinces to secede from the monarchy, and a profound crisis of humanistic and religious systems. Considering the tumultuous context described previously and its effects on individuals, this study proposes a versatile definition of melancholy, the most widespread emotional state of the period. Comprised of three core analytical elements, melancholy is applied as a methodology to examine the literature of the period specifically drama. The first element is the presence of a subject who desires which is followed by a phantasmagorical object that cannot be attained by the subject resulting in the third key analytical element, active and passive emotions. Building on this definition, melancholy is analyzed in dialogue with two areas of research that have been applied but not combined to the study of the Early Modern Hispanic context: Cognitive Studies, which focuses on psychosomatic internal disorders and a cultural perspective, which adopts an external, and collective approach. This thesis demonstrates how the proposed definition of melancholy shaped thought, ideas, and, ultimately, it impacted the Hispanic worldview of the 16th and 17th centuries. By using works by Calderón de la Barca, Miguel de Cervantes, Lope de Vega, and Diego Calleja as the primary corpus, this thesis explores melancholy across three interconnected levels. It begins with its most personal and intimate form: love melancholy. It then expands to a broader, collective dimension through sociopolitical melancholy, and finally reaches its most encompassing expression in religious melancholy, understood as a reflection of universal values.
Mirella Reichenbach Livoti
Abstract: This thesis focuses on the work of Mayra Santos-Febres, one of the most prominent contemporary Puerto Rican scholars and authors of the Spanish-speaking Caribbean. At the beginning of her career, she published the two short story collections Pez de vidrio (1996) and El cuerpo correcto (1998). The publication of these collections marked a period of transition between Santos-Febres’s exploration of different literary genres, from poetry to short fiction, and later followed by the novel through which she gained critical recognition. This thesis offers a close reading of the following three short stories selected from the aforementioned collections: “Resinas para Aurelia,” “Oso Blanco,” and “La escritora.” In this project, I examine the role of abjection, intimacy, and gender in the selected narratives in works that, on my reading, become progressively more linguistically and formally experimental. Following this lexical observation, all of the chosen texts are narrated through highly figurative language, which I describe as poetic, and offer nuanced depictions of sexuality that destabilize set notions of agency and normativity. Moreover, this study centers the representation of the body and analyses the implications of corporeal tropes —primarily the imagery of hands and consistent references to bodily fluids and waste— in the stories. I draw from Julia Kristeva’s theory of abjection to consider how the characters’ intimate encounters with other bodies reveal new forms of relationality that challenge a strictly heteropatriarchal logic and evidence intersecting systems of oppression. This theoretical framework allows me to consider the ambiguous reactions produced by the characters’ interactions with/ as abject bodies, generating feelings of both attraction and repulsion. In addition, I attend to the disruptive aesthetics that emerge from such hand imagery, along with the introduction of formal elements —mainly poetic verses and italics— that visually intervene in the narrative’s structure. In sum, this thesis seeks to revitalize and propose a novel approach to Santos-Febres’s short fiction by foregrounding the ample use of literary devices that characterize her prose.
