Kathryn Houston is a PhD candidate in Hispanic Studies at the University of British Columbia. Her dissertation digs into representations of dirt in the gothic narrative fiction of contemporary Argentine women writers, framing it as a metaphor for gender violence during and after Argentina’s last military dictatorship. She explores dirt as a dual symbol: a life-sustaining element that is often rejected in daily life, and a substance that can be contaminated, corrupted, or harmful. Through this lens, she argues that the works in her corpus engage in a symbolic excavation of the nation’s repressed history, unearthing buried narratives of violence against women and children. Her analysis reveals how these literary texts bring to light the lingering trauma of state terror and its echoes in contemporary issues of gender violence and femicide in Argentina.

Kathryn holds an MA in Hispanic Studies from the University of British Columbia, where she focused on U.S.-Mexico border fiction. She earned her BA in English and Honours Spanish from the University of Victoria.

Interests

• Latin American Literature
• Gothic and Horror Fiction
• Women’s Writing
• Dirt Theory and Eco-fiction
• Intersectional Feminist Theory

Houston, Kathryn. “Cynic Parrhēsía: The Cure to the Repressive Hypothesis? Repression and Revolution in Contemporary Mexico.” Chasqui, vol. 53, no. 1, 2024, pp. 95–112.

Houston, Kathryn. Review of Cyborgs, Sexuality, and the Undead: The Body in Mexican and Brazilian Speculative Fiction, by Elizabeth M. Ginway. The Latin Americanist, vol. 66, no.3, 2022.

Social Science and Humanities Research Council Doctoral Fellowship (2023-2025)

Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada Graduate Scholarship- GSM (2019-2020)

Graduate supervisor: Dr. Tamara Mitchell

“Hazardous Herding: The Production and Consumption of Bodies in Cadáver exquisito” American Comparative Literature Association Conference, May 2025.

“Herd Mentality: The Horror of Belonging in Augustina Bazterrica’s Cadáver exquisito” FHIS Graduate Student Conference, October 2024.

“When Bones Talk Back: Eco-Horror Imagery in the Works of Mariana Enríquez” Latin

American Studies Association Conference, Vancouver, May 2023.

“The Distance from Disaster: Re-Imagining Femininity and Latinidad in Eco Horror Novels” Latin American Studies Association Conference, May 2022.

“The Repressive Hypothesis in Fernanda Melchor’s Temporada de huracanes (2017)” FHIS Graduate Student Conference, October 2021.

“The End of the World or the Loss of the Self?: Tensions between Capitalism and Identity in Rita Indiana’s La mucama de Omicunlé” Latin American Studies Association Conference, May 2021.

“A Chosen Family in Rita Indiana’s La estrategia de Chochueca” Graduate Student Symposium,

University of British Columbia, April 2021.

“Language as Travel in Yuri Herrera’s Señales que precederán al fin del mundo” FHIS Graduate

Student Conference, University of British Columbia, October 2019.

“Cultural, Physical, and Literary Mobility in Salvador Plascencia’s The People of Paper” Levi-

Wasteneys Graduate Symposium, University of Toronto, September 2019

“Dalí on TV: Salvador Dalí en la televisión americana” Asociación Canadiense de Hispanistas, University of British Columbia, June 2019.

“Mobile identities: The People of Paper as a Chicano text” 8th Latin American Research Group

Workshop, The University of Victoria, March 2019.