Dr Olivia Vázquez-Medina

My research centres on modern and contemporary Spanish American fiction. My current research project investigates how contemporary women writers respond to critical issues of the present –such as environmental degradation, social inequality, and gender violence— by exploring novel forms of storytelling. Beyond ‘representing’ such issues, I argue, much of their writing invites us to see the present from unfamiliar angles, challenging our normalised ideas about the world, especially those implicit in language and narrative. In this way, they compel us to engage with uncertainty and discomfort at multiple levels. I probe the notion of 'disquietude' to read authors such as Cristina Rivera Garza, Samanta Schweblin, Mariana Enriquez, Fernanda Trías, Giovanna Rivero, and others from the current generation. Their narratives articulate a feminist perspective on the uncertain and precarious —disquieting— state of the contemporary world. At the same time, I argue, there is a sense of vitality in their prose, a stylistic form of creative and generative disquiet. My project explores the intersections between affect, gender, aesthetics, and politics in this writing. My first monograph examined representations of the body in canonical historical novels from the late 20th century: Augusto Roa Bastos' Yo el Supremo (1974), Fernando del Paso's Noticias del Imperio (1987), and Gabriel García Márquez's El general en su laberinto (1989). I argue that, in these texts, corporeal imagery can be read in allegorical terms (especially from the point of view of Benjamin's allegory), whilst also having a performative dimension that results in decomposition, discontinuity and heterogeneity as textual processes through which these works engage with the writing of history. I have explored representations of illness in contemporary Spanish American fiction, from a variety of perspectives, in the works of authors ranging from Gabriel García Márquez to Cristina Rivera Garza and Lina Meruane.

'Materia doliente: los cuentos de Giovanna Rivero', in Hispanic Issues On Line, vol 33, Humanidades Médicas: Debates desde la literatura, el cine y las artes visuales , edited by Ana Forcinito (2024): 218-235. https://hdl.handle.net/11299/265837 'Vibrancy and Desolation in Fernanda Trías's Mugre rosa (2020)', in Bulletin of Spanish Studies (2023). DOI: 10.1080/14753820.2023.2262863