Project Interview: Sarah Revilla-Sanchez

Sarah Revilla-Sanchez (she/ella) is a PhD candidate in Hispanic Studies at the University of British Columbia. Her doctoral research tracks how contemporary literary works by Mexican women are increasingly engaging with the Gothic mode to grapple with gender-based violence. Drawing on Gothic and Horror Studies, Gender Theories, and Feminist Studies, she demonstrates that the authors in her corpus not only capture and portray the horrors of patriarchal violence, but they do so in ways that expose the entanglement among gender, class, race, politics, and neoliberal logic. Her project will contribute to the study of Gothic literature by shedding light on the legacy of English Gothic writers in the works of Mexican female authors and the evolution and adaptation of this genre in the Spanish-speaking world. Before coming to UBC, she completed a master’s degree in Sociology at the University of Victoria and a master’s degree in Comparative Literatures and Arts at Brock University. Some of her other research interests include Testimony, Sound Studies and Digital Humanities.

Q: What is the title of your research project?

A: My doctoral dissertation is titled, “Monstrous Mexico: Gender Violence in Contemporary Gothic Fiction by Women.”

Q: What was the main focus of your research project during your time as fellow in the Centre?

A: My research tracks how contemporary literary works by Mexican women are increasingly engaging with the Gothic mode to grapple with gender-based violence. During my residency at the CES, I worked on the introduction of my dissertation that sets the foundation for exploring the legacy of English Gothic writers in contemporary Latin American literature.

I began by curating a reading list that included gothic novels from the 18th and early 19th century and works of gothic criticism. Then, I basically spent most of my time reading! I particularly enjoyed Ann Radcliffe’s The Mysteries of Udolpho and Jane Austen’s Northanger Abbey. Initially, I envisioned that my literature review would center around the metaphors of the haunted house, “the unspeakable,” and the Gothic body, particularly as they relate to female resistance and violence against the female/feminized body. As I read, I began to disentangle some of these themes, but I also came across interesting insights I hadn’t thought about before.

Q: What drew you to this research project?

A: In the past decade, Latin American horror and gothic fiction written by women has gained global recognition. Notable authors of this “female literary boom” or “new Latin American Gothic” (Llurba, Madrid) from recent years come from the southern globe (Mariana Enríquez, Samanta Schewblin, Mónica Ojeda, and María Fernanda Ampuero, to name a few). Many of the works by these authors address issues of state violence, environmental issues (climate change, pollution), migration and displacement, and gender violence–which is what my research is all about!

As I began to do more research on this topic, I realized two things: (1) there are also a lot of contemporary Mexican women writers who engage in similar themes and styles but many of them are not widely known beyond Mexico; and (2) This turn to horror and gothic metaphors to discuss issues of gender violence and oppression is not new.

So, my research project positions Amparo Dávila (1928-2020) as one of the foremothers of this tradition of horror and gothic fiction in the twentieth century, and I bring her in dialogue with some contemporary Mexican writers. I’m interested in tracing a genealogy but also showing an evolution in how we perceive fear, horror, and its connection to an emerging vocabulary that allows us to recognize and address violence.

As I was writing my first chapter on Dávila’s gothic tales, I realized that I was struggling with some big questions: What (if at all) is the difference between gothic, horror, and terror? How productive is the term “Female Gothic” in my research? What is my working definition of a gothic aesthetic, mode, genre?

Q: What are your plans after the fellowship?

A: After the fellowship, I will continue working on my dissertation!

Q: What would you consider to be a strength of the Centre for European Studies, and how did it help support you/your project?

A: I really appreciate having an office space to work on my research! The end-of-term showcase was also a fantastic experience to share my research and receive insightful feedback.

Sarah was a 2025 CES Graduate Research Fellow.

Find your next summer read on our Affiliate Bookshelf!

Looking for your next summer read? Check out the CES Affiliate Bookshelf! Covering a broad range of topics related to Europe and the languages spoken there, these books are sure to expand your horizons!

Check out our Spring 2025 Newsletter!

As we begin the summer term, our team here at CES is reflecting on another successful year of scholarship, community, and learning! Check out our Spring 2025 Newsletter to see all of the events, announcements, fellowships, and affiliate publications that have made this year so special.

We can’t wait to continue our work in the 2025-6 academic year, starting with our Summer CES Book Club, which will be discussing Ada’s Room by Sharon Dodua Otoo and translated by Jon Cho-Polizzi. The first meeting is June 25th and will include a guest appearance by the translator! Register here!

Irene Bloemraad

Professor Irene Bloemraad studies the political and civic incorporation of immigrants into Western liberal democracies and the consequences of migration for politics and receiving countries’ sense of national belonging. How do migrants gain voice in the political systems where they live?

One stream of research investigates citizenship: acquiring formal citizenship, as well as the experiential and conceptual contours of citizenship as membership beyond legal status. Other research examines the content and transformation of national identities; immigrants’ engagement in electoral and protest politics; and how non-immigrants’ attitudes about migration and immigrants shift depending on whether we talk about human rights, citizenship, family unity, or appeals to national values. Her work has focused on North America and Western Europe.

She joined UBC in 2024 as the inaugural President’s Excellence Chair in Global Migration, with a joint appointment in Political Science and Sociology. She also co-directs the Centre for Migration Studies.

i.bloemraad@ubc.ca

Geoffrey Winthrop-Young

Geoffrey Winthrop-Young is a Professor of German and Nordic Studies in the Department of Central, Eastern and Northern European Studies. His main research areas include German media theory (with emphasis on media archaeology and the theory of cultural techniques), chronopolitics (in particular, accelerationism and catastrophism), Science Fiction (with emphasis on alternate history), and the re-emerging mythologies of Nazism.

winthrop@mail.ubc.ca

Taking Stock: Media Inventories in the German Nineteenth Century ed. by Sean Franzel, Ilinca Iurascu, Petra McGillen

The volume examines the proliferation of inventorying models and practices as cultural techniques of knowledge organization and production during the long nineteenth century. While inventories are still broadly treated as raw data and unprocessed source materials, the book shows how they function as complex media formats, intersecting and interfering with other material techniques to produce, store, distribute, organize and process cultural information. How do inventories work against and in dialogue with other media of collection, storage and retrieval such as catalogs, indexes, bibliographies, and archives; what new media configurations do techniques of inventorying enable and how, in turn, are such techniques shaped by the media channels and formats they employ; what is at stake in the critical effort of “taking stock”, whether as commercial, bureaucratic, literary, historiographical, or scientific operations; finally, what do such operations tell us specifically about the production and circulation of knowledge in the German nineteenth century?

You can purchase a copy of Taking Stock: Media Inventories in the German Nineteenth Century (2024) here.

*All information is taken from the publisher’s website.

Medieval French on the Move: Studies in Honour of Keith Busby ed. by Leah Tether, Patrick Moran and Anne Salamon

When Keith Busby published his field-shaping Codex and Context in 2002, the work was referred to as ‘groundbreaking’ and ‘monumental’. It prompted scholars of medieval literature to return to manuscripts in their droves. However, Busby’s Codex and Context would also enact another, more gradual movement. His formulation of the term ‘medieval Francophonia’ to describe the presence, power and effect of French outside France would filter steadily into academic enquiry. The term and concept are now widely recognised and applied in global scholarship, including in multiple major projects dedicated to the topic.

This volume brings together a series of cutting-edge studies of medieval Francophonia, covering in one place and for the first time the fullest scope of the concept’s remit, with contributions on history, historiography, language, literature, culture, society and authority. At the same time as offering a timely contribution to the field, this volume pays tribute to Busby’s life work not only to pioneer medieval Francophonia, but also, and moreover, to encourage the study of the medieval through material philology. Each of the studies here, written by Busby’s friends and colleagues, thus roots its approach in a material context.

You can purchase a copy of Medieval French on the Move: Studies in Honour of Keith Busby (2025) here.

*All information is taken from the publisher’s website.

Symposium on Who’s Afraid of Gender? by Judith Butler ed. by Dr. Babak Amini and Dr. Rebecca Gordon

This special edition of Contemporary Sociology: A Journal of Reviews was edited by Dr. Babak Amini and Dr. Rebecca Gordon and was published May 3, 2025. You can read Volume 54, Issue 3, “Symposium on Who’s Afraid of Gender? by Judith Butler” here.

Entangled Histories: Opera and Cultural Exchange between Vienna and the Italian States after Napoleon by Dr. Claudio Vellutini

Dr. Claudio Vellutini book, Entangled Histories: Opera and Cultural Exchange between Vienna and the Italian States after Napoleon, was published on May 23, 2025 by Oxford University Press. You can read more about the book and purchase a copy here.

Overview:

One of the first musicological books contributing to the field of transnational Habsburg studies
Proposes new ways of thinking about Italian and German opera in relation to political and cultural changes in Europe in the first half of the nineteenth century
Sheds new light on both major operatic works by Rossini, Weber, Donizetti, and Verdi, and on lesser-known operas by Mercadante and others

Through a wealth of archival documents and printed materials, Entangled Histories shows how, over the first half of the nineteenth century, opera helped redefine questions of collective identity in the Austrian empire, serving as a testing ground for, among others, theories of language and education, notions of fatherland and citizenship, artistic expressions of cultural hybridity, new forms of managing economic and cultural capital, and practices of collective memory. By emphasizing the entanglements between opera’s aesthetics, its social function, and the ideology underpinning its system of production in different institutional and urban contexts, this book places opera at the intersection of a broad set of political and cultural relationships that for several decades connected Vienna and prominent Italian operatic centers, contributing to a transnational historiography of the art form in the nineteenth century. It also argues that new modes of production and dissemination of opera between Vienna and the Italian states contributed to official cultural policies promoting a supranational identity of the Austrian empire-one that acknowledged, but ultimately transcended cultural differences. As the state emerged victoriously yet completely transformed from over two decades of wars against revolutionary and Napoleonic France, opera-with its long tradition of impresarios, composers, librettists, and performers on the move-became a key tool for bringing some of the different cultural traditions of the Austrian empire into a fruitful mutual dialogue.

*All book information is copied from the publisher’s website.

Sound and Sense in Contemporary Theatre: Mad Auralities by Dr. Matthew Tomkinson

Sound and Sense in Contemporary Theatre: Mad Auralities by Dr. Matthew Tomkinson was published by the University of Toronto Press in January 2025. You can purchase a copy here.

Overview:

Addresses a need for more research combining sound and mad studies
Explores the theatrical relationship between sound and mental health differences
Makes an original contribution to the field by theorizing “mad aurality”

This book is among the first to consider the subject of mad auralities in theatre and performance, asking: what does it mean to hear and listen madly? Drawing widely upon mad studies, critical disability studies, theatre studies, sound studies, queer studies, and critical race theory, it seeks to explore the theatrical relationship between sound and mental health differences by examining a range of case studies in which audience members are immersed in auditory simulations of madness. Ultimately, however, this critical study investigates the shortcomings of simulation as a representational practice, in keeping with the critical tradition of disability studies and mad studies.

Review:

“An impressive and important study that undertakes a vitally needed critical analysis of the staging of madness from the perspective of sound. Tomkinson investigates representational frameworks of madness in contemporary theatre, asking how they inform an audience’s ways of listening. The book invites artists and scholars to consider very carefully the representational politics that permeate soundscapes and, more broadly, the powerful role acousmatic sound plays in shaping the popular imagination with regard to madness.” (Natalie Álvarez, Professor of Theatre and Performance Studies, Toronto Metropolitan University)

*All information taken from publisher’s website.