Bio:
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.
Project Description:
Sarah’s project is titled “Tracing the Legacy of European Female Gothic Writers in Contemporary Latin American Fiction.” During her residency, she will analyze a selection of European literary texts belonging to the “Female Gothic” (Moers 1976). She will also examine critical theories of the genre that centre 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. This work will set the foundation for exploring how the authors in her corpus engage with Gothic tropes to reflect their sociopolitical and cultural landscapes in the Americas.