Carolina Tosi

Universidad de Buenos Aires

Carolina Tosi es doctora en Lingüística, magíster en Análisis del Discurso, y licenciada y profesora en Letras, por la Universidad de Buenos Aires, Argentina. Ha recibido diversas becas de estudio e investigación, entre ellas se destaca la beca tipo II de Conicet, otorgada para finalizar su tesis doctoral (2010-2012), la beca de maestría de la Universidad de Buenos Aires y otra de Fundación Carolina, dada para asistir al Curso de Posgrado de Editores Iberoamericanos en la Universidad Complutense de Madrid, España (2011). Es docente de la cátedra de Corrección de Estilo (Carrera de Edición, FFyL, UBA), Escritura y Prácticas Discursivas Universitarias (Universidad de San Andrés) y Semiología (CBC, UBA), y también dicta materias en Institutos de Formación Docente en la Ciudad de Buenos Aires. Asimismo, se ha desempeñado como correctora y editora en diversas editoriales, ha dictado cursos de lectura, escritura y edición, y ha escrito numerosos artículos para revistas especializadas en Argentina, España, México, Chile, Brasil, entre otros países, así como numerosos capítulos de libros. Ha sido aceptada para ingresar, en 2013, como investigadora asistente en el Conicet. Además, es autora de diversos libros de literatura para niños, como Cerro dulce, el pueblo de la magia, ¿Cuándo llegamos? y otro cuento contra el aburrimiento, ¿A qué jugamos?, Navidad en colores, Cuentos de valientes y La red del miedo, ente otros.

“La edición escolar y la literatura infantil. Acerca de sus continuidades y rupturas”

Es sabido que, tanto en el ámbito literario como en el campo de la edición, la literatura infantil ha sido considerada tradicionalmente como un género menor. Por un lado, suele dársele un estatus diferente al de la literatura para adultos, al grado tal de ser cuestionada como hecho estético. Por otro lado, la edición de la literatura infantil ha estado, desde sus orígenes, subordinada a la edición escolar. De hecho y tal como sostiene Carranza (2007), la literatura para niños surgió como respuesta a las necesidades del sistema educativo, y el resultado de esto fue la fuerte ligazón, que aún perdura, entre la escuela y la literatura infantil. En efecto, actualmente, muchas de las editoriales que producen libros de texto y material pedagógico cuentan con un sello exclusivo de literatura infantil con el comparten las líneas ideológicas. En este sentido, una de las funciones de la literatura infantil ha sido configurar una mirada tutelar y ejercer un control ideológico puesto al servicio de lo políticamente correcto. No obstante, durante la última década, en el mercado editorial hispano comenzaron a aplicarse nuevas políticas editoriales que alejan a literatura infantil de ese modelo tradicional. Sobre la base de lo expuesto, el objetivo de este trabajo es analizar la construcción de la literatura infantil en términos de otredad y abordar los mecanismos desplegados por las nuevas políticas editoriales. De este modo, el foco está puesto en abordar las continuidades y rupturas entre la edición escolar y la literaria con destinatario infantil, especialmente en la Argentina, e indagar los cambios y avances producidos dentro de este campo.

Alyssa Holan

International Studies Abroad/Universidad Internacional Menéndez Pelayo

I received my doctorate from Michigan State University in Hispanic Cultural Studies with a specialization in contemporary Spanish poetry in 2005. Entitled "Alternative Reconfigurations of Masculinity in the Poetry of Leopoldo María Panero, Eduardo Haro Ibars, and Eduardo Hervás," my doctoral thesis examines the representation of self in the works of three Spanish poets who write and publish during early post-Franco Spain. My most recent article publications include "Masculinidades alternativas y política corporal: la renegociación de la identidad en la poesía de Leopoldo María Panero y Eduardo Haro Ibars" in El cuerpo del signficante: la literatura contemporánea desde las teorías corporales (Barcelona: Editorial UOC, 2011) and "Queerly (In)Visible: an Alternative Reading of Eduardo Hervás (Absent) Body Politic," in The Hispanic Journal ( vol. 29, no. 1, 2009). Besides Spanish poetry and Gender Studies, my research interests include identity politics and immigration in 21st century Spain, and Andalusian culture. My current research revolves around the narratives of Angela Vallvey and her representation of the "other" within contemporary Spanish society. I have taught at various universities in the States (Loyola University, Chicago, North Park University, Chicago, Michigan State University, and Arizona State University). Currently I live in Seville and teach American university students studying abroad.
 

“The Women Behind Vallvey´s Leading Men: Gender Interplay and Identity Formation in Los estados carenciales, Muerte entre poetas and El hombre del corazón negro”

This study explores gendered relations in three of Angela Valley´s narrative works: Los estados carenciales (2002), Muerte entre poetas (2008) and El hombre del corazón negro (2011). In particular, it shall analyze the character construction and development of the/a male protagonist from each work -- Ulises, Nacho and Marco -- through his relationships with female characters, as satirical commentary of the traditional, dichotic gender paradigm and correlatively, of postmodern identity. Middle-aged, abandoned and invested in some form of quixotic quest (be it the search for true happiness, the resolution of a hideous murder, or the destruction of Eastern European mafias), all three men's vulnerabilities become more apparent to the reader as their relationships with different women, both maternal figures and lovers, are exposed and unfold. The study considers whether said demythification or humanization of the "leading men" compromises their veracity or reliability as witnesses/narrators of the realities being presented, and how this affects the reader's response to the plot of each given narrative.

Pedro Antonio Férez Mora

University of Murcia

Pedro Antonio Férez Mora holds a PhD from the University of Manchester where he presented a thesis entitled “Matter in Severo Sarduy's Poetics: Neobaroque Light”. Currently he lectures in Spanish and English languages and literatures at the Department of Didactics of Language and Literature at the University of Murcia (Spain). Regarding Latin American literature, his research interests focus on the analysis and expression of the Neobaroque ethos in Latin American poetry, especially in the works of José Lezama Lima, Néstor Perlongher, and Severo Sarduy. He specifically explores the impact of matter into the genesis and definition of the Neobaroque. Dennis Cooper and his transgressive narrative centers most of his attention in literatures in English. He seeks to set up parallels between Cooper's murderous plots and mysticism. In order to implement this project he was admitted into a research project funded by the Spanish Ministry of Education whose main aim was the conceptualization of queer peripheries in the arts. As didactics is concerned, Dr Férez is mainly interested in the study of the strategic competence in foreign language learning, and in the use of literature as a tool in the teaching of English and Spanish as second languages. He has published some of his articles in journals such as “Neophilologus” and “The Bulletin of Hispanic Studies”.

“Material Otherness in Severo Sarduy's Poetry: Now-Time Onto-Epistemology”

That the challenge of the grand narratives around which modernity scaffolds itself is one of the most fertile nodules in contemporary philosophy is something that Derrida, Vattimo, Lyotard, and Deleuze have greatly stressed in their work. Along different paths, these four projects aim to valorize otherness, specifically those categories such as femininity, childhood, the experience of limits and the discourse of the defeated by history, just to mention a few, that modernity would have branded as irrational, short-circuiting, in so doing, any chance for them to manifest themselves as valid existential models.

This study will claim that the form of otherness Sarduy explores in his poetry is matter, a category that due to its perishable and corrupted nature does not either respond to reason or is able to flesh out idealistic discourses. There is, therefore, as André Le Breton highlights, no room for it in the always Utopian and optimistic ethos of modernity. Inherent in Sarduy's defense of matter there is a fierce criticism of the form of time modernity implements, a form of time that frozen in its own idealism ends up invoking nothingness, since its reference is an empty world. Sarduy, instead, with his interest in matter seeks to seize “here and now”. He would be, to use Deleuzian terms, claiming the power of “a” life, a life which feels and suffers, which throbs, versus the idea of “the” life—the one-way, dehumanizing, and transcendent model of life that modernity puts forward.

Sarduy's insight into matter goes beyond a merely Latin American understanding of this type of otherness. On the contrary, he invites human beings to momentarily sidetrack their rationality for the purpose of listening to what flesh, their own and the world's, has to bring: empathy, religation with which is around, and paroxysm. In the end, otherness at its best.