Olivia Vázquez-Medina

I grew up in Mexico and studied Spanish and Spanish American literature at the Universidad Veracruzana, also spending time in France and the US as part of my degree. I then came to Oxford to complete an MSt and a DPhil, after which I held a permanent post as a lecturer in Hispanic Studies at Royal Holloway for five years. Having been a graduate student at Wadham, I was thrilled to return as a Fellow in 2015.

At Wadham, I tutor undergraduates on the Spanish first-year course, and on the second- and final-year Modern Spanish American papers (VIII, XI, and XII). I also teach translation classes. At the Faculty of Medieval & Modern Languages, I offer undergraduates lectures on a range of topics relating to Spanish American literature, and convene the MSt special subject ‘The Body in 20th- and 21st-Century Spanish American Fiction’.

My research focuses on contemporary Spanish American fiction. I am currently working on a project that investigates how contemporary female 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, these texts push against the limits of realism whilst staging unexpected interactions between plot and style that compel the reader to engage with uncertainty and discomfort at multiple levels. In this way, they interrogate our unexamined notions of normality, and intervene in the debate about the agency of literature in our times.

I have also published a monograph on representations of the body in Spanish American historical novels from the late 20th century, and articles and book chapters on illness, sensation and emotion in modern and contemporary fiction.

More information on my research can be found here.

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Department Page

Book

Cuerpo, historia y textualidad en Augusto Roa Bastos, Fernando del Paso y Gabriel García Márquez. Madrid-Frankfurt am Main: Iberoamericana-Vervuert, 2013. 235 pp. https://blog.ibero-americana.net/2013/08/21/4-preguntas-a-olivia-vazquez-medina/

Journal articles

‘Samanta Schweblin’s Fever Dream: Watery Toxicity, Percolating Disquietude’, in Contemporary Literature 62.1 (2021): 1-34.

‘Ugly Feelings in Mariana Enriquez’s Short Fiction’, in Bulletin of Spanish Studies 98.2 (2021): 289-317.

‘Estéticas de la ausencia: Amparo Dávila y Juan Rulfo en la escritura de Cristina Rivera Garza’, in Bulletin of Hispanic Studies 97. 2 (2020).

‘Myopia and Dazzlement: Visions of Venice in Sergio Pitol’, in Bulletin of Spanish Studies 95.4 (2018): 325-350.

‘Seeing the Insane in Cristina Rivera Garza’s Nadie me verá llorar (1999)’, in Journal of Iberian and Latin American Studies 20.2 (2014): 185-209.

‘Reading Illness in Gabriel García Márquez’s Del amor y otros demonios’, in Modern Language Review 108.1 (2013): 162-179