Sofia Iaffa NylénPhD student
About me
PhD student since September 2017. My research interests are 20th Century literature, mainly Hispanic exile and/or censored narratives, and the relations between literature, society and politics.
Research
Literature is sometimes able to depict and mimic trauma, but it also has the ability to play with, distort, downplay, parody or otherwise dissolve trauma in different ways. In my dissertation project I approach this doubleness of literary representations of trauma, through studying how traumatized subjects are given form in the three Latin American writers Luisa Valenzuela, Gloria Gervitz, and Cristina Peri Rossi. These writers’ literary projects are strongly conditioned by the disruptive historical events of the 20th Century - such as dictatorships, persecution, torture, sexual violence, mass migration, and various forms of marginalization - something which the self in their texts continuously grapple with. Studying trauma in these writers can, I argue, give important insights into their feminist literary contributions. Specifically, I am interested to investigate how Valenzuela, Peri Rossi, and Gervitz resist and challenge the destructive and victimizing aspects of trauma with sexual/erotic themes and discourses - and to discuss what implications and consequences it has for their feminist aesthetics. Ultimately, the overarching aim with this thesis is to contribute to research on the role of trauma in contemporary Latin American writing, and more generally on literary trauma theory.
Supervisors
Frida Beckman, Anna Jörngården
Interests
Hispanic literature, trauma theory, Luisa Valenzuela, Cristina Peri Rossi, Gloria Gervitz, subjectivity, critical theory, postcolonial/decolonial theory, intersectionality
Conferences
"La recepción de Gloria Gervitz en los países nórdicos", Conference on Latin American Literary and Cultural studies in the Nordic countries, Göteborgs universitet, november 2021
"Nomadic Texts and How to Read Them: A Study of the Readings of Gloria Gervitz' Migraciones", Revolutions in Reading, Stockholm University, June 2021
"Vida cotidiana y subjetividad en los cuentos de Luisa Valenzuela", International conference on Literature and Exile, Tarragona (Spain), October 2019
"Hushåll och fängelser - gestalningar av vardagen i Argentinsk litteratur skriven under diktaturen 1976-83", CEMFOR, Uppsala University, May 2019
"‘I don’t know, she says that she leaves because of poverty’: Political exile forming and disrupting identities in Cristina Feijóo’s Cómo en las Películas (1995)", Transnational Performativities: Performing Identities in a Global Context (symposium), Stockholm, May 2018
Publications
"Förlisning/exiltillstånd", translation of poems by Cristina Peri Rossi, in Glänta 1:2022
"Passivity and Nomadism in the Literature of Luisa Valenzuela", in Feminism as World Literature, ed. Robin Truth Goodman, Bloomsbury Academic, 2022
"Prologue" in Mullvadarna (Los Topos, 2008) by Félix Bruzzone, transl. Linnea Rutström, Prosak förlag, 2021
"Som på film", a translation of the short story "Como en las películas" (1995) by Cristina Feijóo in Karavan 2:2018
"Nödvändigheten att vittna och viljan att tala om annat", Karavan 2:2018
“'My Insides Were Like a House': A Study of Body and Space in Mercè Rodoreda’s La Placa del Diamant", MA (Stockholm University 2016)
"Talande motstånd - tystnad, talan och våld i Griselda Gambaros Ganarse la muerte (1976)", Ordkonst 1:2014