Bárbara Aranda C. is a doctoral researcher at the Professorship of Spatial Dimensions of Cultural Processes at DIMAS. She holds an MA in Iberoamerican Studies from the University of Heidelberg, as well as dual BA degrees in Literature and Linguistics and Education and Educational Sciences from the Pontifical Catholic University of Chile.
Her research focuses on contemporary Latin American literature, paying particular attention to how genres such as horror, fantastic literature, science fiction and travel narratives engage with cultural and political imaginaries. She is especially interested in how these narratives articulate issues of memory, space and identity, often drawing from decolonial and postcolonial perspectives. She also incorporates gender studies into her work, examining the intersection of gender and violence, and its representation in literary and visual cultures.
Office: Room BA.832, Bajuwarenstra?e 4
E-mail: Barbara.Aranda@zea.uni-regensburg.de
Telephone: +49 941 943-68561
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Research
| Research Areas and Interests | - Latin American Literature - Fantastic and Science Fiction Literature - Travel narratives - Decolonial and Postcolonial Theory - Gender Studies |
| Current Project: | "Beyond the Borders of the Hero: Reimagining Travel Narratives in Latin American Literature" Narration and travel appear deeply linked from their genesis, from the moment in which the need to narrate arises, to tell what has happened during the journey, to transmit what has been seen or learned. The paradigmatic image of the journey, from the Western European context, is the one that illustrates Odysseus' journey to Ithaca: the hero, as the central figure of the story, stands as the human ideal (Curtius 1955) and gives rise to the heroic ethos. Yet this exact ethos and perspective supersedes others. As Le Guin (2019) discusses, to think about history is necessarily to think about the history of the hero, about narratives of magnificence, of power, of violence, narratives that are constructed from a deeply patriarchal and, in some contexts, colonial lens. The following questions then arise: What would happen if we were to change the form of this heroic ethos, with which we narrate our stories and, consequently, our journeys? What happens to travel narratives when we broaden their interpretative possibilities and when we question dominant narratives? And furthermore, what happens with narration when we shift our attention to other journeys and ways in which they are narrated? |