Congratulations to Dr. Anna Casas Aguilar, Assistant Professor of Spanish Literature and Language in the Department of Modern Languages at Wright State University in Dayton, Ohio, who completed her PhD in the Department of Spanish and Portuguese at the University of Toronto in 2013. Her research and teaching focus on contemporary peninsular literature, gender and cultural studies. Her dissertation, “Fathers to a Fatherless Nation: From Abjection to Legacy in Spanish and Catalan Autobiographies after Franco,” examines the portrayal of fathers in the autobiographies of several Spanish authors that were published between 1975 and 2005. In it, she studies how Juan Goytisolo, Carlos Barral, Clara Janés and Terenci Moix confront the idea of paternity imposed by Franco’s dictatorship, which presented the father as an all-powerful figure firmly at the head of his family. She argues that the figure of the father plays a central role in these authors’ conception of self and in their proposals for new gender models after Franco. The thesis contributes to current debates about masculinity, gender identity and subjectivity in the Spanish-speaking world.
Dr. Casas' next project, “Confronting Europe: Tourism, Gender Models and Regional Consciousness in Spain, 1960-1980,” will examine the representation of tourism in film and literature as well as the influence of tourism on the construction of regional and gender identities in Spain. During this period—and against the backdrop of a growing tourist economy—a diverse group of Spaniards began to discuss several supposed threats to Spanish masculinity. The figure of the foreign, Nordic woman emerged as a symbol of Spaniards’ competing fears of and desires for Europe. Dr. Casas' research will contribute to the growing scholarship on European tourism in the Mediterranean and underscore the importance of foreign bodies in the shaping of notions of masculinity, female sexuality, as well as regional and national identities.
