Stephen Vilaseca

PhD, University of Minnesota, Spanish, 2006
MA, University of Minnesota, Spanish, 2002
BA, Carleton College, Spanish, 1992

My research interests include 20th and 21st-century Spanish Peninsular literature and film, cultural geography, representations of space, and literary/cultural theory. In my thesis, "Traveling Across the Geographies of Resistance in Contemporary Spanish Peninsular Literature," I explored the relevance of space to questions of cultural transgression in three Spanish generations: Generation of 1950 (Ana María Matute, Juan Marsé, Carmen Martín Gaite); Generation of 1968 (Rafael Chirbes, Rosa Montero, Javier Marías); and Generation X (José Ángel Mañas, Ray Loriga, and Gabriela Bustelo). I investigated how the generations of 1950 and 1968 carve out spaces within the dominant social order of Francoism and how Generation X ignites moments within capitalism. My reading of Carmen Martín Gaite’s El cuarto de atrás, found in the first chapter of my dissertation, has been published in the Bulletin of Hispanic Studies with the following title: "From Spaces of Intimacy to Transferential Space: The Structure of Memory and the Reconciliation with Strangeness in El cuarto de atrás."

I have broadened my research topic to include not just literature but other cultural production and social groups. Currently, I am investigating contemporary dominant and marginalized ways of occupying and gendering space in Spain. I am particularly interested in cultural movements such as the okupas, Spanish squatters who take possession of spaces that have been unused for many years and convert them into housing and social centers.

E-mail Stephen Vilaseca
Watson Hall 315
(815) 753-6463