Research output per year
Research output per year
Professor
Room 02.002 - 9 University Square
United Kingdom
Accepting PhD Students
PhD projects
I would be delighted to hear from students interested in pursuing doctoral research in the following areas:
Mexican literature and culture
Cultural production from/about the Mexico/US border
Latin American women's writing
The politics and aesthetics of cultural institutions as they relate to Latin America e.g film festivals, book fairs, publishing houses, galleries etc.
Latin American multimedia cultural production
Research activity per year
Research and Teaching Interests
My research explores the social and political functions of literature with reference to Latin American fiction and gender.
I ask what roles literature has in society and investigate and interrogate the institutions and practices which underpin the ways in which literature circulates.
Current Research - Pushing the Boundaries – Literary Innovation and Political Intervention in Latin America
This project studies the ways in which literary texts broadly defined have attempted to intervene in politics.
It explores the ways in which authors and artists are crossing boundaries in order to reach new audiences, find new ways to convey their message and in so doing are challenging traditional conceptions of literature. Working with Dr Jane Lavery (Southampton) I have explored the multimedia interventions of Guatemalan performance artist, poet and blogger Regina José Galindo (2012) and Chilean poet, artist, performer and activist Eli Neira and we are currently preparing an edited volume on The Multimedia Works of Contemporary Spanish American Women Writers and Artists (under contract).
The project also takes fiction produced in Spanish, English and French about the feminicides in Ciudad Juárez as a case study to ask what the political impact of such texts might be.
Literature, Nation-Building and Canon Formation in 20th Century Mexico
For this project I explored the ways in which literary canon formation was tied to processes of nation building in post-revolutionary Mexico and tried to uncover alternative voices which had been lost as a result focusing particularly on the experience of women and women authors.
This work led to the publication of a monograph Gender, Nation and the Formation of the Twentieth-Century Mexican Literary Canon (2011) in which I explored the ways in which literature in post-revolutionary Mexico was used to negotiate who was and who was not part of the nation. I showed how the literary canon consistently worked to reinforce official discourses whilst excluding dissenting voices and marginalising women.
In ‘Towards a Broader Definition of the Novel of the Mexican Revolution’ (2013) I drew attention to the new voices and perspectives on the revolution which would emerge if we expanded our understanding of the novel of the Mexican Revolution to includes those texts which did not fit in with official narratives.
In my article (2015) on the group known as the Ocho poetas mexicanos (which included Rosario Castellanos in their number) I showed how they were marginalised in post-revolutionary literary circles and remain largely forgotten by literary history because they were dismissed as Catholic authors by a literary establishment which favoured nation-building literature at a time when Catholicism was excluded from official constructions of nationhood. I highlight the contributions group members made to mid-century literary culture and propose they are best understood with reference to the “universal” strand of Mexican literature and as heirs to groups such as the Contemporáneos.
Institutions, Criticism and the Circulation of Literature
This project investigates the institutions and practices which underpin the ways in which literature functions and circulates in society.
Using the Spanish Premio Cervantes award for literature in Spanish as a case study I studied the way in which literary prizes could conceal political agendas. By studying the media reports surrounding the Latin American recipients of the Premio Cervantes I showed how the prize was used to negotiate relationships and as a space for dialogue between Spain and Latin America.
In ‘The origins of the Mexican Boom Femenino’ I analyse the ways in which criticism responded to and therefore affected the reception of women authors who came to the fore in Mexico in the 1980s. Building on work in my monograph which used book reviews published in newspapers to show how critics were able to shape the way readers received texts, I focus on the reception of work by Ángeles Mastretta and Laura Esquivel and argue that the gender of the authors was a significant factor in their critical reception.
I currently teach on the following modules
In 2015, UN member states agreed to 17 global Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) to end poverty, protect the planet and ensure prosperity for all. This person’s work contributes towards the following SDG(s):
Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceeding › Chapter (peer-reviewed) › peer-review
Research output: Contribution to journal › Book/Film/Article review
Research output: Book/Report › Edited book › peer-review
Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceeding › Chapter (peer-reviewed) › peer-review
Research output: Contribution to journal › Book/Film/Article review
O'Rawe, R. (Recipient) & Bowskill, S. (Recipient), 21 Feb 2017
Prize: Prize (including medals and awards)
Bowskill, S. (Recipient), Apr 2011
Prize: Election to learned society
Bowskill, S. (Recipient), 2012
Prize: Election to learned society
Bowskill, S. (Recipient), 2016
Prize: Other distinction
Bowskill, S. (Peer reviewer)
Activity: Publication peer-review and editorial work types › Publication peer-review
Bowskill, S. (Peer reviewer)
Activity: Publication peer-review and editorial work types › Publication peer-review
Bowskill, S. (Peer reviewer)
Activity: Publication peer-review and editorial work types › Publication peer-review
Bowskill, S. (Peer reviewer)
Activity: Publication peer-review and editorial work types › Publication peer-review
Bowskill, S. (Peer reviewer)
Activity: Publication peer-review and editorial work types › Publication peer-review