Dr Emma Staniland

I completed my undergraduate degree in French & Spanish (BA Hons) here at the University of Leicester, and stayed on to study for an MA in Humanities & Modern Languages and to complete my PhD in Spanish American literature –Towards Agency: Dialectic Bildung in Late Twentieth-Century Spanish American Women’s Writing – which I was awarded in 2010. I worked as a Teaching Fellow in Modern Languages from 2009 until 2023, when I was promoted to Teaching-focused Lecturer in Spanish & Latin American Studies. I lead on a range of language-acquisition modules and on cultural studies modules related to the Hispanic world – most especially with focus on Latin America and Latinx cultures.

My monograph, Gender & the Self in Latin American Literature (Routledge 2016), explored six 20th-century novels in which the ‘coming-of-age story’ served as a framework for critiquing female gendered identities as they are articulated across Latin American cultures. Myth, exile and the female body provided three central tropes for examining the sociopolitical aims of the Post-Boom women writers whose work I studied: Isabel Allende (Chile), Laura Esquivel (Mexico), Ángeles Mastretta (Mexico), Sylvia Molloy (Argentina), Cristina Peri Rossi (Uruguay), and Zoé Valdés (Cuba). My analyses of their writings sought to reveal the author's feminist engagement with gendered identities as socially-constructed, culturally-contingent, and open-ended. 

My second book is an edited volume titled Women and Water in Global Fiction (Routledge 2023), which explores the persistent, culturally-inscribed connection of women and female gendered identities with the varied forms and symbolic associations of water – rivers, lakes, seas, fluidity, formlessness – and spiritual and mythical beliefs – water goddesses, mermaids and other sea creatures – as depicted in literature from around the world. The diverse chapters brought together by this project create a broad-reaching examination of how this historically-entrenched association has served at once to entrap women and strengthen patriarchies, and to further the aims of global Feminisms by providing a source of inspiration, motivation and sociocultural empowerment. My own chapter discusses the topic of, "Women, Water, and the House Built on Sand: tropes of liquidity in the feminist Latin American dictatorship novel – Cristina Peri Rossi’s The Ship of Fools (1984) and Diamela Eltit’s The Fourth World (1988)" – two seminal texts from the Latin American female canon. 

I have also published on US Latina writing, and have presented conference papers on topics including gender in US film, gender in children's literature in Latin America, Latin American feminisms and music, and Latina memoir and autobiography. In 2019, I co-organised the Society for Latin American Studies annual conference along with my colleague Dr Clara Garavelli, and in 2023 led on the organisation of the first 'Latinx Studies in the UK' conference, funded by the Institute for Languages, Cultures and Societies (ILCS) and the Leicester Institute for Advanced Studies (LIAS).

Staniland, Emma, 'Fighting the Opposition: Lack and Excess in Cuban and Cuban-American Narratives of Selfhood', in Comparative American Studies, Vol. 12, No.3 (2014) (pp.190-204)

Staniland, Emma, Gender and the Self in Latin American Literature, (Routledge, 2016)

Staniland, Emma, Women and Water in Global Fiction, (Routledge, 2023)

I have supervised to completion an MPhil on Queer Puerto Rican documentary film, and have served as Internal Examiner for PhDs on the topics of matrifocality in Anglo-Caribbean literature and gender in contemporary Colombian film. I am currently supervising a PhD project funded by the University of Leicester's Future50 grant scheme, on British Latinx Writing, and an MPhil thesis on US Latinx women's writing. 

I would be very interested in supervising postgraduate work on any topic related to Latin America at the intersection of feminisms, literature, and culture, as well as on Latinx literature and culture in the USA and UK.

I teach modules across the Spanish and Latin American Studies department's curriculum, covering both language acquisition and cultural studies topics. My current teaching includes: Introduction to Spanish & Latin American Studies; Introduction to Latin American Literature & Film, Spanish Language at Beginner, Post-Beginner and Advanced levels, Latinx Literature and Culture in the USA, and Gender in the Spanish American Development Novel.

I am also actively involved in our student support provision. I lead workshops on a range of wellbeing and academic skills topics for all Modern Languages year groups, alongside my colleague in French, Dr Michelle Harrison, and am the Senior Personal Tutor for the School of Arts, Media and Communication. In that role, I work with colleagues across across the School, College and University on the planning and delivery of Personal Tutoring for all AMC students, and support our students in making the most of the guidance that is available to them via the Personal Tutoring system.

• 2010 University of Leicester Student Union's "I love my Academic" award for the College of Arts and Humanities. 
• 2015 Fellowship of the Higher Education Academy.
• 2017 University of Leicester Distinguished Teaching Fellowship for contributions to teaching, learning and student support. 

Alongside my colleague in the Spanish & Latin American Studies department, Clara Garavelli, I organised a symposium on "The Legacy of 1968 in Latin America", which gathered together an international group of Latin Americanists for a series of discussions to mark the 50-year anniversary of the French Mai '68 revolution and to examine its legacy for Latin American politics and culture (April 2018, funded by ILAS and SLAS).

Dr Garavelli and I then co-organised the annual conference of the UK Society for Latin American Studies, in April 2019, which brought 250 delegates to Leicester for multidiscplinary discussions in response to the overarching conference theme of 'The Politics of Identity in Latin America'. 

In April 2023 I led on the organisation of the UK's first conference on Latinx Studies, again funded by ILCS and also with Dr Garavelli. This event brought together academic and artistic responses to the topic of Latinidad, and Latinx arts and culture in both the US and UK, seeking to create a space for dialogue about, and for heightening the visibility of, both Latinx Studies in UK academia and Latinx identities in the UK. Follow-on projects from this event include a Special Section in the Bulletin for Latin American Studies (BLAR) due out in 2025.

Recent conference participation and presentations include:

• 'An ecocritical reading of Latinx writing', Latinx Studies in the UK Conference (University of Leicester, 2023)
• UK Society for Latin American Studies (University of Glasgow 2017, University of Liverpool 2018, University of Leicester 2019)
• Interdisciplinary Gender and Sexuality Research Group (University of Leicester, 2018)
• US Latin American Studies Association (Barcelona, 2018)
• Becoming Latin American: Children, Education and Citizenship (University of Reading, 2018)

BA French & Spanish (University of Leicester)

MA Humanities & Modern Languages (University of Leicester)

PhD (University of Leicester)

Fellow of the Higher Education Academy (2015)