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Faculty of Modern and Medieval Languages and Linguistics

 

Dr Emily Baker

Emily Baker
Position(s): 
Lecturer and Director of Studies in MML at Robinson College
Affiliated Lecturer in Modern and Medieval Languages
Teaching Associate at the Centre of Latin American Studies
Department/Section: 
Spanish & Portuguese
Faculty of Modern & Medieval Languages & Linguistics
Contact details: 
Telephone number: 
01223 339172
Location: 

Robinson College,
Grange Road,
Cambridge​
CB3 9AN
United Kingdom

About: 

Emily completed an AHRC-funded PhD in Latin American Studies at the Centre of Latin American Studies, University of Cambridge. She then worked as a Lecturer in Latin American Cultural Studies at Birkbeck College, University of London, before returning to Cambridge to take up the post of Lecturer and Director of Studies in MML at Robinson College.

Teaching interests: 

Modern Latin American Literature and Visual Culture
Latin American Cultural and Intellectual History
Critical Theory
20th Century Dictatorship and Memory Studies

Research interests: 

Modern Latin American Literature and Visual Culture
Latin American Cultural and Intellectual History
Critical Theory
The Politics of Identity
20th Century Dictatorship and Memory Studies
World Ecology Studies and Ecocriticism
Digital Aesthetics

Recent research projects: 

Emily’s work analyses the way cultural producers re-cast historical events and concepts in fiction to shed light on their political concerns in the present.  Her monograph entitled: Nazism, the Second World War and the Holocaust in Contemporary Latin American Literature: From Imagined to Inoperative Communities is currently under review at Cambridge University Press. It addresses the question of why Latin American authors are writing about Nazism, the Second World War and the Holocaust now. It does so with reference to both the Latin American literary genealogy associated with these themes, and the philosophical, political and ethical positions that contemporary authors adopt in revisiting these historical events and ideologies in the past two decades. Encompassing texts from Mexico, Colombia, Brazil, Argentina and Chile it engages with work by some of the most well-known contemporary Latin American authors including Roberto Bolaño, Juan Gabriel Vásquez, Jorge Volpi, Ignacio Padilla, Lucia Puenzo, Patricio Pron and Michel Laub, as well as notable thematic precursors such as Jorge Luis Borges, Carlos Fuentes and Ricardo Piglia.
She has just started a new monograph project on representations of the Cold War in contemporary Latin American literature, and is working on a collaborative project on the politics of identity.

Published works: 

Journal Article: ‘Darse la mano es como desarmar una bomba’: Division by Language and Reconciliation through Touch in Los informantes by Juan Gabriel Vásquez, Revista de Estudios Hispánicos. 51:2, June 2017.

Journal Article: Art-Mimesis and Political Reality in a Decade of Cuban Film, Journal of Iberian and Latin American Research. October 2018.

Review: Kushigian, J.A. Crónicas orientalistas y autorrealizadas: Entrevistas con Jorge Luis Borges, Carlos Fuentes, Juan Goytisolo, Elena Poniatowska, Severo Sarduy y Mario Vargas Llosa (2016). Bulletin of Spanish Studies. Forthcoming.

Book Chapter: ‘The Digital-Human-Nature Continuum in Las constelaciones oscuras (2015) by Pola Oloixarac’ in Bollington, L. & Merchant, P. (eds.) The Limits of the Human in Contemporary Latin American Culture. University of Florida Press. Forthcoming.

Book Chapter: ‘From “Imagined” to “Inoperative” Communities: The Unworking of National and Latin American Identities in Contemporary Fiction’ in Davies, C., Green, S. & O’Bryen, R. (eds.) Transnational Hispanic Studies. Liverpool University Press. Under Review.

Magazine Article: From ‘Imagined’ to ‘Inoperative’ Communities: Encounters with Nazism and the Second World War in Contemporary Latin American Literature, Jesus College Annual Report, November 2015.