Diana Battaglia

I completed my PhD at the University of Leeds with a thesis on the representation of Cubanness in the detective fiction of Leonardo Padura Fuentes. 

My research intersts include contemporary Latin American literature, especially Cuban literature; the relationship between contemporary cultural production, cultural identity and society in Cuba; Spanish and Latin American detective fiction, and the representation of cultural memory and cultural identity in crime fiction.

My current investigation explores the representation of cultural identity and memory in contemporary Cuba. The broader objective is to contribute to the ongoing debates on the function of memory in fiction and the relation between memory and identity (re)construction. My research confront different experiences and views on the national past and present, exploring issues of uniformity and diversity, authority and individual agency, conformity and subversion of the hegemonic discourse and official memory.

Before coming to UCD I worked at Queen’s University Belfast in the Department of Spanish and Portuguese Studies teaching on both language and literary modules at all levels

At UCD I cover a position of Lecturer/Assistant professor in Spanish. I teach two Spanish language modules and two content modules.

My teaching focuses on the representation of gender identity, sex and sexuality in Post-Revolutionary Cuban culture. Through the analysis of different cultural objects the module engages with the concepts of gender identity, race and cultural hegemony. I also offer a module on detective fiction in Latin America wich explores the main features of the crime genre and stresses the strong socio-political character that the genre adquires in the Latin American context.

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