Profile

I am a fifth-year Ph.D. candidate (ABD) in the Department of Spanish and Portuguese at Princeton University. I am currently working on my dissertation, titled “Spanish Child Prodigies and the Creation of National Myths: The Construction of ‘Spanishness’ Through Popular Culture During the Spanish Miracle (1955–1975),” which examines the narrative constructed around the child and adolescent artists Joselito, Marisol, Rocío Dúrcal, and Raphael through the lens of Roland Barthes’s Mythologies. In my analysis, I focus on how child prodigies served as new role models for the first generation of postwar Spaniards consuming popular music, film, and merchandizing. I have presented several aspects of this project at conferences both in the United States and in Europe, and in spring of 2023 I was awarded the prestigious Margaret Goheen Summer Research and Travel Fellowship to conduct research for this project at the Spanish National Library and the Spanish Cinemathèque in Madrid. This academic year, I am co-organizing the talk series “Smells, Sounds, and Textures of Iberian Modernity,” with points of connection between Iberian Cultural Studies, Near Eastern Studies, Film and Media Studies, History, Religion, Music, and others.

My previous work on crime fiction and ‘cine negro’ has centered around picaresque elements in Spanish and Catalan literature, television series, and film, such as “Barcelona's Picaro Detectives: A Comparative Study of Eduardo Mendoza's Unnamed Detective and Teresa Solana's Borja and Eduard” (2019). Furthermore, I have also published book chapters addressing the revindication of female agency and different types of space in Iberian crime fiction written by women, including “Ellas también (entienden): reivindicación de nuevos espacios por y para la mujer en la novela negra española” (2022). Recently, I have been focusing on crime fiction and television series from Galicia; I have a forthcoming contribution on childhood, trauma, and the use of colors in Ledicia Costa’s novel Infamia (2019), and a book chapter under review on gender and sexuality in Galician rural spaces in the television series Néboa (2020) and O sabor das margaridas (Bitter Daisies 2018–2020).

Prior to coming to Princeton, I studied Romance Studies, as well as Translation and Interpreting at the University of Vienna, Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, Universidade de Lisboa, and University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. While pursuing my master's degree, I worked as a translator and interpreter for the Delegation of the Catalan Government to Austria before accepting a substitute Catalan lecturer position at the University of Vienna. After graduation, I taught seminars on Spanish literature and cinema both at undergraduate and graduate levels, ranging from Almodóvar to ‘cine negro.’ During the summer of 2018, I spent two months as an International Visiting Research Collaborator at Monash University in Melbourne, Australia.

Besides being fluent in nine languages, I am a passionate chef and a proud owner of a dictionary collection. Nonetheless, I am also an active member of the Princeton community, currently serving as a Resident Graduate Student at Whitman College and as a mentor for incoming graduate students. Since Fall 2022, I have been a certified spinning instructor and a member of the Humanities Council Reading Group on Contemporary German Literature.

Campus Affiliations

• Center for Culture, Society, and Religion, Media Team Fellow (2023–2024)
• McGraw Center for Teaching and Learning, Graduate Fellow (2023–2024)
• Center for Digital Humanities, Graduate Fellow (Fall 2023)
• Humanities Council Reading Group ‘Arriving in the Present’ (2022–2024)
• Whitman College, Resident Graduate Student (2022–2024)
• Graduate School Buddy Program, Mentor (2021–2023)
• European Cultural Studies, Graduate Affiliate and Mentor (2021–2023)

Courses Taught at Princeton

• Spanish 218: Culture and Feminist Struggle in Latin America and Spain (Princeton Collaborative Teaching Initiative)
• Spanish 107: Intermediate/Advanced Spanish
• Spanish 101: Elementary Spanish
• Graduate Assistant for the PIIRS Global Seminar in Vienna “Vienna: Birthplace of Psychoanalysis, Modernism and World War I”
• Orientation for New Assistants in Instruction in the Humanities at the McGraw Center for Teaching and Learning