Under Construction: The Body in Spanish Novels (Feminist Issues)
(Our bodies constitute the most tangible link between who ...)
Our bodies constitute the most tangible link between who we are and what we experience in the world; for this reason a large corpus of literary and cultural studies has turned to the human body as a point of reference in the last few years. As Elizabeth Scarlett points out, "Modern Spanish literature is fertile terrain for the exploration of the body as textual marker." Using modern feminist and narratological tools of analysis, Scarlett offers illuminating insights into the terms of embodiment in novels by Emilia Pardo Bazan, Rosa Chacal, and Merce Rodoreda, Carmen Martin Gaite, Soledad Puertolas, Camilo Jose Cela, Luis Martin Santos, Julio Llamazares, and Antonio Munoz Molina. Scarlett reveals significant correlations between gender and figurations of the female (and male) body and traces a history of the mind-body connection in Spanish novels from the late nineteenth century to the present. In the time-honored hierarchy that pits mind against body and privileges the more intangible of the two, woman is typically associated with the flesh and man with transcendence. Perhaps this is why, Scarlett observes, the body-as-text begins to make its most dynamic appearances in novels written by female authors. As one draws closer to the present, however, she notes that male as well as female writers problematize and protagonize the dichotomy of mind and body, constructing the body as situation or process rather than as object. Under Construction is the first sustained study of its kind. It provides original and compelling readings of Spanish novels, and it grounds theory in the changing specificities of literary movements, generational rivalries, and historical turmoil.
Elizabeth Scarlett, American scholar of Spanish literature and culture, foreign language educator, university administrator.
Background
Elizabeth was born in Brooklyn, New York, United States. She attended P.S. 102 Kindergarten, Our Lady of Angels elementary and middle schools, and St. Joseph by the Sea High School. Her undergraduate degree in Comparative Literature is from Washington University in St. Louis, where she was a college-sponsored National Merit Scholar. Her Master's and D. in Romance Languages are from Harvard University Graduate School of Arts and Sciences. She spent her junior year of college at the Complutense University of Madrid, one year of graduate school on an exchange with the University of Seville, and one year as a Fulbright teaching assistant in southwestern France.
Education
Bachelor in Comparative Literature cum laude, Washington University, 1983. Master of Arts in Romance Languages and Lits., Harvard University, 1986. Doctor of Philosophy in Romance Languages and Lits., Harvard University, 1991.
Career
Arts editor Washington University campus newspaper, Student Life, St. Louis, 1979-1980; Spanish drill instructor, Washington University, St. Louis, 1982-1983; English language assistant, Lycée Polyvalent Paul-Sabatier, Carcassonne, France, 1983-1984; Spanish teaching fellow, Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1985-1988, 89-91; researcher, writer, Harvard Student Agencies, Cambridge, 1986; travel guide editor, Harvard Student Agencies, Cambridge, 1987; Teaching Fellow Exchange, Department English Language, U. Seville, Spain, 1988-1989; Assistant Professor Spanish department Spanish, Italian and Portuguese, University of Virginia, Charlottesville; Full Professor, University at Buffalo SUNY, since 2014.
Member: Modern Language Association (MLA), Feministas Unidas, Asociación Internacional de Galdosistas. Executive Committee Member: MLA Transdisciplinary Connections Forum on Religion and Literature.
Connections
Married David Edward Wagner, April 23, 1995. Divorced, 2001. Married Andrew T. Klingle, March 27, 2010. Mother of Adrian Edward Wagner and Sylvia Brigitte Scarlett.