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Cristina F. Gonzalez Martin

Profile picture for Cristina F. Gonzalez Martin

Contact Information

4142 LCLB
707 S Mathews
Urbana, IL 61801
PhD Candidate
Teaching Assistant
DGF-HA Fellow

Biography

Cristina González Martín is a PhD Candidate at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Her research interests are interdisciplinary, spanning a range of topics in literature and audiovisual culture. Her work considers questions of gender, race, coloniality, migration and the politics of space in literary, filmic, and artistic productions. She specializes in contemporary manifestations of insularity as an extension of imperial power, particularly on the responses by authors and creators who expose neocolonial interventions in insular contexts through otros saberes, such as the use of oceanic aesthetics and epistemologies.

Research Interests

  • Caribbean Studies
  • Canary Islands Studies
  • Transatlantic Studies
  • Archipelagic Thinking
  • Contemporary Literatures and Cultures
  • Visual and Cultural Studies

 

Research Description

My dissertation, entitled A contracorriente: Transoceanic Resistances in the Canary Islands, Cuba and Puerto Rico, engages two emerging fields within the blue humanities: transoceanic and archipelagic studies. These theories, I argue, encourage ways of thinking a contracorriente, that is, they help redefine space and identity in ways that disrupt colonial continuums, recentering geographies that have been historically relegated to the periphery. Adopting the ocean as an analytical framework for advancing cross-regional, interdisciplinary research on timely global topics, my thesis traces an ongoing history of sexual, racial and environmental violence particular to these geopolitically enclosed spaces, as depicted in contemporary literary and cultural productions that problematize and resist imperial practices in Cuba, Puerto Rico, and the Canary Islands, archipelagos that share a common history of colonial violence and neocolonial exploitation. From the confinement of queer individuals in island colonies by totalitarian regimes, to the desolation brought upon by recent natural disasters and political oblivion, a post-pandemic present defined by the impact of mass tourism and digital nomads, and finally ending with devastating dystopias set in not-too-distant futures, the works analyzed in this project defy insular boundaries, proposing the ocean as an epistemological space that questions traditional definitions of race, gender, territory and national belonging, in current dialogue among (post)colonial regions. I propose an understanding of the ocean as an affective archive to demonstrate how islanders at the edges of empire defy imperialist behaviors and gestures surrounding the ocean, focusing on the ways in which the waters around them have documented and transmitted their experiences.

 

Education

Ph.D., Hispanic Literatures and Cultures (in progress)
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

M.A., Hispanic Literatures and Cultures
Graduate Certificate in Women’s and Gender Studies
Illinois State University

M.A., Anglophone Literatures and Cultures
University of Salamanca, Spain  

B.A., Modern Languages and Literatures
Concentration in Anglophone and Francophone Literatures and Cultures
University of Las Palmas de Gran Canaria, Spain

Grants

Distinguished Graduate Fellowship in Humanities and Arts (DGA-HA)

Research Travel Grant (Summer 2022, Summer 2019)

Awards and Honors

Conference Presentation Award (Spring 2022, Fall 2018)

Best Graduate Student Paper Award (Spring 2021)

Courses Taught

SPAN 254: Approaches to Culture

SPAN 228: Spanish Composition

SPAN 208: Oral Spanish

SPAN 122: Intensive Elementary Spanish