Ramón E. Martínez (Ray)

I am a PhD candidate in the Department of Spanish and Portuguese at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, with a Minor in Gender and Women Studies. My research, transatlantic and interdisciplinary by nature, lies in the intersection of Latin American & Iberian Baroque Studies, Cultural Studies, Mexican Cinema and Gender & Performance Studies. I investigate the construction and the representation of the Iberian baroque trope of la mujer disfrazda de varón or also called "la mujer varonil" inhabit in contemporary 20th and 21st centuries films, theater and literary fiction from México, Spain and the Caribbean. As theoretical framework, my work draws from studies of cultural representation, gender social construction and female masculinity. I explore the political and social implications of the aesthetics and power of women constructing masculinity and how it creates an "agreement gap" forced by social and cultural anxieties in postcolonial times.