Marta Perez-Carbonell

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Marta Perez-Carbonell

Associate Professor of Spanish

Department/Office Information

Romance Languages
219B Lawrence Hall

Contact

(315) 228-5770

Marta Pérez-Carbonell focuses on contemporary Spanish cultural production. Her research studies novels and short fiction, which she approaches from a variety of frameworks, such as material culture studies, affect theory or urban studies.

Her first monograph, The Fictional World of Javier Marías - Language and Uncertainty (2016) was published by Brill/Rodopi in their series Foro Hispánico. She is interested in "crisis literature" memory, identity, and gender studies. She has published peer-reviewed articles on the works of Isaac Rosa, Juan José Millás, Rosa Montero, Nuria Labari and other contemporary Spanish authors in Hispanic Review, Anales de la Literatura Española Contemporánea, Bulletin of Hispanic Studies, Hispanic Research Journal, Bulletin of Spanish Studies, among other publications.

She is currently co-directing an edited volume entitled Imágenes de aflicción - Literatura, cine y género; as well as directing a special issue on Rosa Montero's fiction for the literary magazine Turia. 

In 2020, she was awarded Professor of the Year by the national collegiate honor society Phi Eta Sigma.

In 2024, she published her first novel, Nada más ilusorio (Lumen), which will see the light in 10 other countries, including the UK, France, Italy, Germany, etc. In the US, it will be published by Riverhead Books in 2026. 


  • BA Spanish and Linguistics, University of Southampton, UK (2004)
  • Licenciatura Filología Inglesa, Universidad de Salamanca, Spain (2007)
  • MA, Translation and Interpreting, University of Westminster, UK (2008)
  • PhD, Royal Holloway University of London, UK (2014)
  • SPAN 470 Subject and the City - Imagined and Real
  • SPAN 474 Short Fiction in Contemporary Spain
  • SPAN 473 Contemporary Spanish Novel - from Dictatorship to Democracy
  • SPAN 353 Modern Spain in Crisis
  • SPAN 361 Advanced Composition and Stylistics
  • CORE 191 Communities and Identities: Spain

Book

monograph

The Fictional World of Javier Marías - Language and Uncertainty (2016) Leiden/Boston: Brill/Rodopi

Peer-reviewed articles

  • "Mutual Exclusion and epoché: Uncertainty in Javier Marías's Recent Fiction," in Javier Marías: 50 años de literatura (1971-2021) Nuevas visiones. Grohmann, Alexis y Bertrán, Santiago (eds.) (2022), 125-138. Brill/Rodopi: Leiden/Boston.
  • "Cultural Politics of the Emotions Portrayed in Sara Mesa's Fiction," Hispanic Review 89. 3 (2021), 293-313.
  • “El mestizaje de géneros literarios en los paseos neoyorquinos de Elvira Lindo,” in Perspectivas sobre el futuro de la narrativa hispánica: ensayos y testimonios. Lefere, Robin; Díaz Ruiz, Fernando y Morales Benito, Lidia (eds.) América sin nombre, 45 (2020), 347-370. 
  • On Identity, or How Two Contemporary Spanish Novels Shape and Shake Up the Limits of the Self, Anales de la Literatura Española Contemporánea 45.1 (2020), 97-116. Co-authored with Renee Congdon.
  • '"Me gustan las cosas que son cosas": la representación de la violencia a través de Cosas que brillan cuando están rotas de Nuria Labari, Bulletin of Spanish Studies, 96:7 (2019), 1095-1111.
  • Introduction: Representing Violence in Twenty-First-Century Spain: Novels, Film and Performance Arts, Bulletin of Spanish Studies, 96:7 (2019), 1069-1073. Co-authored with David Jiménez Torres.
  • Fragmented characters/Fragmented Narrative Voices: Textual and Extratextual Devices in Juan José Millás’s Desde la sombra (2016) and Isaac Rosa’s La habitación oscura (2013), Journal of Catalan Studies Vol. 1 (2019), 97-108.
  • Who said what? Translated Messages and Language Interpreters in Three Texts by Javier Marías and Almudena Grandes, Perspectives, 26:4 (2018), 612-623.
  • Compulsive Translators: Are Narrators in Javier Marías's Novel Beguiled by Language?' Hispanic Research Journal, 18:4 (2017), 338-35.
  • Ghosts as storytellers: Absences and the Phantasmagorical Nature of Javier Marías’s Narrators, Bulletin of Hispanic Studies 93, 5 (2016), 495-509.
  • Intralingual Translation in Tu rostro mañana, by Javier Marías, Aigne, 4 (2013).

Edited Volumes 

  • Representing Violence in Twenty-First-Century Spain: Novels, Film and Performance Arts, Bulletin of Spanish Studies, 96:7 (2019), co-edited with David Jiménez Torres.

Non-refereed articles

Book Reviews 

  • Crear entre mundos. Nuevas tendencias en la metaficción española. (Valencia: Albatros, 2021), by Iana Konstantinova y Sabrina S. Laroussi (eds.). Symposium. Vol 77 (2023), no 1, 54-56.
  • El cine en el pensamiento y la creación de Javier Marías. (Vigo: Academia del Hispanismo, 2019), by Carmen María López López, Rilce38.1 (2022), 400-403
  • Hombres en movimiento: masculinidades españolas en los exilios y emigraciones 1939-1999. (Purdue University Press, West Lafayette, 2018) by Iker González-Allende, Rilce 36.2 (2020), 824-828
  • ‘Thus Bad Begins. The Intimate World of Javier Marías’, Litro Magazine, 13 April 2016 http://www.litro.co.uk/2016/04/thus-bad-begins-javier-marias-2/

Public Scholarship 

Selected Papers

  • 'La marca personal de Rosa Montero: ciencia, literatura y vida,' in XXI Congreso de la Asociación Internacional de Hispanistas, at Neuchâtel University (Neuchâtel, 10-15 July 2023)
  • 'Conversaciones literarias en el Observatorio: entrevista/encuentro con Rosa Montero,' Invited Lecture and Interview at the Observatorio de la lengua española y las culturas hispánicas en los Estados Unidos at Harvard University (Cambridge, Massachusetts, 9 March 2023)
  • “Un tributo al legado de Javier Marías en los Estados Unidos,” Invited Guest Lecture at the International Institute (Madrid, 1 December 2022)
  • “Ciencia, biografía, literatura y vida: la marca personal de Rosa Montero,” in Poder y Resistencia. III Congreso Internacional en los márgenes de la literatura, at Salamanca University (Salamanca, 20-21 October 2022)
  • “Un recuerdo y una mirada a Javier Marías desde Estados Unidos,” Invited Guest Lecture at Observatorio de la lengua española y las culturas hispánicas en los Estados Unidos at Harvard University (28 September 2022)
  • “Entrevista: Recuerdo y legado de Javier Marías,” Interview at Club Tocqueville (16 September 2022)
  • "The Depiction and Politics of an Empty Spain: Un amor (2020) by Sara Mesa and Contra la España vacía (2021) by Sergio del Molino," in Politics of the Sayable. Framing Crisis and Conflict in Contemporary Spain, at Bangor University (Bangor, 1 April 2022)
  • “Literatures of the Crisis and Female Writing in Contemporary Spain,” Invited Guest Lecture at the Department of Modern Languages and Literatures in Lehigh University (Bethlehem, 29 October 2021).
  • “How Fiction Changes Us: The Creative Process in Rosa Montero’s La loca de la casa (2003) and La ridícula idea de no volver a verte,” in From Neuroscience to Structural Violence: The Cultural Production of Contemporary Spanish Female Writers Through Overlapping Lenses, at the Kentucky Foreign Language Conference (Virtual Edition, 22-24 April, 2021)
  • “Autofiction and the Creative Process in Rosa Montero’s La loca de la casa (2003) and La ridícula idea de no volver a verte (2013),” accepted for presentation at the Annual Conference of the Northeastern Modern Language Association, (Virtual edition, 11-14   March, 2021).
  • “Mutual Exclusion and Uncertainty in Javier Marías’s Latest Fiction,” accepted for presentation at the Conference on Javier Marías by the Sub-Faculty of Spanish at the Faculty of Medieval and Modern Languages, University of Oxford (Oxford, 10-11 June 2019).
  • “Más allá del humanismo: muerte y androides en la obra de Rosa Montero,” accepted for presentation at the IV International Conference Visiones de lo fantástico: Las creadoras y lo fantástico at the Universidad Autónoma de Barcelona (Barcelona, 5-7 June 2019).
  • “Lenguaje literario y cinematográfico: traducción y adaptación de Bodas de sangre y La  novia,” Invited Guest Lecture at the Hispanic Studies Department in Hamilton College (21 February 2019)
  • Coloquio internacional: hacia la narrativa hispánica del futuro, Bruselas 2018 - ‘Los paseos neoyorquinos de Elvira Lindo: ¿una ficción involuntaria?’
  • Subjects and Limits of Extension in Contemporary Iberian culture, Cambridge 2017 - 'Fragmented identities and multiple voices in Juan José Millás's Desde la sombra and Isaac Rosa's La habitación oscura'
  • BETA Annual Conference, Santander 2017 - 'La quiebra da un salto desde el margen: las voces de Nuria Labari y Nuria Román'
  • AHGBI Annual Conference, Exeter 2015 – ‘The space of the interpreted message: The role of language interpreters in the short stories of Javier Marías and Almudena Grandes’ in The Space of Language: Interpreting, Translating, Performing
  • AHGBI Annual Conference, Oxford 2013 – ‘The unsaid and what does not happen in Marías’s fiction’, in Absence, Ellipsis and Invisibility in Contemporary Spain

Contemporary Spanish Novel; Short Fiction; Translation Theory; Gender Studies; Urban Studies; Crisis Literature; Affect Studies

  • Women in Spanish and Portuguese Studies
  • Association of Hispanists of Great Britain and Ireland
  • BETA: Asociación de jóvenes doctores en hispanismo
  • Modern Language Association
  • North Eastern Modern Language Association

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