Dr Ana Maria Sanchez-Arce PGCE (Autónoma de Barcelona), MA (Hull), MA (Autónoma de Barcelona), PhD (Hull)
Associate Professor in English, Postgraduate Research Tutor for English and History
Summary
My research specialisms are contemporary literature, global literature, and film. Identity and form, trauma and censorship, best sum up my work. My approach is interdisciplinary with a focus on issues of social justice and human rights in relation to gender and race. I interpret texts by writers who are considered mainstream alongside those who are classed as migrant, postcolonial or world writers. I analyse how culturally prescribed interpretive frameworks affect readings of contemporary literature by writers racialised as non-white. My teaching reflects my research interests, and I teach on a range of undergraduate modules and supervise postgraduate students across English and Film Studies.
About
I work on identity and form in both contemporary literature and film, employing postcolonial, feminist, formalist, and cultural materialist methodologies. I am currently Principal Investigator for a project funded by the Great Britain Sasakawa Foundation on Authenticity: The role of perceived authorial identity in the reception of contemporary literature in Japan and the UK (with Prof. Mitoko Hirabayashi and Dr Isabelle Bilodeau, Aichi Shukutoku University, Japan). I am also working on a new project on Censorship in Global Literature.
In recent years, I have been writing on censorship and the expression of trauma in literature and film. My research on censorship has resulted in a book on the legacy of the Spanish Civil War and dictatorship, The cinema of Pedro Almodóvar (Manchester University Press, 2020). In it, I argue that Almodóvar's work is a form of social critique, his films engaging with stereotypes about traditional and contemporary Spain to address Spain's traumatic historical past and how it informs the present.
My focus is on social justice and human rights and I am particularly interested in issues around race, gender and migration. I analyse how culturally prescribed interpretive frameworks affect readings of contemporary literature by Black British, British Asian and migrant writers.
My first co-edited collection (with Patsy Stoneman and Angela Leighton), European Intertexts: Women’s Writing in English in a European Context (Peter Lang, 2005), explores the interdependence of English and continental European literatures in writing and films by women. My contribution to the collection tackles definitions of ‘Europe’ in a postcolonial world. This volume and another four edited collections were the outcomes of a British Academy funded network (1999–2004) for which I was assistant co-ordinator.
My second edited collection, Identity and Form in Contemporary Literature (Routledge, 2014), revises the binary oppositions – identity-form, content-form and body-mind – through discussions of the role of the author, the ways in which writers embrace or bypass identity politics, and the function of identity and the body in literary form. My own essay considers what factors lead to writers such as Kazuo Ishiguro to be categorised as world writers and how this affects interpretations of their work.
A third, co-edited collection (with Jonathan Ellis), Remembering Annie Hall (Bloomsbury, 2023), responds to arguments in the wake of the #MeToo movement regarding the position of filmmakers like Allen and the treatment of films associated with them. My contributions are an essay on the film’s intertextual relation to Almodóvar’s Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown and a co-written introduction on the changing reputation of Allen as a filmmaker and its impact on scholarship of Annie Hall.
Specialist areas of interest
Equality and diversity issues in contemporary British literature.
Teaching
Department of Humanities
College of Social Sciences and Arts
I work with a team of over 30 academics to deliver postgraduate research programmes in English, Creative Writing, History and Performance, working closely with the Head of Research Degrees, Deputy Head for Research and Doctoral School. I organise an annual multidisciplinary event for PhD students working in the Humanities, Art & Design, Media & Communications, and Architecture.
In addition, I teach undergraduates in English and Film, as well as in the MA Creative Writing. In the past, I have been a member of the organising team of Social Justice week. I have also collaborated with Sheffield Central Library to organise an exhibition of final year students’ work on censorship, and worked with Reading Sheffield, a community voluntary group, to enable students to research and writing blogs about popular early twentieth-century fiction.
Subject area
English
Courses taught
BA English
BA Film Studies
MA Creative Writing
PhD
Modules taught
- The Contemporary Writer (MA)
- Imagined Communities: Nation and Narration
- Film Dissertation
- Literature Research Project
Research
I am currently Principal Investigator for a project funded by The Great Britain Sasakawa Foundation on Authenticity: The role of perceived authorial identity in the reception of contemporary literature in Japan and the UK (with Prof. Mitoko Hirabayashi and Dr Isabelle Bilodeau, Aichi Shukutoku University, Japan). I am also working on a new project on Censorship in Global Literature.
Authenticity: The role of perceived authorial identity in the reception of contemporary literature in Japan and the UK (with Professor Mitoko Hirabayashi and Dr Isabelle Bilodeau, Aichi Shukutoku University, Japan).
Censorship in Global Literature.
The Great Britain Sasakawa Foundation (funder)
Aichi Shukutoku University
Publications
Journal articles
Sánchez-Arce, A.M. (2018). Performing innocence: violence and the nation in Ian McEwan’s Saturday and Sunjeev Sahota’s Ours Are the Streets. The Journal of Commonwealth Literature, 53 (2), 194-210. http://doi.org/10.1177/0021989416686648
Sanchez-Arce, A.M. (2007). "Authenticism," or the authority of authenticity (Percival!Everett's 'Erasure'). MOSAIC-A JOURNAL FOR THE INTERDISCIPLINARY STUDY OF LITERATURE, 40 (3), 139-155.
Sanchez-Arce, A.M. (2007). Authenticism, or, the authority of authenticity. Mosaic: a journal for the interdisciplinary study of literature, 40 (3), 139-155.
Sanchez-Arce, A.M. (2002). Re-seeding "Englishness": agonism in Timothy Mo's Sour Sweet and Hanif Kureishi's The Buddha of Surburbia. Southeast Asian review of English.
Book chapters
Sanchez-Arce, A.M., & Ellis, J. (2023). Introduction: After the fall(1st). In Ellis, J., & Sanchez-Arce, A.M. (Eds.) Remembering Annie Hall. Bloomsbury: https://www.bloomsbury.com/uk/remembering-annie-hall-9781501358494/
Sanchez-Arce, A.M. (2023). The Spanish Annie Hall: Pedro Almodóvar's Mujeres al borde de un ataque de nervios(1st). In Ellis, J., & Sanchez-Arce, A.M. (Eds.) Remembering Annie Hall. Bloomsbury: https://www.bloomsbury.com/uk/remembering-annie-hall-9781501358494/
Sanchez-Arce, A.M., & Ellis, J. (2023). Introduction: After the fall(1st). In Ellis, J., & Sanchez-Arce, A.M. (Eds.) Remembering Annie Hall. Bloomsbury: https://www.bloomsbury.com/uk/remembering-annie-hall-9781501358494/
Sanchez-Arce, A.M. (2023). The Spanish Annie Hall: Pedro Almodóvar's Mujeres al borde de un ataque de nervios(1st). In Ellis, J., & Sanchez-Arce, A.M. (Eds.) Remembering Annie Hall. Bloomsbury: https://www.bloomsbury.com/uk/remembering-annie-hall-9781501358494/
Sanchez-Arce, A.M. (2013). Identity and form in contemporary literature : an introduction. In Sanchez-Arce, A.M. (Ed.) Identity and form in contemporary literature. (pp. 1-15). Routledge
Sanchez-Arce, A.M. (2013). Identity and form in contemporary literature : an introduction. In Sanchez-Arce, A.M. (Ed.) Identity and form in contemporary literature. (pp. 1-15). Routledge
Sanchez-Arce, A.M. (2013). Why Kazuo Ishiguro is stuck to the margins : formal identities in contemporary literary interpretations. In Sanchez-Arce, A.M. (Ed.) Identity and form in contemporary literature. (pp. 140-157). Routledge
Sanchez-Arce, A.M. (2013). Why Kazuo Ishiguro is stuck to the margins : formal identities in contemporary literary interpretations. In Sanchez-Arce, A.M. (Ed.) Identity and form in contemporary literature. (pp. 140-157). Routledge
Sanchez-Arce, A.M. (2012). Meera Syal. In British Writers : Supplement XIX, 19th ed. Gale/Charles Scribner's Sons
Ellis, J., & Sanchez-Arce, A.M. (2011). The unquiet dead : memories of the Spanish Civil War in Guillermo del Toro's Pan's Labyrinth. In Sinha, A., & McSweeney, T. (Eds.) Millennial cinema : memory in global film. (pp. 173-191). New York: Columbia University Press
Books
Ellis, J., & Sánchez-Arce, A.M. (2023). Remembering Annie Hall. Bloomsbury Publishing USA.
Ellis, J., & Sánchez-Arce, A.M. (2023). Remembering Annie Hall.
Sanchez-Arce, A.M. (2022). The Cinema of Pedro Almodóvar.
Sanchez-Arce, A.M. (Ed.). (2013). Identity and form in contemporary literature. Routledge.
Sanchez-Arce, A.M. (Ed.). (2013). Identity and form in contemporary literature. Routledge.
Theses / Dissertations
Hilton, R.M. (2024). Self, Society, and the Passions: Reading Late Eighteenth-Century British Women’s Plays. (Doctoral thesis). Supervised by Sanchez-Arce, A.M., Peace, M., & Kramer, K. http://doi.org/10.7190/shu-thesis-00633
Howard, C.J. (2023). Overlayered ecologies: Posthumanist perception of place in literature of the US South. (Doctoral thesis). Supervised by Tarlo, H., & Sanchez-Arce, A.M. http://doi.org/10.7190/shu-thesis-00576
Hutson, E. (2019). Lived Experience and Literature:Trans Authors, Trans Fiction and Trans Theory. (Doctoral thesis). Supervised by Sanchez-Arce, A.M. http://doi.org/10.7190/shu-thesis-00217
Earnshaw, A.R. (2017). Taboo : why are real-life British serial killers rarely represented on film? (Doctoral thesis). Supervised by O'Brien, S., & Sanchez-Arce, A.M. http://doi.org/10.7190/shu-thesis-00063
Other publications
(2005). European Intertexts: Women's Writing in English in a European Context. Bern, Switzerland: Peter Lang Publishing Inc
Other activities
Member of the Advisory Board for the periodical of the Faculty of Arts, Sohag University, Egypt.
Founding member and co-organiser, multidisciplinary network Migration, Cultures and Communities. Participating universities: SHU, The University of Sheffield.
Member of the Human Rights and Literature Network, run by the Human Rights Institute (Binghamton University, USA).
Member of the British Association for Contemporary Literary Studies (BACLS).
Member of the Contemporary Women’s Writing Association (CWWA)
Member of the Northern Postcolonial Network. Human Rights Symposium organisation 2015.
Member of Multicultural Textualities, a research network established to explore the contribution that literary and other textual representations make to our understanding of multicultural societies and the place of non-white, non-secular citizens within them. Participating universities: Queen Mary, Sheffield Hallam, SOAS, Southampton, UEA, York.
Member of the Postcolonial Studies Association (Conference Committee 2014–15).
Founding member and assistant co-ordinator, British Academy funded network, European Intertexts: A Study of Women’s Writing in English as Part of a European Fabric.
Postgraduate supervision
I welcome applications from research students interested in the fields of censorship, human rights and literature, contemporary literature, migrant writing, fiction and gender, trauma and literature, and identity and form. I am also happy to take on projects on Spanish and American cinema and the Spanish Civil War in film and literature.
I have supervised or am currently supervising the following research projects:
• Autofictional Representations of Charismatic Authority in Chinese Tiananmen and Covid Fictions
• Censoring Allegorical Texts: Interpreting Miller and Orwell
• Coming to life: Worldlessness and Inexhaustibility in the films of Roy Andersson
• Reading Trans: An Analysis of Post-1990s Trans Fiction
• Why are real-life British serial killers rarely represented on film?
• Digesting "Creepypasta": An Analysis of Social Media Horror
• Overlayered Landscapes in Twenty-First Century Fiction of the American South
• Print/Screen: How Contemporary Print Fiction Remediates Digital Writing
• Rethinking Transcultural Relations in a Latin American Literary Context
• All Hallows: A Study of Halloween Literature as a Sub-Genre of Horror
• Abjection and the Body in Body-Horror Films