Colleen McAlister

Education

M.A., Romance Languages and Literatures (Spanish), University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Chapel Hill, NC, Completed 2016

B.A., Spanish and Anthropology, University of Connecticut, Storrs, CT, Completed 2013

About Colleen

Colleen’s research interests include nineteenth-century Spanish literature, art and culture, with a special focus on the interactions between literary texts, works of visual art, archaeology and architecture. She recently published an article examining cases of female and male hysteria in Emilia Pardo Bazán’s novel Doña Milagros (1894), and another paper on the unique connections between the feminine poetic voice and the ruin in Carolina Coronado’s poetry is currently under review. Colleen’s doctoral dissertation studies representations of architectural ruins in the works of such authors as Gustavo Adolfo Bécquer, Fernán Caballero, Carolina Coronado, Mariano José de Larra and José Zorrilla and explores the cross-pollinations between literature and the development of Spanish archaeology and architectural restoration in the nineteenth century.

Colleen has also studied Golden Age literature of Spain, with her Master’s thesis focusing on instances of violence in Don Quixote. She helped to organize a campus-wide marathon reading of Cervantes’ novel in 2016. Within the Department of Romance Studies, Colleen has worked as an Editorial Assistant for Hispanófila, served as Graduate Student Co-Coordinator for Spanish 203, as a mentor to incoming graduate students, as Secretary of the Graduate Romance Association, and has worked in the Spanish Summer Immersion Program. She has received funding awards from the department and from the Graduate School in order to present at conferences, both domestically and internationally. In the summer of 2021, thanks to the Jennings Summer Award, Colleen was able to continue sustained work on her dissertation.