Head of Department

Name:	María Jesús López Sánchez-Vizcaíno
Position:	Associate Professor
Research group:	Research in English and Related Literature. HUM-682
Telephone:	+ 34 957 21 22 79
Email address:	This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
Address:	Facultad de Filosofía y Letras Anexo junto a Salón de Actos Planta 2ª, despacho nº 2

I am Associate Professor at the Department of English of the University of Córdoba, where I graduated with honours in English. In 2004, I obtained a research scholarship to pursue my doctoral studies, focused on the work of J.M. Coetzee. During this 4-year period, I was visiting researcher at the Department of Critical Theory and Cultural Studies of the University of Nottingham (UK), the Department of English of the University of Duke (US), and the Department of English of the University of York (UK). I have also visited the "Coetzee Collective" at the University of Cape Town and the "National English Literary Museum" in Grahamstown (South Africa), the University of New South Wales (Australia), and the School of Oriental and African Studies (London). I have been guest lecturer at the Freie Universität of Berlín and since 2016 have been guest lecturer in the Erasmus Mundus Master's Degree in Women's and Gender Studies at the University of Granada.

My research has mainly focused on the work of J.M. Coetzee, but I have also written on other South African writers, such as Zoë Wicomb, Zakes Mda and Phaswane Mpe, and on other postcolonial authors such as Margaret Atwood and Helon Habila. I have also developed a parallel research line on modernist British fiction, paying attention to Virginia Woolf and Samuel Beckett.

Since 2010 I have been part of a series of I+D research projects involving researchers from the Universities of Córdoba and Granada, devoted to the study of community, the secret and fiction, in one of them as main researcher. As a team, we have organized conferences in 2014 and 2018, and we have produced three edited collections of essays: Community in Twentieth-Century Fiction (Palgrave, 2013), New Perspectives on Community and the Modernist Subject (Routledge, 2017) and Secrecy and Community in 21st-Century Fiction (Bloomsbury, 2021). I am a member of the research group “Research in English and Related Literature.”

Main publications

• María J. López and and Pilar Villar-Argáiz, ed. Secrecy and Community in 21st-Century Fiction. Bloomsbury, 2021.
• “African Strangers, Spaces of Belonging and the ‘Democracy to Come’ in Helon Habila’s Travellers.” The Journal of Commonwealth Literature, published online June 2, 2022. https://doi.org/10.1177/00219894221097007
• “Moving in ‘a forest of hieroglyphs’: Enigmatic and mutable signs of identity in Zoë Wicomb’s Playing in the Light.” Journal of Postcolonial Writing 55.5 (2019): 710-722.
• 'God knows whether there is a Dulcinea in this world or not': Idealized Passion and Undecidable Desire in J.M. Coetzee." In Reading Coetzee's Women, ed. Sue Kossew and Belinda Harvey. London and New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2019.
• Gerardo Rodríguez Salas, Paula Martín Salván and María J. López, eds. New Perspectives on Community and the Modernist Subject. Finite, Singular, Exposed. London: Routledge, 2018.
• Co-edition with Kai Wiegandt of special number "J.M. Coetzee and the non-English Literary Traditions." European Journal of English Studies 20.2 (2016).
• "The Gothic, the Abject and the Monstrous: A Revision of National Identity in Virginia Woolf's Between the Acts." English Studies 97.5 (2016): 493-509.
• "Communities of mourning and vulnerability: Zakes Mda's Ways of Dying and Phaswane Mpe's Welcome to Our Hillbrow." English in Africa 40.1 (May 2013): 99-117.
• "'You are one of us': Communities of Marginality, Vulnerability and Secrecy in Margaret Atwood's Alias Grace." English Studies in Canada 38.2 (June 2012): 157-177.
• Acts of Visitation: The Narrative of J.M. Coetzee. Amsterdam and New York: Rodopi, 2011. Research award “Enrique García Díez” in literature in English given by AEDEAN (Spanish Association for Anglo-American Studies).

Research projects

• Democracy, Dissidence and Secrecy in Contemporary English Literature (PID2019-104526GB-I00)
  Ministry of Science and Innovation
  University of Córdoba and University of Granada
  01/06/2020-30/05/2022
  Main researcher: Paula Martín Salván
• "Secrecy and community in contemporary narrative in English" (FFI2016-75589-P)
  Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness
  University of Córdoba and University of Granada
  30/12/2016-29/12/2019
  Main researcher: María Jesús López Sánchez-Vizcaíno
• "Individual and community in modernist narrative in English" (FFI2012-36765)
  Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness
  University of Córdoba and University of Granada
  01/01/2013-31/12/2015
  Main researcher: Paula Martín Salván
• "Community and immunity in the contemporary novel in English" (FFI2009-13244)
  Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation
  University of Córdoba and University of Granada
  01/01/2010-31/12/2012
  Main researcher: Julián Jiménez Heffernan