Histories, Cultures, and National Identities

Women Writing Spain, 1877-1984

Christine Arkinstall

2009
250 pages
ISBN 1611483239

The processes and problematics of the construction of national identities have been a central concern in Hispanism in recent years. Much work remains to be done on women's contributions to Spanish national agendas. This book addresses the visions of history, culture, and national identity in modern Spain articulated by Rosario de Acuña (1851-1923), Ángela Figuera (1902-1994), and Rosa Chacel (1898-1994). It argues that the emphasis in their work on liberal histories associated with Republican ideals sheds light on the history of Spanish democracy, competing concepts of national and cultural identity, and the gendered politics of culture.

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Reviews
"[Arkinstall] weaves the multiple threads of gender, history, politics, and culture with striking agility to create a book that is at once meticulously detailed and fluid... Histories, Cultures, and National Identities should appeal to anyone concerned with cultural studies from a feminist perspective as well as to Hispanists interested in the women writers of Spain neglected by the literary canon." -- Catherine G. Bellever, University of Nevada, Las Vegas ( Tulsa Studies in Women's Literature , 28.2, Fall 2009)

About the author:

Christine Arkinstall is Associate Professor in Spanish at the University of Auckland, New Zealand. She obtained her Master's degree from the University of Oviedo, Spain, and her PhD in 1991 from the University of Auckland. A specialist in twentieth-century Spanish literature and culture, she has a particular interest in the Spanish Civil War and dissident writing under the Franco dictatorship. She has published widely on issues of gender, genre, and nation with regards to works by nineteenth- and twentieth-century Spanish women writers. Her previous book, Gender, Class, and Nation: MercèRodoreda and the Subjects of Modernism (BUP, 2004) was awarded the Premi Mercè Rodoreda for 2002 by the Institut d'Estudis Catalans, Barcelona.

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