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Prof. dr. S. (Shelley) Godsland

Spanish and Latin American Literature
Faculty of Humanities
Capaciteitsgroep Romaanse talen en culturen
Photographer: eigen foto

Visiting address
  • Spuistraat 134
  • Room number: 314
Postal address
  • Postbus 1641
    1000 BP Amsterdam
  • Profile

    SHELLEY GODSLAND. PROFESSOR OF SPANISH AND LATIN AMERICAN LITERATURE

    Shelley Godsland’s research expertise focuses on women’s fiction from Spain and Latin America, the detective novel in Spanish and Catalan, and narratives of violence in the Spanish-speaking world, particularly the strategies used by cultural creators to articulate and respond to specifically gendered forms of aggression.  An acknowledged international leader in these fields, she devised and demonstrated an innovative methodology for analysis of female-authored crime writing from Spain, an approach relevant to similar fiction in other language contexts.  This work is widely cited and deployed by scholars internationally.  Furthermore, in 2002 Professor Godsland organised and hosted the world’s first scholarly conference devoted to noir literature from the Iberian nations, thus founding a research framework that has since been taken up and developed by groupings such as Medellín Negro, Salamanca Negra, and Tenerife Noir, in all of which Professor Godsland has been invited to participate.  She has been at the forefront of establishing the agenda for academic approaches to Spanish popular culture, and promoted this via her edited collections devoted to the theme, and at a congress that she held in 1999.  Professor Godsland’s international standing has been acknowledged in the many international invitations that she has received to deliver keynote talks and guest lectures, her media appearances in both English and Spanish, and the large number of requests to participate in scholarly networks and contribute to specialist publications.

    Professor Godsland holds a BA (First Class Honours), an MA and a PhD from universities within the UK’s prestigious Russell Group.  She has lectured at other members of the Russell Group, as well as at Manchester Metropolitan University (MMU), Britain’s leading Post-1992 centre of Higher Education.  While at MMU, Professor Godsland founded and directed the Crime Fictions Research Centre, the first scholarly unit anywhere in the world to promote the study of detective writing across languages, and she was the editor of the Centre’s series of research publications that she also established.

    For news of Professor Godsland's current activities, and those of the Spanish Department (Spaanse taal en cultuur), please visit our news page at: https://spaansetaalencultuuruva.wordpress.com/

  • Publications

    BOOKS AND EDITED VOLUMES

    **  Killing Carmens.  Women’s Crime Fiction from Spain.  Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 2007.  ISBN: 9780708320167

    **  Writing Reflection, Reflecting on Writing.  Female Identity and Lacan’s Mirror in Helena Parente Cunha and Sylvia Molloy.   Valladolid: Universitas Castellae, 2006.  ISBN: 8492315679

    **  Mujeres Malas: Women’s Detective Fiction from Spain, co-edited with Jacky Collins.  Manchester: Manchester Metropolitan University Press, 2005.

    **  Latin American Detective Fiction: New Readings, co-edited with Jacky Collins.  Manchester: Manchester Metropolitan University Press, 2004.

    **  Mulheres Más, co-edited with Ana María da Costa Toscano.  Porto: Edições Universidade Fernando Pessoa, 2004.

    **  Reading the Popular in Contemporary Spanish Fictions, co-edited with Nickianne Moody.  Newark: University of Delaware Press, 2004.

    **  Interface 7 (2004).  Special number: Hispanic popular culture.

    **  Letras Femeninas XXVIII:1 (2002).  Special number: Hispanic women’s crime fiction.

    **  Cultura Popular.   Studies in Spanish and Latin American Popular Culture, co-edited with Anne M. White.  Bern & Oxford: Peter Lang, 2002.

    **  La Nueva Literatura Hispánica 10 (2001-2003).  Special number: Antonio Muñoz Molina: Intertextualidad y novela negra.

    REFEREED JOURNAL ARTICLES AND BOOK CHAPTERS

    ** “Negotiating Real and Conceptual Borders in a Different Sort of ‘Crime Writing’: Jacqueline Franco Barnes’ Domestic Violence Blogpost”.  Las fronteras del crimen, Gustavo Forero (ed), Bogotá: Planeta, 2015.  pp. 149-63.

    ** “Los estereotipos nacionales, de clase y de género en Nadie quiere saber de Alicia Giménez Bartlett”.  El género en la novela criminal española desde 1975, Elena Losada Soler (ed), Barcelona: Icaria, 2015.  pp. 71-95.

    ** “Reading Traces of the Picaresque in the Twentieth-Century Novel”.  The Picaresque in Europe, John Ardila (ed), Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015.  pp. 247-68.

    ** “Approaches to Teaching Rape in the Spanish Literature Classroom: Alicia Giménez Bartlett’s Ritos de muerte”.  Teaching Gender Through Hispanic Literature and Culture, Mary Long et al. (eds), Amsterdam: Sense, 2015.  pp. 177-89.

    ** “Bodies and Borders: Gender in Gisa Klönne’s Detective Novels”.  Las fronteras del crimen, Gustavo Forero (ed), Bogotá: Planeta, 2015.  pp. 231-54.

    ** “Masochism and the Novela Negra: The Case of Francisco González Ledesma”, Clues 31:2 (2013): 90-102.

    ** “Genre Reformulation and Gender Violence in Teresa Solana’s ‘Feina feta no fa destorb’”, Anales de la Literatura Española Contemporánea ( ALEC) 38:3 (2013): 115-37.

    ** “Allegory, Gender and Aggression in Some Recent Argentinean Novels of Violence”.  Trece formas de entender la novela negra, Gustavo Forero (ed), Bogotá: Planeta, 2012.  pp. 189-212.

    ** “Alicia Giménez Bartlett: Genre Fiction and Literary Success”, Revista Monográfica / Monographic Review XXVII (2012): 9-36.

    ** “Spanish Women’s Crime Fiction: Reading Gender in the Paratextual”, co-authored with Nickianne Moody, Ámbitos feministas 2 (2012): 7-25.

    ** “Writing the Male Abuser in Cultural Responses to Domestic Violence in Spain”, Hispania 95:1 (2012): 53-64.

    ** “La asesina en la novela criminal femenina española: ¿respuesta literaria al control social ejercido sobre la mujer?  Novela y control social, Gustavo Forero (ed), Medellín: Universidad de Antioquia, 2012. pp. 53-73.

    ** “Monolingual England: The Crisis in Foreign Language Enrolments from Elementary Schools through College”, Hispania 93:1 (2010): 113-18.

    ** “Popular Genre and the Politics of the Periphery: Catalan Crime Fiction by Women”, co-authored with Anne M. White, Detective Fiction and National Identity, Kate Quinn & Marieke Krajenbrink (eds), Amsterdam: Rodopi, 2009.  pp. 43-55.

    ** “Detecting Discontent: Contemporary Crises in Manuel Vázquez Montalbán’s Los pájaros de Bangkok”, co-authored with Stewart King, Journal of Spanish Cultural Studies 9:1 (2008): 1-17.

    ** “Gender and Nation in Catalan Women’s Genre Fiction”, Antípodas XVII (2007): 133-56.

    ** “La novela detectivesca femenina española: últimas tendencias”, Mujeres, literaturas, políticas y compromisos en el Nuevo Milenio: diálogos trasatlánticos, Guadalupe Cortina (ed), Madrid: Nuevo Espacio, 2007.  pp. 175-201.

    ** “El espejo lacaniano y la construcción de la identidad femenina: el caso de En breve cárcel (1981) de Sylvia Molloy”.  Mujeres que escriben en América Latina, Sara Beatriz Guardia (ed), Lima: CEMHAL; Editorial Minerva, 2007.  pp. 307-12.

    ** “Francisco Umbral’s ‘Lady’ Tourists: a fictional view of early female visitors to Spain”, Revista Canadiense de Estudios Hispánicos 30:2 (2006): 225-48.

    ** “Crimes Present, Motives Past: A Function of National History in the Contemporary Spanish Detective Novel”, co-authored with Stewart King, Clues 25:3 (2006): 30-40.

    ** “History and Memory, Detection and Nostalgia.  The Case of Dulce Chacón’s Cielos de barro”, Hispanic Research Journal 6:3 (2005): 253-64.

    ** “Verdugas, victimarias, viciosas: Angélica Gorodischer y la re-escritura de la criminalidad femenina”, Mujeres y Cambio desde la Letra, Asunción Horno-Delgado & Janet N. Gold (eds), Santo Domingo: Secretaría de Estado de La Mujer, 2005.  pp. 227-41.

    ** “Últimas tendencias de la literatura criminal hispánica escrita por mujeres: la reformulación femenina de un género popular”, Interface 7 (2004): 33-43.

    ** “The Importance of Being Esbelta: Fatness, Food and Fornication in Almudena Grandes’ “Modelos de mujer””, Reading the Popular in Contemporary Spanish Fictions, Shelley Godsland & Nickianne Moody (eds), Newark: University of Delaware Press, 2004.  pp. 59-73.

    ** “The Romance Novel, or, the Generalísimo’s Control of the Popular Imagination”, co-authored with Salvador Faura & Nickianne Moody, Reading the Popular in Contemporary Spanish Fictions, Shelley Godsland & Nickianne Moody (eds), Newark: University of Delaware Press, 2004.  pp. 46-58.

    ** “Enajenadas, endiabladas, envidiosas: la mujer delincuente en los cuentos de Angélica Gorodischer”, Alba de América 22:41-42 (2003): 263-75.

    ** “From Feminism to Postfeminism in Spanish Women’s Crime Fiction: The Case of Maria-Antònia Oliver and Alicia Giménez-Bartlett”, Letras Femeninas XXVIII:1 (2002): 84-99.

    ** “Las mulatas de Manuel: significados y funciones del cuerpo mulato en la novelística de Manuel Zeno Gandía”, Las representaciones de la mujer en la cultura hispánica, K. M. Sibbald & Ricardo de la Fuente Ballesteros (eds), Valladolid: Universitas Castellae, 2002.  pp. 161-168.

    ** “Maria-Antònia Oliver: la reescritura femenina / feminista de la novela negra”, Bulletin of Hispanic Studies 79:3 (2002): 337-52.

    ** “Re-writing Eve: Contesting the Female Function in Original Sin Through Gendered Deviance in Women’s Crime Fiction from Spain”, Revista Monográfica XVIII (2002): 161-175.

    ** “Mujeres que matan: violencia femenina y transgresión social en la novela criminal femenina española”, España Contemporánea 15:2 (2002): 7-22.

    ** “Sun, Sex and Servitude: Francisco Umbral’s View of Spanish Tourism Development in Las europeas”, Cultura Popular.   Studies in Spanish and Latin American Popular Culture, Shelley Godsland & Anne M. White (eds), Bern: Peter Lang, 2002.  pp. 175-90.

    ** “Exilio frustrado: cultura y sexo en La tesis de Nancy”, Sender 2001, Anthony Trippett (ed), Bristol: HiPLAM, 2002.  pp. 121-41.

    ** “ Mujeres ‘malas’: The Representation of the Female Criminal in Spanish Women’s Crime Fiction as a Response to Discourses of Gendered Violence”, Violence and Patriarchy in Literature and the Arts: Perspectives for the New Millennium, Fernando de Diego & Agatha Schwartz (eds), Ottawa: University of Ottawa Press, 2002.  pp. 199-210.

    ** “La enfermedad como impedimento a la formación nacional en Crónicas de un mundo enfermo de Manuel Zeno Gandía”, Siglo XIX 7 (2001): 161-69.

    ** “Investigating Fictions of Identity: Contemporary Catalan Crime Fiction by Women”, co-authored with Anne M. White, Crime Scenes.   Detective Narratives in European Culture since 1945, Anne Mullen & Emer O’Beirne (eds), Amsterdam: Rodopi, 2000.  pp. 219-27.

    ** “Piadosa en la urbe: la visión zenogandiana de Nueva York”, Revista de Estudios Hispánicos XXVI:1 (1999): 3-13.

    ** “Writing as Therapy: Textualising Abuse and Survival in Sylvia Molloy's En breve cárcel”, Journal of the Australasian Universities Modern Languages Association 91 (1999): 67-82.

    ** “Medical Machismo: Gender, Power, and Discourse in David Sharon’s Spanish Med-tech Thrillers”, Medical Fictions, N. Moody & J. Hallam (eds), Liverpool: John Moores University Press, 1998.  pp. 130-44.

    CONFERENCE PROCEEDINGS

    ** “Mujeres que matan, mujeres que mueren: la mujer-criminal y la mujer-víctima en Cómo triunfar en la vida de Angélica Gorodischer”, Actas del XXXIII Congreso IILI, Salamanca: Universidad de Salamanca, 2002.  np.

    INTRODUCTIONS AND PREFACES

    ** “Introduction”.  Latin American Detective Fiction: New Readings, Shelley Godsland and Jacky Collins (eds), Manchester: Manchester Metropolitan University Press, 2004.  pp. 9-10.

    ** “Prólogo”, Mulheres Más, Ana María da Costa Toscano & Shelley Godsland (eds), Porto: Fundação Fernando Pessoa, 2004.  pp. 5-8.

    ** “Introduction”, Interface 7 (2004): 1-4.

    ** “Introduction” [co-authored with Nickianne Moody], Reading the Popular in Contemporary Spanish Fictions, Newark: University of Delaware Press, 2004.  pp. 1-7.

    ** “Preface” [co-authored with Anne M. White], Cultura Popular.  Studies in Spanish and Latin American Popular Culture, Shelley Godsland & Anne M. White (eds), Bern: Peter Lang, 2002.  pp. 9-11.

    ** “Introduction”, Letras Femeninas XXVIII:1 (2002): 11-15.

    ** “Introducción”, La nueva literatura hispánica 5-7 (2001-2003): 141-44.

    ENTRIES IN REFERENCE WORKS

    **  “Magdalena Petit”, ** “Griselda Gambaro”, Dictionary of Latin American Women Writers, María Claudia André (ed), New York: Routledge, 2007.

    ** “Teatro Argentino”, ** “Josefina Pla”, ** “Magdalena Petit”, ** “Griselda Gambaro”, ** “Concepción Leyes de Chávez”, Diccionario general de teatro, Ricardo de la Fuente Ballesteros & Sergio Villa (eds), Salamanca: Ediciones Almar, 2003.

    ** “Sylvia Molloy”, ** “Helena Parente Cunha”, ** “Silvina Bullrich”, ** “Josefina Pla”, ** “Griselda Gambaro”, ** “Magdalena Petit”, ** “Concepción Leyes de Chávez”, ** “Ana María Shúa”, originally for Feminist Dictionary of Latin America (Greenwood Press, 2001), now published as web-based dictionary of same name, María Claudia André (ed), Hope College (http://www.hope.edu/latinamerican/).

    REVIEWS

    ** Laurence Roth.   Inspecting Jews.  American Jewish Detective Stories.  New Brunswick, NJ & London: Rutgers University Press, 2004.  In:  Clues 25:3 (2007): 73-75.

    ** Persephone Braham.   Crimes against the State, Crimes against Persons.  Detective Fiction in Cuba and Mexico.  Minneapolis & London: University of Minnesota Press, 2004.  In:  Clues 23.4 (2005): 91-92.

    ** Susana Bayó Belenguer.   Theory, Genre, and Memory in the Carvalho  Series of Manuel Vázquez Montalbán.  Lewiston, Queenston, Lampteter: The Edwin Mellen Press, 2001.  In:  JILAS 9.1 (2003): 102-3.

     ** Jeffrey Oxford and David Knutson (eds).    Eduardo Mendoza.     A New Look.  New York, Oxford: Peter Lang, 2002.   In:   JILAS 9.1 (2003): 104-5.

    ** Catherine Davies (ed),  The Companion to Hispanic Studies, London: Arnold, 2002.  In:  International Journal of Iberian Studies 16.1 (2003): 65.

    ** Alicia Molero de la Iglesia,  La autoficción en España, Bern: Peter Lang, 2000.  In:  MLR 97:4 (2002): 1008-10.

    ** Alicia Steimberg,  Call me Magdalena (trans. Andrea G. Labinger), Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2001.  In:  Bulletin of Hispanic Studies 79:4 (2002): 577-78.

  • Invitations to Speak

    2014       Fiesta del Libro / Medellín Negro.  Round Table discussion with novelists.

    2014       Xavier University, Cincinnati.  Guest Lecture.  “Domestic Abuse in Spain Today”.

    2014       Western Kentucky University.  Guest Class (undergraduate).  “Gender and Emigration in Pardo Bazán’s ‘Las medias rojas’”.

    2014       Western Kentucky University.  Guest Class (undergraduate).  Spanish conversation class – introducing Europe to year 1 students of Spanish.

    2014       Western Kentucky University.   Guest Lecture.  “Cultural Responses to Domestic Violence in Spain”.

    2014       Fiesta del Libro / Medellín Negro.  Keynote Lecture.  “Mi vida como novela negra: Un caso real de violencia 'doméstica'".

    2013       Universität Wien.  Guest Lecture.  “Estudios de género, feminismo y el caso de Te doy mis ojos”.

    2013       Universidad de Valladolid – Campus de Soria.  Guest Lecture.  “El thriller español: Beltenebros de Antonio Muñoz Molina”.

    2013       Invited member of round-table discussion with writers and academics.  IV Congreso Medellín Negro.

    2013       Universidad del Claustro de Sor Juana, Mexico City.  Guest Lecture.  “Damas del crimen”.

    2013       Universidad de Antioquia / Fiesta del Libro, Medellín.  Keynote Lecture at International Conference. “Rememorando la víctima en la novela de crímenes”.  IV Congreso Medellín Negro.

    2013       Austin Peay State Univeristy, USA.  Guest Lecture.  “Escena del crimen”.

    2012       Universidad de Barcelona.  Guest Lecture.  “La literatura criminal femenina en España”.

    2012       Universidad de Antioquia / Fiesta del Libro, Medellín.  Keynote Lecture at International Conference. “Venganza femenina en la novela negra”.  III Congreso Medellín Negro.

    2012       Panel member on round table with writers and critics at international conference to discuss the novela negra in the Hispanic world.  III Congreso Medellín Negro.

    2012       Panel member for book presentation: Trece formas de entender la novela negra (containing a chapter by me).  III Congreso Medellín Negro.

    2011       Universidad de Antioquia.  Guest Lecture.  “The Social Origins of Crime Fiction”.  (With Prof. David Knutson)

    2011       Universidad de Antioquia / Fiesta del Libro, Medellín.  Keynote Lecture at International Conference.  “Malos tratos y novela negra”.  II Congreso Medellín Negro.

    2010       Universidad de Antioquia / Fiesta del Libro, Medellín.  Keynote Lecture at International Conference.  “Mujeres asesinas”.  Novela y control social.

    2010       Universidad de Antioquia / Fiesta del Libro, Medellín.  Participation in Round Table with writers and critics at International Conference.  Novela y control social.

    2010       Cardiff University.  Guest Lecture.  “Painted in Blood: The Art of Spanish Crime Fiction”.  (With Nickianne Moody.)

    2009       Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile.  Keynote Lecture at International Conference.  “Muerte, misoginia y masoquismo: una lectura de la novela negra de la transición española a la democracia”.  II Coloquio Latinoamericano de Literatura Policial.

    2009       Xavier University, Cincinnati.  Guest Lecture.  “Reading Male Masochism in Spain’s Novela Negra”.

    2008.      Universidad Jaime I, Castellón.  Guest Lecture.  “Cultural Responses to Domestic Violence in Spain”.

    2008       Caja de Segovia, Segovia.  Guest Lecture.  “Petra Delicado: Mujer y Policía”, and participation in two educational sessions for secondary level students on women detective writers.

    2006       Universitas Castellae, Valladolid.  Guest Lecture.  “La novela detectivesca española”.

    2006       Universitas Castellae, Valladolid.  Guest Lecture.  “El hispanismo británico y los estudios culturales”.

    2005       Xavier University, Cincinnati.  Guest Lecture.  “Wicked Women: Gender, Crime, and Fiction in Spain”.

    2005       Xavier University, Cincinnati.  Guest Lecture.  “Violence against Women in Spain”.

    2005       Sisters in Crime, Melbourne.  Talk on Spanish women’s crime fiction as part of a round table entitled “Murder in the Mediterranean”.

    2005       La Trobe University, Melbourne.  Guest Lecture.  “Killing Carmens: Women’s Crime Fiction from Spain and Latin America”.

    2005       Monash University, Melbourne.  Keynote Lecture.  “Post-feminist Petra: Alicia Giménez-Bartlett’s Female Detective”.  4 th Annual Hispanic Studies Symposium.

    2004       University College Cork.  Guest lecture at one-day symposium on Spanish narrative.  “Murderous Marías.  Narrative Strategies for Life After Death in Contemporary Spanish Crime Fictions by Women”.

    2004       National University of Ireland – Galway.  Guest Lecture.  “Remembering the Civil War in Spanish Crime Fiction”.  Crime Fiction and Political Memory.

    2004       Lancaster University.  Guest Lecture.  “Gender, Crime, and Nation in Catalonia”.

    2003       University of Leeds.  Guest Lecture.  “Women, Crime, and Fiction in Spain”.

    2003       Universidad de Oviedo.  Participation in round table with Andreu Martín and others: “La novela policiaca contemporánea en España”.

    2003       Universidad de Oviedo.  “Damas del crimen: escritoras hispánicas de novela policial”.  Seminar at summer school on Hispanic crime fiction: “El género policiaco en la literatura y el cine”.

    2003       Universitas Castellae, Valladolid.  Invited paper at international conference.  “Turismo, sexo y consumo en Los pájaros de Bangkok de Manuel Vázquez Montalbán”.  Oriente y Occidente en la Cultura Hispánica.

    2001       University of Ottawa.  Invited paper at international conference.  “Mujeres ‘malas’: the representation of the female criminal in Spanish women’s crime fiction as a response to discourses of gendered violence”.  Violence and Patriarchy in Literature and the Arts: Perspectives for the New Millennium.

    1998       Universidad Jaime I, Castellón.  Guest Lecture.  “Teaching Spanish on the Uniwide Programme”.

    1998       Universidad Jaime I, Castellón.  Guest Lecture.  “The ‘Fallen Woman’ in European Literature”.

  • PhD Students

    PhD Spanish University of Amsterdam

    PhD Hispanic Studies University of Amsterdam

    PhD Spanish Literature University of Amsterdam

    PhD Latin American Literature University of Amsterdam

    PhD Iberian Studies University of Amsterdam

    PhD Spanish Cultural Studies

    PhD Latin American Cultural Studies

    Professor Shelley Godsland is currently supervising, or has successfully supervised, PhD (and MA) theses / dissertations in the following areas:

    *Women's literature in Spanish, Catalan and Portuguese from a range of theoretical perspectives;

    *Crime and detective fiction from the Hispanic world;

    *Canonical Latin American fictions via various theoretical methodologies;

    *Narratives of violence from Iberian nations;

    *Twentieth- and twenty-first-century Spanish and Latin American novel and short story;

    *Spanish / English comparative literature;

    *Biography in Spanish.

    Studying for a PhD in Spanish or Hispanic Studies at the University of Amsterdam is usually free; no fees are charged.  Distance learning is also a possibility for candidates from outside the Netherlands.

    If you hold a good BA and MA in a relevant field and wish to discuss applying for a PhD position in Spanish at the University of Amsterdam, or possibilities for your MA, please contact Professor Godsland: s.godsland@uva.nl.

  • Ancillary activities
    • No ancillary activities