Faculty | Bishop's University

Below is a list of faculty that are active in the department, and available to students with course specific questions. If you need administrative support, we encourage you to refer your questions to one of the following;

The Chair of the department can address detailed program questions, including program requirements, planning and selection, research opportunities, graduate studies, and more.
The Academic Advisor, if available, can offer support including course registration and course load, important dates, academic policies and more.
The Academic Deans serve as the academic and administrative anchors to the professors within their Faculties or Schools as well as the students.

Faculty – Hispanic Studies:

Contact Information is found in the BU Directory

Gilberto D’Escoubet

Senior Instructor

B.A. Hispanic Studies (Université de Montréal, 1994) M.A. Hispanic Studies (Université de Montréal, 1998), Ph.D. in process.

Areas of research:
“Colonial Discourse: The Construction of an American Difference. The representation of the “Negro” as a subject/objet discursive in the Spanish colonial discourse” and “Questioning Identity in The Americas” primarily in the Hispanic Caribbean: Cuba, Porto Rico, the Dominican Republic and the Caribbean coast of Venezuela.”

Myriam Pruneau

Contract Faculty

B.A. Major Hispanic Studies, Major in English, Minor in Film Studies and Minor in Cultural Studies, Bishop’s University, 2007) M.A. Advanced Hispanic Studies (Universidad de Valencia, Spain, 2009) Ph.D Hispanic Studies (Universidad de Valencia, Spain) in progress.

Dr. Jordan Tronsgard

Associate Professor

Jordan Tronsgard obtained his Ph.D. in Spanish literature from the University of Ottawa after having studied Spanish at the undergraduate and Master’s levels at the University of Calgary. His doctoral dissertation, which was awarded the Pierre Laberge Prize from the University of Ottawa for excellence in a doctoral thesis, explores self-awareness and irony behind the construction of historical memory of the Spanish Civil War in four contemporary Spanish novels. At Bishop’s, Dr. Tronsgard teaches courses on Spanish and Latin American literatures, cultures and film, in addition to Spanish language courses at all levels.

Dr. Tronsgard’s research agenda centres on contemporary Spanish narrative fiction and cultural studies, Hispanic film, the Spanish Civil War/Franco regime, and transnational identities.

His current project seeks greater understanding of how the stories we tell, and how we tell them, characterize a community’s engagement with its collective history. In particular he is interested in the visible space of pop-culture as a powerful voice in framing who we are as a function of where we have been. Indeed, in 21st-century Spain what do graphic novels, B-movies, noir fiction, pornography, and more “serious” works of literature and film have in common? They are all examples of genres and media that give increased awareness to the nation’s traumatic past of civil war (1936-1939), repressive dictatorship under General Francisco Franco (1939-1975), and the still-unresolved transition to democracy. Beginning at the end of the 1990s, censorship and self-censorship toward these events gave way to an explosion of interest in what has been called “historical memory,” leading to the proliferation, and profitability for publishers and the box-office, of novels and films that touch on the war and its continued legacy. This study focuses on how this dynamic has played out in the last 10 years in two distinct but related ways: the “infiltration” of historical memory in areas of popular culture not previously invested in the debate about the past, and the ironic approach of many of these texts as they merge historical fiction with parody, self-criticism, and a self-aware understanding of how the past has become a commodity. Whereas much research in Spanish cultural studies to date has focused on the overtly earnest approach to historical memory in the Spanish novel, this project seeks to address the emerging ironic appropriation of the past by understanding a new dynamic in new narratives: irreverence.

Books

Exploration and Exploitation of Historical Memory in 21st-Century Spanish Literature and Film

Refereed Publications

“Drawing the Past: The Graphic Novel as Postmemory in Spain” Submitted for peer-review. 2016.

“Detectives y desencanto: memoria en la novela negra de Javier Calvo.” Reescrituras del imaginario policiaco en la narrativa española e hispanoamericana contemporáneas (Roberto Bolaño, Eugenio Fuentes et alii). Ed. Felipe Aparicio Nevado. Jaraíz de la Vera (Cáceres): Editorial Gráficas Morgado, 2016. 125-133.

“Difference but not Deference: Historical Memory as Dialogue in Benjamín Prado’s Mala gente que camina.” Ciberletras 36 (2016): No pagination. Web.

“El dolor del puzle: la novela policíaca, la tortura y la transición en El jardín colgante de Javier Calvo.” La tragedia del vivir: Dolor y mal en la literatura hispánica. Ed. Ricardo de la Fuente Ballesteros, Jesús Pérez Magallón, and Francisco Estévez. Valladolid: Editorial Verdelis, 2014: 377-384.

“El doble filo de la ironía en la metaficción historiográfica de Cercas y Bolaño.” Ficções da História: Rescritas Latino-americanas. Ed. Jorge Carlos Guerrero and Aimée González Bolaños. Rio Grande: Editora da Furg, 2013. 151-164.

“Memory, Migration and Identity in Manuel Rivas’s El lápiz del carpintero and Almudena Grandes’s Malena es un nombre de tango.” Revista Canadiense de Estudios Hispánicos 36.3 (2012): 501-517.

“Ironic Nostalgia: The Second Republic Today in Manuel Rivas’s El lápiz del carpintero.” Anales de la Literatura Española Contemporánea 36.1 (2011): 225-247.

“Ver el pasado no visto: postmemoria desde el útero en Rabos de lagartija de Juan Marsé.” Un hispanismo para el siglo XXI. Ed. Rosalía Cornejo-Parriego and Alberto Villamandos. Madrid: Biblioteca Nueva, 2011. 261-277.

“Alguien te mira: Voyerismo y transición en Te trataré como a una reina de Rosa Montero.” Espéculo 37 (2007-2008): No pagination.

Book Reviews

Rev. of Líneas de fuego. Género y nación en la narrativa española durante la Guerra Civil (1936-1939), by Iker González-Allende. Revista Canadiense de Estudios Hispánicos. 423-425.

Rev. of Contemporary Spanish Fiction. Generation X, by Dorothy Odartey-Wellington. Revista Canadiense de Estudios Hispánicos 34.2 (2010): 420-422.

Recent Conference Papers

“Memoria, misterio y trauma en la novela policíaca actual.” Congreso International BETA: Conflictos y Desplazamientos en las Culturas Hispánicas, Universidad de Granada, Granada, Spain, June 2016.

“Trauma, tortura y textos marginales en la memoria histórica española.” 52nd Conference of the Asociación Canadiense de Estudios Hispánicos, University of Calgary, Calgary, June 2016.

“Dibujando el pasado: La novela gráfica como posmemoria.” Congreso Internacional: Cómic y compromiso social, Universitat de València, Valencia, Spain, November 2015.

“Tiempo, espacio y memoria en la novela negra de Javier Calvo” Coloquio Internacional – Reescrituras del imaginario policiaco en la literatura española y latinoamericana contemporáneas (1990-2015). Université de Haute-Alsace, Mulhouse, France, June 2015.

“From Pornography to Parody: Ironic Approaches to the Spanish Civil War.” 50th Conference of the Asociación Canadiense de Hispanistas, Brock University, Waterloo, May 2014.

“El dolor del puzle: la novela policíaca, la tortura y la transición en El jardín colgante de Javier Calvo.” Congreso Internacional La Tragedia del vivir: Dolor y mal en la literatura hispánica. Universitas Castellae and McGill University. Valladolid, Spain, June 2013.

“Putting together the pieces? The crisis of aporia in Lucía Etxebarria’s Lo verdadero es un momento de lo falso and Rosa Montero’s Te trataré como a una reina.” XXXVIII International Symposium of Hispanic Literature – CSUDH, Carson, California, March 2013.

“Buscando pistas una generación después: la novela policíaca y la transición en El jardín colgante de Javier Calvo.” 48th Conference of the Asociación Canadiense de Hispanistas, Wilfred Laurier University, Waterloo, June 2012.

“Dos escritores, dos personajes, dos traumas nacionales: La autorreflexión irónica en la ficción histórica de Javier Cercas y Roberto Bolaño.” 4th International CELEHIS Conference, Mar del Plata, Argentina, November 2011.

“Negotiating ‘Spanishness:’ Memory and Identity.” ACFAS, Bishop’s University, Sherbrooke, June 2011.