Hispanic Studies

POSTGRADUATE STUDENTS

MA Students

Angela Burke, BA (UCC)

I did my BA in UCC with Hispanic Studies as my major. I received a First Class Honours degree. I have spent three years living and working in Central and South America, where my real love for Spanish lies! I first went to Peru when I was eighteen and I have been going back ever since. I have also spent some time living in Madrid. I am currently teaching Beginners Spanish to first year UCC students.

During the summer I completed a 120 hour ACELS approved TEFL Course with a view to teaching English to non-native speakers either at home or abroad.

I don't have a title for my thesis yet but my area of interest would definitely be Latin America. I have chosen Dr Nuala Finnegan's module which will examine Cuban Cinema since the Revolution so I was thinking of basing my thesis on the idea of filming resistance in other Latin American countries, namely El Salvador, Nicaragua and Guatemala.

My name is Fiona Corcoran. I am from Cork City and attended the Ursulines Secondary School in Blackrock. I graduated from UCC this summer with a degree in European Studies and Spanish for which I spent my third year at Universidad de Granada. My dissertation title was 'Basque Nationalism and Autonomy'. I am currently doing an MA in Hispanic Studies but haven't decided on a topic yet. I am interested in researching nationalist literature and censorship under Franco and also the poetry of Gongora!

I'm from Kerry, specifically from the Corca Dhuibhne Gaeltacht, which is partly the reason for my topic choice. I've also worked in Raidio na Gaeltachta over the past number of summers, which adds to my desire to link my topic to Irish. The topic I hope to research for my thesis is a comparison between the efforts to boost the Catalan language and those to save the Irish language, as of yet however, I haven?t come up with a specific title.

Further qualifications: FÁS CERTIFICATE in Computer Skills from the Vocational Centre of the National Rehabilitation Hospital and a FETAC CERTIFICATE in Media Production from Coláiste Stiofán Naofa.

I graduated from UCC in 2003 with a joint honours degree in Spanish and Economics.  I then spent two years (2003-2005) as a lector (teaching assistant) in the English Philology Department at the Universidade da Coruna, Galicia, Spain.  I'm currently studying an MA in Hispanic Studies in UCC with a specific interest in Galician literature and culture. My thesis topic will lie in this area though I am as yet undecided on the thesis title.

I have a Bachelors Degree in Teaching, which I obtained from the Universidad Autonoma Madrid.

My research interests lie in Spanish Children's Literature although I still do not have a title for my thesis.

I'm Emma O'Brien, born and reared in Wexford. I studied Applied Languages (Spanish, German and T.E.F.L.) at the University of Limerick for four years, and discovered a love of teaching during my work placements abroad. I taught English in Paris, and Spanish, German and French in Wexford after graduating, but then moved to the Canary Islands to teach English...and stayed for three years. I came home to do the H.Dip in Education (2005 - 2006), and decided that I liked being a 'mature' student so much, I'd stay on and combine it with my love for all things hispanic by completing a Masters in Hispanic Studies. In a nutshell,  my thesis will explore the linguistic challenges facing English-speaking learners of Spanish at university level. My other interests lie in the teaching of Spanish as a foreign language, the sociology and linguistics of contemporary Spain, Latin American writers such as Isabel Allende and Mario Vargas Llosa...and in immersing myself in as much Spanish as possible!

Primary areas of interest: Chicano Literature; Border Studies; Mexican-American Relations.

MPhil Student

Aileen Lee, BA (NUI-UCC)

Research interests: Latin American Women Writers, Chicano Literature, Feminist Critical Theory.

MPhil research based thesis focusing on the poetry of Ana Castillo, a Chicago born Chicana writer.

The working title at present is 'Ana Castillo: the Chicana poet as Peripheral Politician'. I am interested in the political aspect of her poetry and its contribution to the social history of the Chicanas/os as well as it's universal importance for other under-represented social groups. The idea of her as a peripheral politician is looking at the political importance of her work as a poet, her writing as a form of negotiation with the outside world and representation of what namely Chicanas/os needs and wants are as a peripheral social group in the U.S.

PhD Students

Eoin Barrett, BA, MA (NUI-UCC)

Eoin Barrett is studying for a PhD in Latin American Studies under the supervision of Dr. Nuala Finnegan. Eoin began studying Spanish as a beginner at UCC in 1995, and spent a year in Málaga teaching English to the local police force in 1998, before graduating with a Joint Honours degree in English and Spanish in 1999. Having read the stories of the Argentine Jorge Luis Borges in his final year, Eoin decided to study for a Masters degree in Latin American Studies, focusing on the short story as a genre, more specifically the short narrative of the Mexican writer Juan Rulfo. Upon completion of his MA thesis, he took up a position as a Language Assistant at the University of A Coruña in Galicia, Spain, teaching courses in English Language, Translation and Media Studies. Returning to Cork in 2004, Eoin began his PhD in 2005. While he is interested in all aspects of Hispanic culture, his doctoral project involves a comparative analysis of the short fiction of Jorge Luis Borges and Juan Rulfo - Thesis title: ?Respecting the Reader: Rulfo, Borges and the Latin American Short Story?.

In his spare time Eoin enjoys following current affairs, spending weekends by the sea and creating eclectic playlists for his iPod!

My name is Orla Juliette Borreye.  I am half Irish and half French.  I was born in France and studied there until I was 17.  Then I began university in Ireland, in the University of Limerick in 1999, where I studied Languages and Cultural Studies (French and Spanish).  I received a First Class Honours Degree.

After graduating, I spent one year living in Mexico and returned to Ireland in order to start my Master?s in Contemporary Mexican Cinema in the University of Limerick. After one year, I decided to transfer the Master?s to PhD and also changed universities and thus continued in University College Cork.  My supervisor is Dr Nuala Finnegan and I am concentrating on the analysis of a selection of contemporary Mexican films (Perfume de violetas: nadie te oye, by Marisa Sistach, 2000 / Amores perros, by Alejandro González Iñárritu 2000, Y tu mamá también, by Alfonso Cuarón 2001) focusing on issues of gender and sexuality. The title of my thesis for the moment is the following, however it is subject to change: 'Gender and Identity in Contemporary Mexican Cinema'.  At the moment I am in Mexico, where I am completing part of my research.

My name is Ana Cruz García and I come from Córdoba, Spain. In 1999 I obtained my BA in Arts (Filología Inglesa) at the University of Granada, Spain. I spent the third year of the degree as an Erasmus student in University College Cork. In the year 2000 I was awarded a ?Lectorado scholarship? to work as a Spanish Language Assistant in Mount Royal College, Calgary, Canada. Afterwards, I moved back to Cork where I have been living until now. My main area of research has been Mexican literature and in 2000-2001 I completed a MA in Hispanic Studies at University College Cork on the theme of incest in the work of Juan Rulfo?s Pedro PáramoPedro Páramo and Ángeles Mastretta?s Arráncame la vida. My interest in Mexican studies has then extended until the present. I am currently pursuing a PhD on the theme of madness, femininity and representation in the work of Elena Garro, Susana Págano, Ana Castillo and María Amparo Escandón. As can be seen from this introduction, my research interests could be summarised as: Latin American Women Writers; Twentieth-century Mexican and Chicano narrative, Feminist Theories and Border Studies.

When I finished my Bachelor of Arts Degree I started teaching Spanish in Besana Secondary school while I was doing my MA in Comparative 20th-Century Literature. I then went to Rome to research my thesis "The image of Rome in the narrative of the 20th Century" and I also taught Spanish there. I moved to Galway where I worked as a Spanish Language Assistant in the NUI-Galway.

I have always had a vivid interest for poetry, so I decided to do the PhD in Spanish Poetry of the 20th century at UCC. The title of my thesis is: "Ideology and Literary tradition in poetry anthologies of the Spanish Civil War: politics and popular verse form". I have been awarded with the President's PhD Scholarship in the Faculty of Arts, UCC.

MA Thesis Title: 'Pre-millennial Man: An Examination of the anxieties surrounding masculinity in four American films produced at the turn of the millennium'

The thesis examined specifically - "American Beauty", "Being John Malkovich", "Fight Club" and "The Matrix"

PHD Thesis Title: 'Versions of the Masculine: Images of Canadian and Mexican Masculinity in Contemporary North American Cinema'

Areas of interest - gender studies, culture and politics, sexuality, cinema.

Supervisors - Dr Nuala Finnegan and Dr Gwenda Young (Dept of English)

Seana Ryan, BA (UCG), MA (UCC)

Seána Ryan graduated from N.U.I., Galway in 1998 with a B.A. in French and Spanish and graduated from U.C.C. with an M.A. in Spanish in 1999. She has been a member of the Department of Hispanic Studies since 1998 and currently lectures part-time in Spanish-English Comparative / Contrastive Linguistics. She has also been a Government of Ireland Scholar since 2004 and is working towards completing a doctoral thesis on four novels by Javier Marías. Her research interests include contemporary Spanish literature, Literary Translation and Comparative Linguistics.

Nicole Sigl, MA (University of Vienna)

A Bavarian girl abroad, a long story short?. I was born in Bavaria on September the 20th in 1980 and grew up in a little village in the Bavarian forest. The first university I went to was the University of Heidelberg where I spent two years of my MA programme (I did Spanish and Italian then, but also Philosophy and Jewish Studies). Then I transferred my programme to the University of Vienna, Austria, where I focused on Spanish, French and still some Italian studies. There I completed the MA programme in April 2005 (my MA dissertation was about the Portuguese novel/Mexican film ?El crimen del padre Amaro?) and in September of the same year I started my PhD here at UCC. The working title of my thesis is ?Identity and Contemporary Society in Recent Québécois and Mexican Cinema? as I am doing a jointly supervised PhD in Hispanic and French studies. So, who?s confused now?! Obviously, I?m interested in many cultural backgrounds and the respective languages; my studies so far have included linguistics, literature, politics, history and culture in general. Ultimately, I?m doing film studies now and, as my thesis? title suggests, I?m writing about recent (from 2000-present) French Canadian and Mexican films.

Well, what else there is to say about me? I love cooking, drinking pints, learning languages (I try my luck with Irish now?), travelling and many other things? That?s it, I guess, the rest you have to find out yourselves. Slán!

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