Staff in the Department of Hispanic Studies
Go to the MLAC staff pages.
Dr Kerstin Oloff
Contact Dr Kerstin Oloff (email at k.d.oloff@durham.ac.uk)
Before coming to Durham, I taught courses on Latin American poetry and Postcolonial Studies at the Universities of Warwick and Toronto. At Durham, I teach on various courses, including the second-year module 'Latin American Texts' and the final-year module 'Caribbean Cultures'.
Currently, I am completing a book entitled Refashioning the Self: Modernity, the Individual and the Caribbean Novel, which examines how the originally European and quintessentially modern form of the novel is transformed in the twentieth century pan-Caribbean context. It considers how the bourgeois 'sovereign individual'- traditionally formulated in the novel in contradistinction to the working class 'masses', 'racial others' and 'wild' nature- is rewritten by certain Caribbean writers from a more relational perspective that transforms the individual's relationship to her community and the natural environment.
I am able to supervise research students on the cultures of the Caribbean and Mexico. I am particularly interested in the form of the novel, postcolonial theory, and feminism and gender studies but I am happy to supervise on a broad range of topics related to either my theoretical or geographical interests.
I teach on the MA in Culture & Difference. I am a member of the Culture & Difference and the Literature/History/Theory research groups within the School of Modern Languages & Cultures.
Research Groups
- Culture and Difference
- Literature/History/Theory
Research Interests
- Caribbean Studies
- Latin American Studies
- Postcolonial Theory
- Feminism and Gender Studies
- Modernism and Postmodernism
Selected Publications
Books: edited
- 2009 (co-edited with Niblett, Michael.) Perspectives on the 'other America': comparative approaches to Caribbean and Latin American culture, Rodopi, 270 pp.
Books: reviews
- 2012 'Elusive Origins: The Enlightenment in the Modern Caribbean Historical Imagination. 2010. x + 230 pp', NWIG 86.
- 2007 '(Review article) Private Topographies: Space,Subjectivity, and Political Change in Latin America by Marzena Grezegorczyk', Revista Canadiense de Estudios Hispánicos 31, pp. 378-380
Essays in edited volumes
- 2012 '¿‘El hábito hace al monje’?: Cross-dressing, Gender and Sexuality in Benitez-Rojo’s Mujer en traje de batalla', in Fumagalli, Maria Cristina. & Ledent, Bénedicte. (eds.), The Cross-dressed Caribbean: Sexual Politics after Binarism, University of Virginia Press.
- 2009 'Wilson Harris and Postcolonial Theory', in Oloff, Kerstin. & Niblett, Michael. (eds.), Perspectives on the “Other America', Rodopi.
Journal papers: academic
- 2012 ''Greening the zombie': Caribbean Gothic, World-Ecology and Socio-ecological Degradation', Green Letters: Studies in Ecocriticism 16.
- 2011 'Representation and Rupture in the Age of Globalization: Narrative Strategies in Manlio Argueta's Cuzcatlán donde bate la mar del sur and the Debate on Subalternity', Revista Hispánica Moderna 64, pp. 149-65
- 2011 'Terra Nostra and the Rewriting of the Modern Subject: Archetypes, Myth, and Selfhood', Latin American Research Review 46, pp. 3-20
Other media: research equivalent
- 2012 (co-authored with Cabiya, Pedro) '“Lo humano es una historia, un cuento de hadas” entrevista a Pedro Cabiya', La Habana elegante pp.
Short Works
- 2011 '"La muerte de Artemio Cruz by Carlos Fuentes."'.
- 2007 'Entries for “Literature: Representations of Blacks in British Literature” and “Vanity Fair.”', pp. 260-263; 499.
Translated: Book
- 2010 (trans.). Rodríguez, N. E., Divergent Dictions: Contemporary Dominican Literature (Escrituras de desencuentro en la República Dominicana.). Caribbean Studies Press
Grants Awarded
- 2005: HRC fellow
- 2005: Lord Rootes Memorial Fund
- 2003: AHRC fellow (3 years)