We are pleased to announce that several members of our research group will participate in the VI Seminar in English Studies (SEING VI), hosted by the Universidad de Zaragoza. This doctoral seminar provides a valuable platform for early-stage researchers to present their work, exchange ideas, and engage with current debates in English Studies .
Under the theme “Research as Resistance in a World at Odds,” this year’s edition foregrounds the role of academic inquiry in responding to contemporary global challenges . Our team contributes to these discussions through papers that address surveillance, race, posthumanism, and the limits of representation.
Below is a list of our members’ papers:
Javier Álvarez
“Rethinking Utopia in Times of Crisis: Posthuman Ethics and Alternative Futures in Contemporary Fiction”.
María Abizanda-Cardona
“Big Brother meets big business: The Biopolitics of Surveillance Capitalism in Rob Hart’s The Warehouse (2019)”
This paper examines the convergence of corporate power and surveillance technologies, analysing how Hart’s novel depicts the datafication of subjectivity and the expansion of biopolitical control under late capitalism.
Aurora Rodríguez Bermejo Fraile
“Gothic Themes and the Black Body in Rivers Solomon’s Model Home”
Rodríguez Bermejo Fraile explores how contemporary Gothic reconfigures racialised embodiment, foregrounding the intersections of horror, identity, and systemic oppression.
Laura García Soria
“‘No use living without delight’: Virtual Unreality and Vulnerable Materiality in Ursula K. Le Guin’s Paradises Lost (2002)”
This paper investigates the tension between virtuality and embodiment, analysing how Le Guin reasserts material vulnerability in speculative narratives of simulated experience.
Alessandra Martín González
“Posthuman Shapeshifting: Blurring the Boundaries Between Human and Nonhuman in Nnedi Okorafor’s Lagoon”
Martín González examines shapeshifting as a posthuman strategy that destabilises fixed ontologies and reimagines human–nonhuman relations within Afrofuturist frameworks.
Marta Hernández González
“Nonhuman Biography and the Limits of Representation in Karen Joy Fowler’s We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves”
This paper addresses the challenges of narrating nonhuman lives, interrogating the ethical and epistemological limits of representation in literary depictions of animal subjectivity.
Our group’s participation in SEING VI highlights our ongoing engagement with contemporary critical theory and interdisciplinary approaches to literature. By addressing issues such as surveillance, embodiment, and posthuman relationality, these papers contribute to broader conversations about the role of the humanities in a rapidly changing world.
We look forward to an enriching exchange of ideas in Zaragoza.