Elisa studied English Literature as an undergraduate and completed her PhD in a History Department. She began her academic career as a Research Fellow at King’s College, Cambridge and has been at King’s London since 2000.

Research Interests and PhD Supervision

• Latin American colonial literature and historiography.
• Re-interpretations of the historical, particularly 19th century and contemporary.
• The Politics of Gender in Latin American cultural production
• Nation building and unbuilding – notions of the transnational and multilingual in contemporary Latin American culture

Elisa’s research is animated by a desire to trace the intersections of gender and genre in Latin American writing and to examine the role of colonialism in shaping Latin American cultural difference. It thus intervenes in historically significant and ongoing debates in the discipline around hybridity and identity.

Elisa supervises doctoral students singly and also jointly with History, with English and with the AHRC Project Language Acts and Worldmaking, evidencing the interdisciplinary nature of her expertise. She would welcome any PhD students interested in Colonial, Nineteenth Century and Contemporary Latin American literature; the relationship between historiography and fiction in Latin American literature; Theories of post-colonialism in Latin America; Gender Studies; and Cultural Studies.

For more details, please see her full research profile.

Teaching

As a teacher of Modern Languages, Elisa is committed to the theory and practice of a discipline that by its very nature makes students reflect upon questions of identity and diversity. At King´s Elisa teaches a number of undergraduate courses on colonial, nineteenth century and contemporary Latin American literature and culture, including one on the importance of History as a discourse in Latin American fiction, another on biographical and autobiographical narrative and one on the politics of Gender in Latin American culture. She also contributes to the flagship ‘Global Iberias’ core module. Her graduate teaching concentrates on the nineteenth and twentieth century narrative and critical methodologies from the South, and she collaborates with colleagues on co-taught modules on these subjects. Elisa is a co-creator of two innovative Service Modules in the Department.

Selected publications

Books

• Ricardo Palma's Tradiciones: Illuminating Gender and Nation.Lewisburg [Pa.]: Bucknell Univ. Press, 2012. (The Bucknell Studies in Latin American Literature and Theory) 200 pages ISBN-10: 161148412X
• Colonial Angels: Narratives of Gender and Spirituality in Mexico, 1580-1750.Austin: University of Texas Press, 2000. 222 pages ISBN: 978-0-292-77748-4

Chapters

• ‘The Tricks of the Weak: Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz and the Feminist Temporality of Latina Literature’ The Cambridge History of Latina/o American Literature. John Moran & Laura Lomas Eds, CUP, 2018 pp. 74-92. Online ISBN: 9781316869468
• ‘Accounting for the Self: Conventual Writings in the New World’ The Uses of First Person Writings: Africa, America, Asia, Europe: Les usages des écrits du for privé: Afrique, Amérique, Asie, Europe. ed. / Francois Joseph Ruggiu. Peter Lang, 2013. pp. 254-264. ISBN: 978-3-0352-6309-1
• ‘Introduction: Beyond the nation: New Directions in the Study of Nineteenth-century Latin America’ Special Issue, ed. / Elisa Sampson Vera Tudela, The Bulletin of Hispanic Studies. Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2007 84:1, 1-8 Online ISSN: 1478-3398