Reyes Lazaro

By training, Reyes Lazaro is a teacher of contemporary Spanish literature, culture and language. Her interest in comparative literature sprang from different sources. First, it originated from a fascination with the underground dialogue that unites storytelling across countries and ages. Her engagement with comparative literature has also allowed her to enrich her understanding of Spanish literature, which usually means literature written exclusively in Castilian. Comparative literature provided a natural space to study peripheral literatures of the Iberian Peninsula and beyond.

Lazaro has published on Spanish fiction writers of the 20th century, such as Ramón del Valle Inclán, Luis Martín-Santos, Blanca de los Ríos, Azorín, Rosa Chacel and Bernardo Atxaga. She is working on a book, “Don Juan and the Spanish National Conquest,” in which she relates the many rewritings of Don Juan in Spain in the 20th century to competing nationalisms of the Iberian peninsula and the gender ideologies in which they are rooted.

She is also preparing a book chapter on immigrants as authors and as themes in contemporary Spanish literature and film.