Ana Rueda

Education:
Ph.D., Spanish Literature, Vanderbilt University, 1985

M.A., Linguistics, University of Florida, 1980

B.A., Synoptic Major: Psycholinguistics & Philosophy of Language, Kenyon College, 1977

Biography:

Dr. Ana Rueda, born in Bilbao, Spain, earned her M.A. in Linguistics from the University of Florida and her Ph.D in Spanish Literature from Vanderbilt University. Her specialization is Modern and Contemporary Spanish Literature. She came to the University of Kentucky in 2002 and served as Chair of the Department of Hispanic Studies from 2005 to 2014. From 2015 to 2020 she was John E. Keller Endowed Professor in the Literature, Culture, and Linguistics of Spain and in 2014-15 College of Arts and Sciences Distinguished Professor for excellency in the three areas of Research, Teaching, and Administration/Service. She is William T. Bryan Endowed Chair in Spanish. She has received major research awards, including a National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) Fellowship, a Summer NEH Stipend Award, and an Hispanex Award from the Ministerio de Educación, Cultura y Deporte in Spain. She is also the recipient of several teaching awards: the Kemper Award for Excellence in Teaching, the Great Teacher Award from UK's Alumni Association, and a Teacher Who Made a Difference Honoree.

 

 

Research Interests:
Modern and Contemporary Spanish Studies
Short Fiction
Writing the Self
Transnational Topics
Gender Studies and Women's Writing
Writing War
Colonial/Neocolonial Studies (Spain & Morocco)
Interdisciplinary Studies
Critical Theory and Intellectual History
Research

Fields: Modern and Contemporary (18th-21st Century) Spanish Literature.

  • Short Fiction (short story, micro-fiction);
  • Writing the Self (epistolarity, life-writing, diaries, autofiction);
  • Transnational Topics (Travel Writing, Hispano-Moroccan relations, neocolonialism, migration, Moroccan literature in Spanish;
  • Writing War (Spanish War of Independence, Carlists Wars, the War of Africa, the Rif Wars); 
  • Gender Studies and Women's Writing;
  • Interdisciplinary Studies (art history and literature, literature and music);
  • Critical Theory and Intellectual History.

UK Affiliations: War and Gender, an interdisciplinary research work group.

Interests: Fiction writing (short story).

Recent seminars: Realisms, War & Gender, Travel Writing, Teatro: de Moratín a Valle-Inclán, Realism and Naturalism, The Short Story & Micro-Fiction, Costumbrismo, The Age of Enlightenment, The Rise of Realism, The Aesthetics of Drama in Contemporary Spain, Travel Writing in Hispanic Literature, 19th-Century Drama and the Romantic Subject,  Epistolarity, Introduction to Hispanic Studies.

Recent undergraduate courses: Food Cultures in the Hispanic World, Contemporary Women Writers, Carmen in Franco-Hispanic Literature & Music (IS), Introduction to Hispanic Literature, The Myth of Don Juan in Western Literature, From the Age of Enlightenment to Romanticism, Short Fiction in Hispanic Literature.

My work in progress includes (1) Fictions of Conflict, a book-length study on the problem of writing war that draws on fictional and non-fictional accounts of the War of Africa (1859-60), (2) a book-length study on travel writing and the absurd, and (3) two book editions.

Honors, Awards and Grants

RECENT HONORS: 2021-2026, William T. Bryan Endowed Chair; 2015-2020, John E. Keller Endowed Chair in the Literature, Culture and Linguistics of Spain; 2014-15 Distinguished Professor in the College of Arts & Sciences for her research, teaching, and service/administration.

RECENT TEACHING AWARDS: 2013 Teacher Who Made a Difference (UK's College of Education); 2012 Great Teacher Award (UK´s Alumni Association. She has also been honored with the prestigious Kemper Award for Excellence in Teaching.

SELECT RESEARCH AWARDS & GRANTS: 2016 Hispanex (Ministerio de Educación, Cultura y Deporte, Spain) for Minificción y nanofilología: Latitudes de la hiperbrevedad (2017). El retorno/El reencuentro: La inmigración en la literatura hispano-marroquí (2010) was Book of the Week by Radio Exterior de España, September 16, 2010. In 2007 she received a Major Research Award from the University of Kentucky, and a National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) Summer Award for a component of her book project Fictions of Conflict in 2006.She is also the recipient of a National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) for her book Cartas sin lacrar (2001), among other honors and grants.

Selected Publications:

Books

STUDIES:

La Guerra de África de 1859-1860. Moldes literarios para el imaginario español (manuscript completed).

Cartas sin lacrar: La novela epistolar y la España Ilustrada, 1789-1840 (Iberoamericana/Vervuert, 2001) offers the first comprehensive study of a previously forgotten literary genre. It documents and analyzes more than forty novels of both the Enlightenment and the Romantic periods written in the form of letters that, despite their considerable popularity at the time, remain unknown even to specialists in the field. The book has become a standard reference in the field. (ISBN: 84 848 9018 X)

Pigmalión y Galatea: Refracciones modernas de un mito (Fundamentos, 1998) provides an interdisciplinary and comparative study of how writers in both the nineteenth and twentieth centuries have refashioned this self-reflexive myth of the artist. The book begins with a preliminary discussion of Ovid's Metamorphoses, not only to establish historical and critical context, but also to stage an alternately complementary and conflicted dialogue between Ovid´s text and the aesthetic theories that the Pygmalion-Galathea myth has generated since the Romantic period. In keeping with the book´s comparative interest, Rueda analyzes such authors as Bécquer, Galdós, Gómez de la Serna, Alarcón, Torrado, Grau, Quiles, Resino, Arrabal, Vázquez Montalbán, and Isabel-Clara Simó in relation to those by such other European and American authors as Poe, Merimée, Hoffman, Hawthorne, Balzac, Pushkin, Shaw, Capec, Landolfi, Oates and Petry. (ISBN: 84 245 0784 3)

Relatos desde el vacío. Un nuevo espacio crítico para el cuento actual (Orígenes, 1992) explores the short story in Spain from 1970 to 1985, particularly as influenced by Latin American masters of the genre. This book constructs a new theoretical model for the genre as it discusses short story collections by such Spanish authors as Javier del Amo, Rafael Dieste, Ricardo Doménech, José Ferrer-Bermejo, José Ángel Valente, Carmen Martín Gaite, and Enrique Vila-Matas, among others. (ISBN: 84 7825 061 1).

 

CRITICAL EDITIONS:

Ahmed Daoudi's El diablo de Yudis. Edición crítica. Constantin C. Icleanu and Ana Rueda (Stockcero, 2022). El diablo de Yudis (The Devil of Yudis) by Moroccan author Ahmed Daoudi (1965-) is a critical edition and study of the novel by Constantin C. Icleanu and Ana Rueda.

Vicenta Maturana, novelista. Teodoro o el huérfano agradecido y Sofía y Enrique (Biblioteca decimonónica, 2021) is a critical edition of  the two novels written by Vicenta Maturana (1793-1859), prefaced by a 65-page study of the author's contributions to the pre-romantic novelistic tradition.

Minificción y nanofilología: Latitudes de la hiperbrevedad (Iberoamericana-Vervuert, 2017) is a critical edition that gathers select proceedings from the VIII International Conference on Microfiction held at the University of Kentucky in October 2014. Beyond the proceedings, the books offers a Brief Atlas of Microfiction written by specialists in the following countries/regions: Portugal and Brasil, Haiti and Other French Antilles, Italy, Rumania, Hungary, Greece, and Island. The book is prefaced by Rueda's introduction, "Perspectivas actuales para la minificción: Un balance."

El retorno/El reencuentro: La inmigración en la literatura hispano-marroquí (Cátedra Miguel Delibes; Iberoamericana-Vervuert, 2010) is a critical edition that gathers recent literary expressions (2000-2010) on the topic of migration by Spanish and Moroccan writers. It includes a theoretical introduction, an analysis of the texts selected, suggestions for teaching, and a bibliography on the topic of migration in literature, criticism, film, and music. It is written with the collaboration of Sandra Martín. (ISBN: 978 84 8489 504 6)

Irene y Clara o la madre imperiosa (Universidad de Salamanca, 2003) is the first modern edition and study of an epistolary novel by Vicente Salvá. This critical edition locates the lost 1830 edition of the novel, compares it to subsequent editions available in Spain, and establishes the dual authorship of the text (Salvá collaborated with Gómez Hermosilla in the adaptation of a lost original). As the first in-depth study of this novel, it helps put into perspective Spain´s forgotten contribution to a genre --the epistolary novel-- that reached its peak in 18th-century England, France, and Germany. This novel also establishes an important link between the Age of Enlightenment and the Romantic and Realist novelistic practices of the Modern Period. (ISBN: 84 891 0937 0)

CREATIVE WRITING:

La agenda negra (Endymion, 2001), a collection of short stories, is Ana Rueda's personal contribution to the genre. (ISBN: 84 7731 382 2)

 

Book Chapters & Articles 

Ana Rueda has some 25 book chapters that explore the work by contemporary women writers from Spain, war and gender issues, and the Spanish Enlightenment, among other topics. She has also published several essay entries in encyclopedias.

Her articles, published in refereed academic venues such as Insula, Dieciocho, Bulletin of Hispanic Studies, Anales Galdosianos, and Revista de Estudios Hispánicos, among others, reflect research interests that span various periods, genres and critical traditions.

Some of her most recent essays/articles are:

“El drama de la mujer judía en las crónicas de la Guerra de África.” Centro de Estudios Africanos Universidad de Oporto, Portugal (CEAUP). Representaciones de Otredad en la literatura colonial española en África. Dir. Yasmina Romero Morales, 2023, pp. 77-108.

“Francisco de Goya’s ´Sleep of Reason´ and Other States of Somnolence.” The Enlightened Nightscape 1700-1830. Ed. Pamela Phillips. Routledge, 2023, pp. 172-191.

“El drama de la mujer judía en las crónicas de la Guerra de África.” Centro de Estudios Africanos Universidad de Oporto, Portugal (CEAUP). Representaciones de Otredad en la literatura colonial española en África, dirigido por Yasmina Romero Morales, 2023, pp. 77-108.

"A modo de prólogo: Cruising con Raúl Miranda." Relatos de viaje: Volumes 1-3. With the money de tous les chiliens: SCL-JFK-CDG e outros... Quinto Morza, 2021, pp. i-xv.

“Historias de cautiverios: Prisioneros y presidiarios en el contexto de la Guerra de África, 1859-1860.” Monograph on “Testimonios de lucha y resistencia: conflictos bélicos en la España del XIX.” Coord. by Jorge Avilés-Diz. Siglo Diecinueve nº 27, 2021, pp. 97-135.

“Orchestrating War: Burlesque Musical Pieces on the War of Africa (1859-60).” Dissonances of Modernity. Music, Text. and Performance in Modern Spain. Eds. Irene Gómez Castellanos & Aurelie Vialette. Chapel Hill: North Carolina Studies in the Romance Languages and Literatures, 2021, pp. 43-72.

“¿Dos o tres orillas? La manipulación massmediática en la narrativa marroquí en castellano”. Lenguas africanas en lenguas ibéricas. Actas del Primer Congreso Internacional de la Asociación Marroquí de Estudios Ibéricos e Iberoamericanos (Agadir y Sidi Ifni, 18-20 de abril de 2019). Abrighach, Mohamed (coord.). Coquimbo: AMEI/Centro Mohamed VI para el Diálogo de las Civilizaciones, 2021, pp. 89-108.“Los contornos de la orfandad en la tradición novelesca. El caso de Teodoro o El huérfano agradecido (1825) de Vicenta Maturana.” La invención de la infancia. Ed. Fernando Durán López. Cádiz: Editorial Universidad de Cádiz, 2020, pp. 681-707.

“Los contornos de la orfandad en la tradición novelesca. El caso de Teodoro o El huérfano agradecido (1825) de Vicenta Maturana.” La invención de la infancia. Ed. Fernando Durán López. Cádiz: Editorial Universidad de Cádiz, 2020, pp. 681-707.

“Widowhood at the Crossroads of Age and Gender in the Spanish Long Eighteenth Century.” Das achtzehnte Jahrhundert. Special Issue on “Intersections between age and gender in Enlightenment society.” Ed. by Hanna Nohe. Rheinische Friedrich- Wilhelms-Universität Bonn. Das achtzehnte Jahrhundert (2020), pp. 228-248.

“La Electra de Galdós y sus redes de conducción eléctrica.” Anales Galdosianos 54 (2019): 59-72.

"Seduction as Platform for Social Change in Eighteenth-Century Spanish Novels," Routledge Companion to the Spanish Enlightenment. Eds. Elizabeth Lewis, Catherine Jaffe and Mónica Bolufer, 2019. 126-141.

“La figura del renegado en la literatura del siglo XIX, El Moro Vizcaíno y su memoria viajera,” Espacios. Revista de la Asociación Marroquí de Estudios Ibéricos e Iberoamericanos, Núm. 1/2 (2018/2019):  75-95.

“The Squire as Hero: Sancho Panza in Eighteenth-Century Continuations of Don Quixote.” Dieciocho (Jan. 2017): 2-15 & 42-51. Part of a collaborative cluster titled “Quixotes and Quixotisms in the Hispanic Enlightenment” with Catherine M. Jaffe and Mark Malin. Dieciocho 40.1 (Spring 2017): 1-51.

" Perú como cripta: la falsa naturaleza en la novela americanista.” España y el continente americano en el siglo XVIII. Coords. Gloria Franco Rubio, Natalia González Heras, Elena Lorenzo Álvarez. Gijón, España: Ediciones Trea, S.L., 2017. 385-398 and 956-957.

“Las cantineras de las guerras modernas y el caso español: Más allá del pintoresquismo.” Monográfico Armas y faldas. Crítica Hispánica 2 (Dec. 2016): 1-37.

“Más allá del frente: Turismo de Guerra y Turismo Negro en las guerras hispano-marroquíes (1909-1927).” Nueva Literatura Hispánica (2016): 151-175.

“Perspectivas actuales para la minificción: Un balance.” Minificción y nanofilología: Latitudes de la hiperbrevedad. Ed. Ana Rueda. Madrid-Frankfurt: Iberoamericna-Vervuert, 2016. 11-30.

 

Recent conference papers include:

"La Numancia inverosímil de José López de Sedano: la magia en la reconstrucción del espíritu nacional del dieciocho". Congreso Asociación Internacional de Hispanistas (AIH), Neuchâtel, Switzerland, July 10-15, 2023.

"El ´problema´ de Marruecos desde la perspectiva galdosiana". Encuentro Internacional: Vigencia de Galdós en la España del siglo XXI. Centro Internacional Antonio Machado (CIAM), Soria, España, 21-14 julio, 2022.

“Contornos de la orfandad. El caso de Vicenta Maturana y Teodoro o El huérfano agradecido”. XIX Encuentro de la Ilustración al Romanticismo: La invención de la infancia, Cádiz, Spain, October 2019. Keynote speaker.

Roundtable on “Hispanic Identities of the Enlightenment,” organized by Dr. Catherine Jaffe for International American Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies (ISECS). Participants: Mónica Bolufer, Clorinda Donato, Mariselle Meléndez, Mehl Penrose, Ana Rueda, Karen Stolley. Edinburgh, Scotland, 14-19 July 2019.

Roundtable on “Passion, Emotion, and Affects: Concepts in Dialogue,” organized by Dr. Joel Sodano for American Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies (ASECS), 48th Annual Meeting. Participants: Aleksondra Hultquist, Stockton University; Radhika Koul, Stanford University; Jean Marsden, University of Connecticut; Adam Potkay, College of William and Mary; Ana Rueda, University of Kentucky. Orlando, Florida, March, 2018.

“Recuerdos marroquíes (1868) del ‘Moro vizcaíno’ y los usos del diario de viajes.” Session: “El relato de viajes hispánico de los siglos XIX al XXI,” organized by Dr. Javier Torre. IX Congreso Internacional Humboldt, Mérida, Yucatán, México, November 2018.

“Convents in Flames: Sexual Encounters and the Ruse of Letters in Spanish Romantic Novels.” Panel on Eighteenth-Century Habits: Nuns in Fact and Fiction, in the Cloister and Beyond. American Society of Eighteenth-Century Studies (ASECS): Minneapolis, 30 March-1 April 2017. 2.               

“Perú como cripta: la falsa naturaleza en la novela americanista.” VI Congreso Internacional de la Sociedad Española de Estudios del Siglo XVIII. Madrid, Spain, 24-26 October, 2016.

“Amor en guerra: Cruces de género y genéricos en la novela sobre la Guerra de la Independencia de España.” IXI Congreso de la Aosicación Internacional de Hispanistas. Münster, Germany, 11-17 July, 2016.

“Goya’s ‘Sleep of Reason’ and Other States of Somnolence.” Panel: Sleeping Through the Long Eighteenth Century. American Society of Eighteenth-Century Studies. Pittsburgh, PA, April, 2016.