Dr Isabel Pérez-Ramos
Visiting Research Fellow, September - December 2023
ORCID iD: orcid.org/0000-0002-3532-5062
Isabel Pérez-Ramos, PhD, is a Ramón y Cajal research fellow (Grant RYC2021-031353-I funded by MCIN/AEI/ 10.13039/501100011033 and by “European Union NextGenerationEU/PRTR”) in English Studies at the University of Oviedo, Spain, and has previously been awarded the Juan de la Cierva Formación and Incorporación postdoctoral and research fellowships. Dr. Pérez-Ramos holds a doctoral degree from KTH, Royal Institute of Technology (Environmental Humanities Laboratory), Sweden, and her research interests include narrative representations of environmental injustices, mainly in Chicanx and US Southwestern literature, as well as in climate and dystopian fiction. She was affiliated as a researcher with The Seedbox: A Mistra-Formas Environmental Humanities Collaborative (Linköping University) and is currently part of the research project “World Travelling: Narratives of Solidarity and Coalition in Contemporary Writing and Performance” (SOLIDARITIES, grant PID2021-127052OB-I00 funded by MCIN/AEI/ 10.13039/501100011033 and by “ERDF A way of making Europe”), attached to the University of Oviedo. Her work has been published in edited volumes as well as academic journals such as MELUS: Multi-Ethnic Literature of the United States; International Journal of English Studies; Environmental Humanities; Resilience: A Journal of the Environmental Humanities; and Ecozon@: European Journal of Literature, Culture and Environment, and she has co-edited the bilingual volume Transatlantic Environmental Humanities/Humanidades Ambientales desde una Perspectiva Transatlántica (UAH 2021). She is a member of the multidisciplinary research groups Intersections: Contemporary Literatures, Cultures and Theories (University of Oviedo) and GIECO-Instituto Franklin (University of Alcalá). She serves on the advisory board of the European Association for the Study of Literature, Culture and Environment (EASLCE) and is book review editor of Ecozon@.
Project title: Decolonial solidarities and socioenvironmental change in/through Chicanx (speculative) fiction
The world suffers, as part of a broader and very complex environmental emergency, from a waste crisis, or in other words, an environmental justice crisis prompted by neoliberal/neocolonial interests. In this context, Marco Armiero has developed the concept of the Wasteocene. He not only argues that the accumulation of waste is a material reality, but that we live in a time of “wasting relationships producing wasted human and nonhuman beings, then wasted places, and wasted stories” (2021, 2). Furthermore, this relationship is more often than not a racialized one, tied to certain social groups and the geographical regions they inhabit, as the iconic report “Toxic Wastes and Race in the United States” (1987) already proved. This is moreover happening in a world ruled by what Laura Pulido, when looking at death rates derived from global warming issues, has termed “geographies of racial vulnerability” (2018).
This project seeks to analyze the ways in which decolonial solidarities are mobilized in North American literature and culture by Chicanx authors to challenge socio-environmental injustices derived from wasting relationships. The scope of the project is twofold. On the one hand, it explores the use of decolonial solidarity in Chicanx literature with an environmental justice dimension. On the other hand, it studies the construction and use of specific narrative techniques to convey a decolonial and ecological message to the readership. The research is structured around three main socioenvironmental problems: wasting, resource extraction, and climate change.