Contact details
- Name:
- Professor Cláudia Pazos Alonso
- Position:
- CCWW International Advisory Board - Professor in Portuguese and Gender Studies (Wadham College, Oxford)
- Institute:
- Institute of Languages Cultures and Societies
- Email address:
- Claudia.PazosAlonso@sas.ac.uk
- Website:
- https://ilcs.sas.ac.uk/people/professor-claudia-pazos-alonso
Research Summary and Profile
- Research interests:
- Gender studies, Language and Literature (Portuguese)
- Summary of research interests and expertise:
-
Profile
Cláudia Pazos Alonso's research interests centre on women's writing, gender representations in the public sphere, and the role of literature in the formation of national and postcolonial identities. She is one of the editors of the series Reconfiguring Identities in the Portuguese-Speaking World for Peter Lang. She is perhaps best known for her contribution to A Companion to Portuguese Literature (2009) and its sister volume, Reading literature in Portuguese (2013). Alonso's first monograph concentrated on the poetry of Florbela Espanca. A contemporary of the phenomenon of Fernando Pessoa, her voice was often overlooked both in her lifetime and during Salazar’s dictatorship. A bilingual anthology of Espanca’s powerful poetry entitled This Sorrow that Lifts Me Up, appeared in 2022. Her second book, co-written with Hilary Owen, provides an overview of Portuguese women's writing across the 20th century, and includes chapters on two major living writers, Lídia Jorge and Hélia Correia. Alonso's third monograph stretches back in time to the 19th century to uncover the fascinating story of the bilingual Francisca Wood, a prominent journalist who fought for women’s rights before the word feminism was in common usage. Her current project broadens her 19th-century expertise by looking at the Black Atlantic. It will bring into conversation key literary works -- from Brazil, the Cape Verde islands and Portugal -- in order to explore how the literature of the period deals with the trauma of slavery.