PhD 2001 University of Toronto, Spanish and Portuguese
MA 1996 University of Toronto, Spanish and Portuguese
BA (Honours) 1995 University of Toronto, Universidad de Granada, Spain (1993-1994)
CRISTINA SANTOS research interests focus on sexuality and gender studies from an intersectional feminist perspective in the construct of monstrous women from an interdisciplinary and multi-cultural approach as seen in literature, film, television, popular culture, and mythology. She also investigates the construct of political and social deviance and trauma in life narratives as the construction of a personal and communal sense of identity that challenges official history and patriarchy.
In Unbecoming Female Monsters: Witches, Vampires and Virgins (2016) she explores to the concept of female monstrosity as representative of a marginalized, denied, silenced, and censored feminine sexuality. Her most recent book in Interdisciplinary Gender Studies, Untaming Girlhoods: Storytelling Female Adolescence (2023), looks specifically at female adolescence and the processes of socialization and individuation in identity building for young girls in contemporary contexts that impede, classify, proscribe, and censor non-normative female identities.
Her current SSHRC funded project, (Re)appearing the Desaparecidos: Testimonial Mural Art and Intergenerational Trauma of the Argentinean Dictatorship (1976-1983) focuses on the authenticity of human experience of trauma, memory, and life vis-à-vis voices of past political prisoners and intergenerational testimonies of the disappeared.
Books
Untaming Girlhoods: Storytelling Female Adolescence. Abington, UK: Routledge, 2023.
The Turn to Testimony: Engaging Common Ground. Santos, Cristina, Adriana Spahr, and Tracy Crowe Morey, eds. Leiden: Brill Publishing, 2019.
Unbecoming Female Monsters: Witches, Vampires and Virgins. Lanham, KY: Lexington Press. 2016.
Virgin Envy: The Cultural (In)significance of the Hymen. Eds. Jonathan A. Allan, Cristina Santos and Adriana Spahr. Regina: University of Regina Press, 2016. UK release with Kings Cross, England: Zed Publishers, 2016. (Korean translation by Translator Lee Hye-Gyeong. Chaeksesang Publishers, 2019.)
Selected Articles
Santos, Cristina and Sarah Revilla-Sanchez. “La Llorona Hauntings: Storytelling Feminicide at the Purgatorial Mexico/US Border.” #TimeToLeave: Female Identity in Fictional Purgatorial Worlds From 1985 to 2020. Ed. Simon Bacon. Bloomsbury Publishers. 55-68.
“La Llorona (Various, 2006-2019)—Mexican Undead.” The Undead in the 21st Century: A Companion. Ed. Simon Bacon. New York: Peter Lang. pp. 27-35
“Horror as Real and the Real as Horror: Ghosts of the Desaparecidos in Argentina.” Special Issue: Endangered Citizenship: Crime, End of the World and Biopolitics in Postcolonial Literatures and Cinema. Ed. Gaia Giuliani. e-cadernos CES 32 (2019): 29-45. https://journals.openedition.org/eces/4723
Graduate (MA Studies in Comparative Literature and the Arts)
SCLA 5P73 Witches, Vampires and Virgins: The Monstrous Representation of Women
Graduate (PhD in Interdisciplinary Humanities)
HUMA 7P52 Feminist Thought: Constructive Revisions of the Canon
Undergraduate
PORT 1F00 Introductory Portuguese
PORT 1F90 Intermediate Portuguese
SPAN 1F00 Introductory Spanish
SPAN 1F90 Intermediate Spanish
SPAN 2P95 Latin American and Iberian Film
SPAN 3P98 Contemporary Chronicle and Testimonial Writing
SPAN 3F80 Im/migrant and Community Outreach Internship
SPAN 4P01 Latin American Women’s Perspectives [WSGS 4P01]
SPAN 4P60 Women in Hispanic Literature: Witches, Vampires, and Virgins [WSGS 4P60]
SPAN 4F80 Im/migrant and Community Outreach Research and Internship
“Identity and Trauma.” Foreword. Podcast interview with Alison Innes. 29 July 2021.
“Myth, Murder, and Monstrosity: Mother(hood)s in the Mexican Cultural Imaginary.” thenightsofhorror.com https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c93CxA_TKDk
Speaker Series: Diaspora Inter-Crossings Speaker Series – Founding Joint-Coordinator with Lisa Paul, Cristina Santos, Dawn Zinga
The Speaker Series builds on a history of successful engagement of diasporic research by the Brock University colleagues launching this project in 2014– from Humanities to Social Sciences, Education and Health Sciences. The Series is an attempt to celebrate, promote and support diaspora researchers, cutting-edge research and far-reaching community engagement that guides the Univ. in “in responding effectively to the changing environment in research opportunities.”
Community Outreach Course “Im/migrant and Community Outreach Internship” with Cristina Santos, (2015-)
- Brock to host the Niagara Forum on Migrant Worker Issues (The forum is hosted by the Canadian Council for Refugees and the Niagara Migrant Workers Interest Group, and sponsored by the Brock University Im/Migrant Community Outreach Internship course)
https://brocku.ca/brock-news/2017/11/brock-to-host-migrant-worker-forum/ - https://brocku.ca/brock-news/2017/08/experiential-brock-course-aims-to-inspire-social-consciousness/
- https://brocku.ca/brock-news/2015/12/outreach-course-connects-with-migrant-workers/
- http://www.brocku.ca/blogs/humanities/2016/11/09/program-profile-immigrant-and-community-outreach/
- https://brocku.ca/brock-news/2017/08/experiential-brock-course-aims-to-inspire-social-consciousness/
- http://www.brockpress.com/2016/03/spanish-department-pioneers-service-learning-courses-for-faculty-of-humanities/