Francisco Cantero Soriano, Spanish and Portuguese

Name:

Francisco Cantero Soriano

Title:

Assistant Professor of Spanish

Department:

Spanish and Portuguese

Describe your research in about 200 words.

 My research lies at the intersections of poetics, exile studies, queer theory, and visual culture, with a focus on twentieth-century Spanish literature and culture under Francoism. I examine how queer bodies materialize through poetic form in the literature of Spanish Republican exile, paying attention to the linguistic, rhetorical, and formal mechanisms through which embodiment acquires ethical and political force. In the current AI era, I am especially interested in how close reading and sustained attention to literary and visual form generate new modes of knowledge production and open alternative ways of understanding embodiment, desire, visibility, and belonging towards democracy. Translation is also central to my work, both as a scholarly method and a creative practice. As founder and director of ÍMPETU, I develop collaborations between scholarship, translation, and artistic practice.

What’s the most interesting thing you have learned from a student?

I learn from my students every day. Our classroom is a space where we debate, question, and reflect on the world together, and their perspectives continually reshape my own.