Bio

Elisenda Marcer Cortés obtained her doctorate at the University of Birmingham with a thesis on Gabriel Ferrater, published under the title Ressonàncies, veus i ecos en l'obra de Gabriel Ferrater (Arola 2013). Marcer is an Associate Professor of Catalan language and culture at the same university, where coordinates Catalan Studies and researches inter-artistic and transmedial relations in poetry and experimental cinema. She is co-author, together with Dr Helena Buffery, of The Historical Dictionary of the Catalans (Scarecrow 2011), and author of articles in peer-reviewed journals about Josep Palau i Fabre, Montserrat Abelló, Maria-Mercè Marçal, Miquel de Palol and more recently, on experimental cinema and ecocriticism. Together with Catalania Mir, Irene Mira-Navarro and Margalida Pons Jaume has co-edited the volume Mirades afectives sobre la cultura catalana contemporània (Edizioni Ca’Foscari 2023) linked to the PoAf project led by Dr Margalida Pons. Marcer has just edited the volume Culture in Exile: Comparative Perspectives on Nazi Germany and Francoist Spain, where she also contributes with a chapter on Catalan poets in exile and an introductory study (in press, Palgrave 2024). Currently, she is working on a book with the provisional title The vulnerability of the flesh: interpretations of the animal and human subject in contemporary Catalan culture.

Project

At Faberllull, she will investigate the interpretations of the animal and human subject in Catalan literature of the 80s and 90s, and the impact of affections when shaping them.

During these days she will focus on the analysis of the subversive and alternative subjectivities that appear in the literary work, both poetic and narrative, of Miquel de Palol from the perspective of critical posthumanism. Drawing inspiration from the theories of Rosi Braidiotti (2015; 2019) and Donna Haraway (2017), Marcer will explore the limits of anthropocentric thinking in Palol with the intention of evaluating the suitability of the chosen theoretical framework as a critical instrument capable of deepening -there and vindicate, at the same time, the links with the identities and identifications of the literary subject in the specific context of Catalan culture.