This book aims at connecting presentism with some decolonizing projects undertaken in the field of Chicana feminist theory, such as the one proposed by Emma Pérez in The Decolonial Imaginary (1999), where she encourages a revision of women’s role in history through a cultural and historical imaginary free from subjugation patterns. Presentism will therefore be proposed as a valuable interpretative tool for the decolonization of the imaginary in the domain of literature. For this purpose, irst it will be necessary to dissociate this concept from the cultural materialism from which it undoubtedly derives and link it to theories of aestheticism and reception. In the second part of this book, two works from the Chicana feminist corpus which show a clear attempt to decolonize the historical and sexual imaginary will be analysed in presentist terms: Sor Juana’s Second Dream (1999) by Alicia Gaspar de Alba, and Their Dogs Came with Them (2007) by Helena María Viramontes.
Envisioning a Decolonial Future: The Poetics of Presentism and Chicana Literature - 15,00€

Envisioning a Decolonial Future: The Poetics of Presentism and Chicana Literature
15,00€
Elsa del Campo obtained her PhD in Literary Studies in 2017, after spending a research year at the University of California Los Angeles (UCLA) thanks to a scholarship granted by the UCEAP program. She has been developing her research career since then, reconciling it with her role as an Associate Professor in Universidad Nebrija and Universidad Camilo José Cela. Her research interests lie in the area of Chicana feminist theory and literature, gender studies, and postmodernism. In 2014 she participated in the IX International Conference on Women’s Studies, and her article was subsequently published in the Women’s Studies Collection, Vol. IX, by Fundamentos.