QMUL English Postgraduate Research Seminar: Dr. Valentina Aparicio

Venue: Room 104, Graduate Centre, Mile End campus - map here

This paper focuses on the friendships the Romantic traveller Maria Graham established with South American women in Chile and Brazil. A well-studied figure in South America, Graham was a prolific travel writer who provided some of the only remaining women-authored descriptions of life in the region during the Spanish American independences in the 1820s. Through an analysis of three different relationships with South American women in her journals, this paper explores how Graham’s portrayals of ‘friendship’ were determined by the way she understood the race and class of her interlocutors. How did her preconceptions of gender, race, and class impact her ability to engage with women in her travels? Did she experience any transformation in her views through these friendships? How are these transformations expressed (or not) in her writing? Apart from looking into her Brazilian and Chilean journals, this paper will also showcase original research linked to a recent archival visit to the National Library of Brazil where I was able to access the private correspondence between Graham and the Brazilian Empress Maria Leopoldina.

Valentina Aparicio is a Lecturer in Romanticism at Queen Mary University of London. Valentina’s research explores Romantic British, Latin American, and Caribbean literary exchanges. Her current research focuses on Scottish women travellers who visited South America, analysing their friendships with local women and how they portrayed gender, race, and class. In connection to this project, she recently visited the National Library of Brazil with the support of a Carl H. Pforzheimer Research Grant. She is also currently working towards the publication of her first monograph on Robert Southey’s Latin American and Caribbean Works. Her work has recently been published in European Romantic Review and Essays in Romanticism.

Host or Publisher QMUL PGRS