Susan Mooney

Professor, Comparative Literature
Director of the Graduate Certificate of Comparative Literary Studies

CONTACT

Office: CPR 301-N
Phone: 813-974-9504
Email
Fall 2023 Office Hours: via Teams, Tuesday and Thursday 12:00-1:30 pm; email in advance to set up an advising appointment or if you need the Teams link, or alternative day/time.

BIO

Greetings! I specialize in narratives, gender and sexuality, affect and emotions, intersectionality, LGBTQIA2S+, film, film theory and semiotics, psychoanalysis, contemporary and twentieth-century literatures and film in English (by Irish, English, American, African American, Latinx, Canadian, and Indigenous writers and filmmakers), Spanish (Peninsular and Latin American), French, and Russian, modernism and postmodernism.

BOOKS

  •  Palgrave, 2022. Print ISBN 978-3030991456. eBook ISBN 978-3-030-99146-3

Despite some hype, men are not masters of master narratives. In this book, I show how, with the eclipse of the traditional male hero, modern world writers and filmmakers, feminist or not, provide diverse male-centered narratives that foreground intersubjectivity, affects, and ethics.

  •  Ohio State UP, 2008. ISBN 978-0-8142-1082-6.

Literature under censorship does not always get "repressed.鈥� Certain landmark progressive World writers of the twentieth-century鈥擩oyce, Nabokov, Mart铆n Santos, Erofeev鈥攃hanneled the forces of censorship to embed them thematically and in narrative forms in their novels. I examine four modernist and postmodernist novels that prompted in their day harsh external censorship because of their sexual content鈥�Ulysses, Lolita, Time of Silence, and Russian Beauty. My study reveals the impact of censorship on literary creation, and shows how sexuality is always already politicized.

RECENT PUBLICATIONS

  • 鈥淏lindly Paternal: Undoing a Male Gaze through Disability and Trauma in Almod贸var鈥檚 Los abrazos rotos.鈥� Under review at Bulletin of Contemporary Hispanic Studies.
  •  Bulletin of Spanish Studies, vol 98, no 7 (2021): pp. 1133-1163. DOI: 10.1080/14753820.2021.1938830 路
  •  Joyce Studies Annual 2017: 220-255. E-ISSN: 1538-4241 Print ISSN: 1049-0809. 路
  • Quarterly Review of Film and Video 33.6 (August-September 2016): 529-49. Journal ISSN 1543-5326. DOI:10.1080/10509208.2015.1089090.

I鈥檓 currently writing a third monograph, The Success of the Censored in Franco鈥檚 Spain: The Political Purposes of Spanish Literature, Engaged Authorship, and Sex

This monograph explores the impact of censorship in Franco's Spain (1938-1975) and the transition (1975-1983) on Spanish literature through archival research of censorship files, interviews with prominent progressive writers, and critical analyses of selected works. 2 chapters written. Chapter 1 is partly represented by my published 2021 article 鈥淭he Counter-Nostalgia Front against Spanish Censorship.鈥� Two and half chapters out of four written. This project has been partly funded by Spain鈥檚 Ministry of Culture and USF鈥檚 Humanities Institute.

The project includes research I conducted in Spanish archives storing literary, theater and film censorship files kept by censors of Franco鈥檚 era:

  • , Alcal谩 de Henares, Madrid, Spain
  • Interviews with an array of distinguished Spanish writers

My book shows how Spanish authors deployed multifaceted, creative ways鈥攅ven in the most repressive years of censorship鈥攖o offer publicly challenging versions of Spain that defied the government鈥檚 monolithic view of the country and society. This sustained creative effort elevated Spanish literature to one of the world鈥檚 most acclaimed.

TEACHING AND ADVISING

I teach advanced undergraduate and graduate courses, Honors seminars, and general education course.

I invite advising inquiries from current and prospective students whose research interests intersect in some way with my areas of expertise. I supervise work at the doctoral, masters, and honors levels. Drop me an email and let鈥檚 talk!

Dissertations, portfolios, and theses by students I鈥檝e supervised have included studies on 19C, 20C, and contemporary Irish, British, American, African American, Latinx, Indigenous, Spanish, French, and Russian literatures and film, and topics have included masculinity, feminist theory, postmodernism, dystopias, emotions, totalitarian systems, narratives about enslavement, asylums, mourning, beauty, place, postcolonialism, psychoanalysis, narrative theories, trauma, poetry, the novel, the Bildungsroman, and more. Authors of focus have included Joyce, Beckett, Goytisolo, Matute, Zora Neale Hurston, Junot D铆az, Ralph Ellison, Nabokov, Yeats, Lady Gregory, Wilde, Woolf, Zamiatin, Platonov, Morrison, Ellison, McCarthy, DeLillo, Atwood, Allende, Coetzee, and more.

In 2007, I received USF's Outstanding Undergraduate Teaching Award.

GRADUATE CERTIFICATE OF COMPERATIVE LITERARY STUDIES

For information regarding the Graduate Certificate of Comparative Literary Studies, see the  and USF鈥檚 Office of Graduate Certificates (for the forms and procedures), and contact me via email, where you can drop me a line to set up an advising time. I鈥檓 currently holding office hours and one-on-one student appointments using Teams.

I advise applicants to the Comparative Literature Graduate Certificate and all students registered in the program. Current USF graduate students in English and other disciplines (e.g., Philosophy; World Languages; History; School of Interdisciplinary Studies; Anthropology; Sociology, Psychology; Education and more) and non-degree seeking students who have completed an undergraduate degree may apply.