Dr Ryan is a specialist in collective and cultural memory in Contemporary Spain with a particular focus on el boom de la memoria, the enormous paradigm shift in Spanish mnemonic culture since the mid-1990s. Her publications to date have focused on what she termed empowerment, in effect, the literary strategies designed to reconceptualise the defeated Republicans as active agents, struggling to maintain a coherent identity in post-war Spain.
Accordingly, her work has explored the cultural representation of the relationship between spatial expressions of the Francoist collective ideology and the preservation of a repressed Republican counter-memory in the post-war period, as well as the adult rationalisation of postmemory. She is also concerned with theoretical aspects of memory, particularly forms of individual resistance to dominant memory narratives, as well as the interaction between cosmopolitan and national memory narratives.
Dr Ryan is currently working on two projects, the first of which is a literary historiography of the Spanish memory boom, while the second is a multidisciplinary study of the transformation in Spanish memory culture since the mid-1990s.
Presentation of Papers
Dr. Ryan has presented twenty-five conference papers during her academic career to date. Her most recent include the following:
The Externalisation of Spanish National Memory. Memory and Exile Research Group, University of Birmingham, March 2012.
Discussant. Memory Studies Workshop. University of Birmingham, June, 2012.
Familial Memory and the Recuperation of Historical Memory in Contemporary Spain. Association of Contemporary Iberian Studies Conference. Kings College London. September 2012.
Beyond Postmemory: Rethinking Motivation in Contemporary Spanish Cultural Studies. Researching the Spanish Civil War: Trends and Issues. University of Warwick, February, 2013.
Discussant. Research roundtable, Department of Modern Languages. March, 2013.
Membership of Professional Organisations
Association of Hispanists of Great Britain and Ireland.
Women in Spanish and Portuguese Studies.
Single-Authored Monograph
Memory and Spatiality in Post-Millennial Spanish Narrative (Under Review).
Articles in peer reviewed journals
Alternative Mother Figures in the Narrative Fiction of Almudena Grandes. (Submitted).
Illusory Liberalism in Atlas de Geografía Humana. Hispania (Forthcoming).
Urban Agression and the Violation of Domestic Space in Alberto Méndez's Los girasoles ciegos. Bulletin of Spanish Studies (Forthcoming).
Deep Memory and the Impossibility of Civil Resistance in Alfons Cervera's Maquis. Hispanic Research Journal. (Forthcoming).
Cosmopolitan Memory and National Memory Conflicts: On the Dynamics of their Interaction. Journal of Sociology. (Forthcoming).
The Development of Child Subjectivity in La lengua de las mariposas. Hispania 95:3 (2012): 447-459.
Memory, Power and Resistance: The Anatomy of a Tripartite Relationship. Memory Studies 4: 2 (2011):154-169.
The Empowerment of Republican Postmemory in Alfons Cervera’s El color del crepúsculo. Modern Language Review 106:1 (2011): 130-148.
The Enactment of Resistance: Hidden and Public Transcripts in Alfons Cervera´s el ciclo de la memoria. Romance Studies 29:1 (2011): 30-43.
A Reconfigured Cultural Memory and the Resolution of Postmemory in Alfons Cervera’s Aquel Invierno. Hispanic Research Journal, 11: 4 (2010): 323-337.
The Sins of the Father: The Destruction of the Republican Family in Franco’s Spain. History of the Family: an International Quarterly, 14: 3(2009): 245-252.
Terms of Empowerment: Setting, Spatiality and Resistance in Dulce Chacón’s Cielos de Barro and Carlos Ruíz Zafón’s La Sombra del Viento. CLUES: A Journal of Detection, 27:2 (2009): 95-108.
Chapters in edited books
"Social Trauma and Motherhood in Post Civil War Spain", in Marina Betagglio (ed.), Mothers and Motherhood in the Spanish-Speaking World.
“Catharsis and Confrontation: Post Millennial Memory Culture in Contemporary Spain”, in Niamh Thornton and Kathy Bacon (eds.), The Noughties in the Hispanic and Lusophone Worlds (Cambridge Scholars Press: Newcastle-upon-Tyne, 2012), pp. 106-129.
“Familial Trauma in Post Transition Spain: Memory and Reconcilation through Generations”, in Bruno Charbonneau and Genévieve Parent (eds.), Peacebuilding, Memory and Reconciliation: Bridging Bottom-up and Top-Down Approaches (Routledge: New York, 2011), pp. 56-74.
“When the Personal is Political: The Formation of a Republican Mnemonic Community in Alfons Cervera’s La noche inmóvil”, in Alison Ribeiro de Menezes and Catherine O´Leary (eds.), Legacies of War and Dictatorship: Essays on Cultural Memory in Spanish and Portugese Literature (Peter Lang, Iberian and Latin American Studies: the Arts, Literature and Identity: Oxford, 2011), pp. 169-187.
“All Turbulent on the Home Front: Unfulfilled Working Mothers in Almudena Grandes´ Atlas de Geografía Humana”, in Tiffany Trotman (ed.), The Changing Spanish Family: Essays on New Views in Literature, Theatre and Cinema (McFarland: North Carolina, 2011) pp. 40-58.
“Irish National Memory and Multiculturalism”, in Oona Frawley (ed.), Memory Ireland: Explorations in Celtic Memory, Volume One: History and Modernity (Syracuse University Press: New York, 2011 ) pp. 207-217.
“For Whom the Dominant Memory Tolls: The Suppression and Re-Emergence of Republican Memory in Contemporary Spanish society”, in Laura Rorato and Anna Saunders (eds.), The Essence and the Margin: National Identities and Collective Memories in Contemporary European Memory Culture (Rodopi: Amsterdam, 2009), pp. 119-135.
“Nada más que un espejismo: la inquieta realidad de la modernidad española a través de los relatos La buena hija de Almudena Grandes y La hija predilecta de Soledad Puértolas”, in Cinta Ramblado (ed.), Construcciones culturales de la maternidad en España. La madre y la relación madre-hija en la literatura y el cine contemporáneos (Editorial Universidad de Alicante: Alicante, 2006) pp. 45-63.
“A Case Apart: The Evolution of Spanish Feminism”, in Rebecca Phelan (ed.), Feminisms Within and Without (Women’s Studies Centre, University College Galway, 2006), pp. 56-68.
“The Aberration that Dare not Speak its Name: The Unloving Mother-Daughter Relationship in Esther Tusquet’s “Carta a la Madre”, in Nuala Finnegan and Martin Veiga (eds.), Reading Spanish and Latin American Literatures: New Directions in Research (Department of Hispanic Studies: University College Cork, 2006), pp. 62-74.