Research Statement
My name is Christiane Alcantara and I am a PhD Candidate in Comparative Literature at
Purdue University. Throughout my career in academia I have been interested in researching how
female oppression and female agency are represented in literature and mass production media
such as TV and films. In my M.A. I investigated how rape and trauma caused by dictatorial
regimes can impact the lives of women. In that study I analyzed two novels, one by the
Dominican author Loida Maritza Pérez entitled Geographies of Home and Breath, Eyes,
Memories, a novel by Edwidge Danticat, a Haitian-American writer. Using a comparative
approach I demonstrated that the violence of rape and the violence of dictatorships indirectly
affects not only the victim of abuse, but also other female members from the family. I also show
that victims may identify with their aggressors and perpetrate violence if these women are not
empowered with sisterhood and knowledge of their bodies and if they do not challenge the
patriarchal system.
My current research analyzes beauty as a polyvalent signifier disseminating multiple
meanings in different social contexts. My Ph.D. research has identified a chiasmus in the
movement of beauty from mind to body in novels by Jorge Amado, a 20th century Brazilian
author, and Jane Austen. I demonstrate that Amado focuses on his characters’ corporeal aspects
because beauty, for this author, will be emphasized by the woman’s body and it is through their
body that women will find agency. I also show that Austen wants to prove that women have
intellectual capacity, thus her novels emphasize intelligence over physical beauty. However, I
also believe that these authors cannot rely solely on one side of the dichotomy. If the mind and
body are interconnected to form the individual, then these novels demonstrate that it is not only
the materiality of the body or the smartness of a character, but rather that a mixture of these
elements will best represent what was considered attractive in each author’s time period and
location. My multidisciplinary methodology follows recent work in cognitive sciences,
philosophy and history. The two authors I have chosen to compare together provide excellent
examples of social and cultural interactions in different times and places which can help readers
understand the historical moment when these authors lived and how the context may have
affected their thinking and writing. Since these authors expose and question the prevalent
oppressive patriarchal values of their times and culture, this work becomes relevant because it
provides an understanding of the complex relationships between beauty and female agency in
different contexts.
In the future I plan to continue investigating the representation of women and gender
issues in literature and how these issues reflect or mirror problems in society. In my next project
I want to analyze an issue that has appeared both in my investigation during the MA and Ph.D.
studies: the role of marriage in maintaining women under control in patriarchal societies as
represented in literature. My MA analysis of Danticat’s Breath, Eyes, Memory has shown that
the tests, tradition and marriage in Haitian society work together to keep women subservient to
men. My analysis of Austen’s novels has shown that marriage in 18th and 19th century England
was a woman’s way to achieve financial stability, and that women could only find financial
security in marriage. However, by getting married women are never emancipated because they
cannot pursue a career or inherit property. In both Danticat’s novel and in Austen’s novels we
see a cyclic relation between patriarchy, the importance of being a “proper woman” and marriage
and I would like to further explore this connection to understand if marriage contributes or
supports female oppression.
Another interesting aspect I would like to research that has appeared in both my MA and
PhD researches is female body image. I want to investigate a novel by the Argentinean writer
Fernanda Garcia Lao entitled Muerta de Hambre and a sequel of novels by Zimbabwean writer
Tsitsi Dangarembga, Nervous Conditions and The Book of Not. I want to understand what
prompts distorted body images in characters in these novels, how eating disorders affect the lives
of female characters and if eating disorders represent a struggle against patriarchy or if eating
disorders are portrayed as a means for the transgressive female character to conform to
patriarchal expectations. In this study I will rely on scholarship from multiple fields, including
medicine, genetics, psychology and history in order to understand the phenomenon of eating
disorders as experienced by the protagonists of these novels.