I am an associate professor at Stony Brook University. My career began in France, where I obtained a DEA in Spanish civilization at the Sorbonne and a diplôme de Fin d’Etudes (piano) at the Conservatoire National de Musique (Mantes-la-jolie); and continued at the University of California, Berkeley, where I earned a PhD in Hispanic Languages and Literatures. I am an international scholar and a dedicated professor.

I have extensive professional experience as a university professor and have held tenure track positions at Stony Brook University, where I am currently teaching, and at The Ohio State University. I have also been a visiting professor at Columbia University, The University of Texas at Austin, and Cornell University.

My book, Intellectual Philanthropy: the Seduction of the Masses, was published by Purdue University Press in 2018 and is the recipient of the North American Catalan Society Prize for Outstanding Work in the Field of Catalan Studies (2019). My volume on music and literature Dissonances of Modernity: Music, Text, and Performance in Modern Spain (co-edited with Irene Gómez-Castellano) is forthcoming at North Carolina University Press . Finally, my current book-length project is titled Disposable Bodies: Penal Colony, Race and Biopolitics in the Carceral Archipelago. The book is in progress.

I publish internationally in English, Spanish, French and Catalan. My research has an international impact, as I study the culture and history of countries such as Spain, México, and Cuba, and also the political relationships between Catalonia, the US and Cuba in the nineteenth century. The research experience that I have gathered throughout the years has allowed me to build a strong international reputation. That is why I have been part of international research groups such as the CSIC (Consejo Superior de Investigación Científica) in Madrid, the “grupo de estudio interdisciplinario sobre las relaciones entre literatura y música” and the “Grup d’Estudi de Literatura Catalana Contemporània” (gelcc), both at the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona.

In my first book, Intellectual Philanthropy: The Seduction of the Masses (Purdue University Press, 2018, visit Purdue's website), I focus on the cultural production that responds to the workers’ educational and social phenomena, such as poverty, the rise of revolutionary movements, and the integration of masses of workers into the cultural, political, and social concert in 19th-century Iberia (Catalonia, Basque Country, Asturias, Galicia). This book will be translated into Spanish and published by Ediciones Akal. 

Dissonances of Modernity (forthcoming at North Carolina University Press, visit NCUP website) illuminates the ways in which music, as an artifact, a practice, and a discourse redefines established political, social, gender, and cultural conventions in Modern Spain. Using the notion of dissonance as a point of departure, the volume builds on the insightful approaches to the study of music and society offered by previous analyses in regards to the central position they give to identity as a socially and historically constructed concept, and continues their investigation on the interdependence of music and society in the Iberian Peninsula. While other serious studies of the intersections of music and literature in Spain have focused on contemporary usage, Dissonances of Modernity looks back across the centuries, seeking the role of music in the very formation of identity in the peninsula. The volume’s historical horizon reaches from the nineteenth-century War of Africa to the Catalan working class revolutions and Enric Granados’ central role in Catalan identity; from Francisco Barbieri’s Madrid to the Wagnerian’s influence in Benito Pérez Galdós’ prose; and from the predicaments surrounding national anthems to the use of the figure of Carmen in Francoist’ cinema. This volume is a timely scholarly addition that contemplates not only a broad corpus that innovatively comprises popular and high culture – zarzuelas, choruses of industrial workers, opera, national anthems – but also their inter-dependence in the artists’ creativity.

My current book project is titled Disposable Bodies: Penal Colony, Race and Biopolitics in the Carceral Archipelago and explores primary sources about the carceral system that unveil crucial contemporary issues regarding criminality, imprisonment, and mass incarceration. The proposals to reform the penitentiary system in the nineteenth-century included issues that our civil society is constantly examining: the prisoners’ labor, their education in prison, juvenile crime, or questions that are similar to the “broken windows policy.” Architecture, the use of prison buildings, and the modes of life of prisoners, were also discussed –questions that resonate deeply with the issue of mass incarceration. I explore the human aspect of banishment implied in penal colonization, and examine and historicize the carceral archipelago as a space of exception.