Cristina F. Gonzalez Martin

My dissertation, entitled A contracorriente: Transoceanic Resistances in the Canary Islands, Cuba and Puerto Rico, engages two emerging fields within the blue humanities: transoceanic and archipelagic studies. These theories, I argue, encourage ways of thinking a contracorriente, that is, they help redefine space and identity in ways that disrupt colonial continuums, recentering geographies that have been historically relegated to the periphery. Adopting the ocean as an analytical framework for advancing cross-regional, interdisciplinary research on timely global topics, my thesis traces an ongoing history of sexual, racial and environmental violence particular to these geopolitically enclosed spaces, as depicted in contemporary literary and cultural productions that problematize and resist imperial practices in Cuba, Puerto Rico, and the Canary Islands, archipelagos that share a common history of colonial violence and neocolonial exploitation. From the confinement of queer individuals in island colonies by totalitarian regimes, to the desolation brought upon by recent natural disasters and political oblivion, a post-pandemic present defined by the impact of mass tourism and digital nomads, and finally ending with devastating dystopias set in not-too-distant futures, the works analyzed in this project defy insular boundaries, proposing the ocean as an epistemological space that questions traditional definitions of race, gender, territory and national belonging, in current dialogue among (post)colonial regions. I propose an understanding of the ocean as an affective archive to demonstrate how islanders at the edges of empire defy imperialist behaviors and gestures surrounding the ocean, focusing on the ways in which the waters around them have documented and transmitted their experiences.