Diana Villanueva Romero is an assistant professor in the English department at the University of Extremadura, Cáceres, Spain. Her field of expertise is Anglophone environmental literature, with a special focus on literary animal studies. She has has been deeply involved in the European Association for the Study of Literature, Culture and Environment (EASLCE) and was a member of its advisory board from 2012 to 2016. She also collaborates regularly with its journal, Ecozon@: European Journal of Literature, Culture and Environment, as one of the managing editors. In 2015 she was invited to give a lecture on literary animal studies at Ateneo de Manila University, the Philippines. As a Fulbright scholar at Georgetown University in 2018, she worked on a project on Philippine women’s literature. In July 2018, together with Dr. Carmen Flys Junquera, she co-organized the first European conference on Environmental Humanities entitled “Stories, Myth, and Arts to Envision Change.”
She has recently been involved in two research projects: Acis & Galatea, which centers on cultural myth criticism, and HUAMECO, a project on environmental humanities that connects fine arts with the study of literature. Both have given her the opportunity to work with scholars across different disciplines, as well as local organizations and NGOs.
RCC Research Project: The New Alliance: Environmental Humanities.
Selected publications:
- “Posthuman Spaces of Relation: Literary Responses to the Species Boundary in Primate Literature.” Special issue, Relations: Beyond Anthropocentrism 4, no. 1 (2016).
- “A Material Reading of Brenda Peterson’s Animal Heart.” Forum for World Literature Studies 6, no. 1 (2014): 6–23.
- “Dismantling ‘Conceptual Straitjackets’ in Peter Dickinson’s Eva.” In International Ecocriticism: Young Voices, edited by Serpil Oppermann, 187–99. New York: Lexington Books, 2014.
- “‘Savage Beauty’: Representations of Women as Animals in PETA’s Campaigns and Alexander McQueen’s Fashion Shows.” Feminismo/s. Revista del Centro de Estudios sobre la Mujer 22 (2013): 147–75.
- “Reflections on Literature and Environment: An Interview with Scott Slovic.” Ecozon@: European Journal of Literature, Culture and Environment 1, no. 2 (2010): 67–86.
- “Gary Snyder’s Ecology of Family.” REDEN. Revista Española de Estudios Norteamericanos 21–22, Año XII (2001): 45–61.