María Laura Arce Álvarez is European PhD on American Literature and Comparative Literature with the PhD dissertation titled The Invention of the Space of Literature: Paul Auster's Fictionalization of Maurice Blanchot's Poetics, celebrated the 12th of September 2014 and graded Cum Laude.
She was awarded with the International Fellowship Exchange Program at Tufts University (Boston, Massachusetts) where she became a TA at the Romance Languages Department and started her doctoral research and with a Postgraduate Grant by the Spanish Ministry Education to obtain the European Doctorate in Northampton University (UK). She is currently working as an Associate Professor in the English Department at the Autonomous University of Madrid, Spain and has been granted with a six-year-period of research activity (Sexenio de investigación). Her field of study focuses on Postmodern American Literature, Multicultural Literature, Intersectionality, Queer and Gender Literary Theory. She has published several articles on Paul Auster's fiction, Native American Fiction, Queer and Transgender Fiction, American Fiction during the McCarthy Era and Short Fiction.
She has currently published 23 academic research publications in national and international journals and publishing houses with highest impact factor, 3 of them focused on matrifocal narratives. She has attended many conferences and has published 2 books, one of them awarded with the Spanish Association of American Studies Best Monograph prize. She is currently working on her third book focused on motherhood and literature titled Intersectional Maternities: Re-creating Motherhood in 21st century American Literature (Brill, Rodopi 2024). She has participated since 2016 in the research group MIRCAALT and previously, she participated in the research group SIIM Estudios sobre intermedialidad y mediación cultural in the English Department at the Universidad Complutense de Madrid. She currently teaches Postmodern American Literature, Multicultural Literature and the MA course “Sex, Gender and Sexuality in American Literature.”
"Mothering The American Dream: Surrogate Mothers In Joanne Ramos’ The Farm" 17th SAAS Conference, American Dreams, American Nightmares, American Fantasies. Universidad de Alicante. April 8-10, 2025.
"Immigrant Mothers and Geomaternal Border Narratives in Angie Cruz’ Dominicana (2019)" 35th Biennial EAAS-conference, titled “1924 – 2024: The American Immigrant Narrative Revisited." Amerikahaus Munich. April 4-6, 2024.