Mercedes Carbayo Abengozar is an Associate Professor at Maynooth University. Although she initially graduated in Spanish Literature and Linguistics in the University of Alcalá de Henares, after a postgraduate year at the University of Durham in the UK studying literature, there she did her PhD on the work of the Spanish writer Carmen Martin Gaite.
After analysing the critical reception of her work in different periods in terms of a specific rhetoric about women and writing she came to the conclusion that despite Gaite´s contradictory public relationship with feminist theory and practice in Spain, her writing was informed by feminist struggles in Spain in a number of ways. Within the same framework and driven by Gaite´s and her own interest on popular culture, she developed an interest in popular music. In the same contradictory ways that Gaite related to a particular kind of feminism, “coplas” have been identified with specific discourses and particularly with the conservative of the Franco regime. As in the case of Gaite, she argues that “coplas” have been historically informed by feminist struggles in a number of ways and that they have negotiated with different discourses in order to keep their popularity and to carry on opening a window in women’s lives.
Her intention is to carry on with her research in the same areas but also adding new perspectives within gender studies. In particular, I am interested in the fluidity of identity in adoption studies.