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Articles by Almudena Machado-Jiménez
Coolabah, 2021
Following European exploration of the Atlantic, origin myths could now be projected onto a possib... more Following European exploration of the Atlantic, origin myths could now be projected onto a possible future and ‘undiscovered’ lands. Often the island proved the most suitable design for these projections to ensure the ‘perfection’ of the community and avoidance of corruptive external influences. These novel conceptualisations envisaged new social constructs to explain human nature, however, they continued to be overtly patriarchal. Gender essentialism and colonisation of the female body was an integral part of reproducing traditional utopian imaginings. Thomas More’s Utopia exemplifies this archetypal gendered conceptualisation of the ideal island society where female education serves to reinforce patriarchal structures and women are essentialised in terms of their fertility. This paper addresses the relationship between the geography of Utopia and the insularity and confinement of women as dominated ‘matrixial entities’ which is further reinforced by utopian cartography. In this context, I assert that the process of colonisation and islanding unsettles the immutability of these patriarchal constructs and exposes the dystopian origins of Utopia.
Feminismo/s, 2021
This essay examines contemporary feminist dystopias to study the phenomenon of gender pandemics. ... more This essay examines contemporary feminist dystopias to study the phenomenon of gender pandemics. Gender pandemic narrative allegorises possible aftermaths of patriarcavirus, unleashing many natural disasters that force global biopolitics to hinder gender equality. The main objective of this essay is to explain how gender pandemics are appropriated in patriarchal utopian discourses as a pretext to control female empowerment, diagnosing women as diseased organisms that risk the state’s well-being. Moreover, the novels explore the interdependence between biology and sociality, portraying the acute vulnerability of female bodies during and after the pandemic conflicts, inasmuch as patriarchal power arranges a hierarchical value system of living that reinforces gender discrimination. Particularly, the COVID-19 emergency is analysed as a gender pandemic: the exacerbated machismo and the growing distress in the female population prove that women are afflicted with a suffocating patriarcavirus, which has critically gagged them in the first year of the pandemic.
Beyond Philology: An International Journal of Linguistics, Literary Studies and English Language Teaching, 2018
Despite all variables, the subjugation of the female figure has always been the constant in the c... more Despite all variables, the subjugation of the female figure has always been the constant in the conceptualisation of patriarchal utopias. To ensure that subjugation women must undergo a process of reformation and surrender into normative sororities that are at the mercy of the state. It is argued here that such patriarchal utopias involve the elimination of solidarity with and between members of the sororal collective. This ensures the isolation of women and, consequently, eliminates the emancipation of womanhood from patriarchal idealisations. Sororities without solidarity are subjected to a comparative analysis of various classical utopian/dystopian texts and Atwood’s feminist dystopia The Handmaid’s Tale in order to foreground the problem concerning the construction of normative female beings. Moreover, the figure of (e)merging women in contemporary feminist utopian/dystopian discourses paves the way for female empowerment within patriarchal society by combining sorority and solidarity.
Book Chapters by Almudena Machado-Jiménez
Hermeneutical Narratives in Art, Literature, and Communication, 2024
Didácticas específicas: retos científicos y sociales abordados desde la investigación educativa, 2023
Utopian Anglo-Iberian encounters on literatures in English: Weaving Tales, 2024
Utopian Possibilities: Models, Theories, Critiques, 2023
His project "Privutopia", under the MSCA Seal of Excellence scheme, investigates the early modern... more His project "Privutopia", under the MSCA Seal of Excellence scheme, investigates the early modern history of privacy through utopian texts and paratexts, letters and maps. He is a collaborating researcher with the Centre for English Translation and Anglo-Portuguese Studies (CETAPS)
Alfabetización en la Nueva Docencia, 2021
Innovación Docente e Investigación en Arte y Humanidades. Avanzando en el proceso de Enseñanza-Aprendizaje., 2020
Transgressive Utopianism, 2021
Competencia 6: Hacia el sentido de iniciativa y espíritu emprendedor. ¿Una competencia en marcha?, 2015
The 8th March celebrates women’s struggles for gender equality in society. Many voices have spoke... more The 8th March celebrates women’s struggles for gender equality in society. Many voices have spoken up and have made their way in the history of humanity. Thanks to them, the pillars of our modern society are based on democracy and liberty, but there is still a long way to go in order to fulfill this dream of justice. This project breaks with the standards of conventional education and aims at making a better place out of this world, where children live as upstanding citizens with no fear of being defined with prejudices and stereotypes. Along the various blocks of this project, students will reflect on gender roles, the history of women and their role in different places of the Earth, to finally create their own magazine Speak Up! Like… This will be done by means of two main tools: English as a vehicle to know history and change the future, and social networks for worldwide broadcasting.
Mapping the Imaginative. Teaching Fantasy and Science Fiction in the EFL Classroom. Eds. Christian Ludwig and Elizabeth Shipley. Heidelberg: Universitätsverlag Winter (ISBN 978-3-8253-4720-8), 2020
Book Reviews by Almudena Machado-Jiménez
The Grove. Working Papers on English Studies, 2021
Conference Presentations by Almudena Machado-Jiménez
Roundtable “Present and Future Trends in African Studies"
Coolabah, 2021
Following European exploration of the Atlantic, origin myths could now be projected onto a possib... more Following European exploration of the Atlantic, origin myths could now be projected onto a possible future and ‘undiscovered’ lands. Often the island proved the most suitable design for these projections to ensure the ‘perfection’ of the community and avoidance of corruptive external influences. These novel conceptualisations envisaged new social constructs to explain human nature, however, they continued to be overtly patriarchal. Gender essentialism and colonisation of the female body was an integral part of reproducing traditional utopian imaginings. Thomas More’s Utopia exemplifies this archetypal gendered conceptualisation of the ideal island society where female education serves to reinforce patriarchal structures and women are essentialised in terms of their fertility. This paper addresses the relationship between the geography of Utopia and the insularity and confinement of women as dominated ‘matrixial entities’ which is further reinforced by utopian cartography. In this context, I assert that the process of colonisation and islanding unsettles the immutability of these patriarchal constructs and exposes the dystopian origins of Utopia.
Feminismo/s, 2021
This essay examines contemporary feminist dystopias to study the phenomenon of gender pandemics. ... more This essay examines contemporary feminist dystopias to study the phenomenon of gender pandemics. Gender pandemic narrative allegorises possible aftermaths of patriarcavirus, unleashing many natural disasters that force global biopolitics to hinder gender equality. The main objective of this essay is to explain how gender pandemics are appropriated in patriarchal utopian discourses as a pretext to control female empowerment, diagnosing women as diseased organisms that risk the state’s well-being. Moreover, the novels explore the interdependence between biology and sociality, portraying the acute vulnerability of female bodies during and after the pandemic conflicts, inasmuch as patriarchal power arranges a hierarchical value system of living that reinforces gender discrimination. Particularly, the COVID-19 emergency is analysed as a gender pandemic: the exacerbated machismo and the growing distress in the female population prove that women are afflicted with a suffocating patriarcavirus, which has critically gagged them in the first year of the pandemic.
Beyond Philology: An International Journal of Linguistics, Literary Studies and English Language Teaching, 2018
Despite all variables, the subjugation of the female figure has always been the constant in the c... more Despite all variables, the subjugation of the female figure has always been the constant in the conceptualisation of patriarchal utopias. To ensure that subjugation women must undergo a process of reformation and surrender into normative sororities that are at the mercy of the state. It is argued here that such patriarchal utopias involve the elimination of solidarity with and between members of the sororal collective. This ensures the isolation of women and, consequently, eliminates the emancipation of womanhood from patriarchal idealisations. Sororities without solidarity are subjected to a comparative analysis of various classical utopian/dystopian texts and Atwood’s feminist dystopia The Handmaid’s Tale in order to foreground the problem concerning the construction of normative female beings. Moreover, the figure of (e)merging women in contemporary feminist utopian/dystopian discourses paves the way for female empowerment within patriarchal society by combining sorority and solidarity.
Hermeneutical Narratives in Art, Literature, and Communication, 2024
Didácticas específicas: retos científicos y sociales abordados desde la investigación educativa, 2023
Utopian Anglo-Iberian encounters on literatures in English: Weaving Tales, 2024
Utopian Possibilities: Models, Theories, Critiques, 2023
His project "Privutopia", under the MSCA Seal of Excellence scheme, investigates the early modern... more His project "Privutopia", under the MSCA Seal of Excellence scheme, investigates the early modern history of privacy through utopian texts and paratexts, letters and maps. He is a collaborating researcher with the Centre for English Translation and Anglo-Portuguese Studies (CETAPS)
Alfabetización en la Nueva Docencia, 2021
Innovación Docente e Investigación en Arte y Humanidades. Avanzando en el proceso de Enseñanza-Aprendizaje., 2020
Transgressive Utopianism, 2021
Competencia 6: Hacia el sentido de iniciativa y espíritu emprendedor. ¿Una competencia en marcha?, 2015
The 8th March celebrates women’s struggles for gender equality in society. Many voices have spoke... more The 8th March celebrates women’s struggles for gender equality in society. Many voices have spoken up and have made their way in the history of humanity. Thanks to them, the pillars of our modern society are based on democracy and liberty, but there is still a long way to go in order to fulfill this dream of justice. This project breaks with the standards of conventional education and aims at making a better place out of this world, where children live as upstanding citizens with no fear of being defined with prejudices and stereotypes. Along the various blocks of this project, students will reflect on gender roles, the history of women and their role in different places of the Earth, to finally create their own magazine Speak Up! Like… This will be done by means of two main tools: English as a vehicle to know history and change the future, and social networks for worldwide broadcasting.
Mapping the Imaginative. Teaching Fantasy and Science Fiction in the EFL Classroom. Eds. Christian Ludwig and Elizabeth Shipley. Heidelberg: Universitätsverlag Winter (ISBN 978-3-8253-4720-8), 2020
The Grove. Working Papers on English Studies, 2021
Roundtable “Present and Future Trends in African Studies"
The 20th century left as a legacy the resulting union between human cruelty and the latest techno... more The 20th century left as a legacy the resulting union between human cruelty and the latest technological advances. The World Wars and their war sequels, promising peace to humanity, were no other thing than the deceit to the masses, hiding genocide
and massacre, due to the greed of the egotistical utopian dream of tyrannical powers. George Orwell was the best illustrator of the individual impotence in this suffocating situation, and the inevitable fall of the rebel hero against the corrupt state. Thus,
dystopia is born, combining the!primitive brutality and a futuristic world to analyze the present. Nonetheless, it is precisely this historical analysis which has permitted other heroes not to fall in the same mistakes of the past, fighting for a more pacific and cooperative future. And this is exactly what this piece of work will try to achieve.
Many studies have investigated the notion of utopia in history, philosophy and literature. Howeve... more Many studies have investigated the notion of utopia in history, philosophy and literature. However, little attention has been devoted to its negative counterpart. Dystopia is the “utopia’s twentieth-century doppelgänger” (Gordin et al., 2010:1). This essay claims the deconstruction of traditional opposites by using Dystopology. This multifocal literary theory expands the dystopian analysis to other genres. Additionally, this paper will provide a dystopological overview of literature to better understand the pure dystopias of the era of social deception, conceiving not only the genesis of a new literature, but also another way of perceiving reality, through comics, cinema and other arts. The new millennium secured the fears of the dystopian trilogy ‒Huxley, Orwell and Bradbury. Therefore, when dystopia turns into reality, the only solution for contemporary authors is apocalypse. Following anarchic ideals, the coming generations see the destruction of society as the only opportunity for humanity to be reborn again.
Innovación docente e investigación en arte y humanidades: avanzado en el proceso de enseñanza - aprendizaje, 2020, ISBN 978-84-1377-217-2, págs. 695-706, 2020
Libro de Actas del X Congreso Universitario Internacional sobre Contenidos, Investigación, Innovación y Docencia: (CUICIID 2020), 2020, ISBN 9788409229482, 2020
Feminismo/s, 2021
This essay examines contemporary feminist dystopias to study the phenomenon of gender pandemics. ... more This essay examines contemporary feminist dystopias to study the phenomenon of gender pandemics. Gender pandemic narrative allegorises possible aftermaths of patriarcavirus, unleashing many natural disasters that force global biopolitics to hinder gender equality. The main objective of this essay is to explain how gender pandemics are appropriated in patriarchal utopian discourses as a pretext to control female empowerment, diagnosing women as diseased organisms that risk the state’s well-being. Moreover, the novels explore the interdependence between biology and sociality, portraying the acute vulnerability of female bodies during and after the pandemic conflicts, inasmuch as patriarchal power arranges a hierarchical value system of living that reinforces gender discrimination. Particularly, the COVID-19 emergency is analysed as a gender pandemic: the exacerbated machismo and the growing distress in the female population prove that women are afflicted with a suffocating patriarcavi...
The Grove - Working Papers on English Studies, 2021
The Practical Rule of Christian Piety, Archibald Lovell's 1685 English translation of Arias Monta... more The Practical Rule of Christian Piety, Archibald Lovell's 1685 English translation of Arias Montano's Dictatum Christianum (1575), is what scholars would, in all likelihood, define as a rare text. Unknown to researchers for more than three centuries, this version has finally been presented to modern readers thanks to the edition by Cinta Zunino-Garrido (University of Jaén). The rareness of the translation is what Zunino-Garrido attempts to explain in the comprehensive and splendid introduction to the text, in which she examines in detail the ideological, philosophical and religious context that most possibly fuelled Archibald Lovell's interest in the Dictatum.
Following European exploration of the Atlantic, origin myths could now be projected onto a possib... more Following European exploration of the Atlantic, origin myths could now be projected onto a possible future and ‘undiscovered’ lands. Often the island proved the most suitable design for these projections to ensure the ‘perfection’ of the community and avoidance of corruptive external influences. These novel conceptualisations envisaged new social constructs to explain human nature, however, they continued to be overtly patriarchal. Gender essentialism and colonisation of the female body was an integral part of reproducing traditional utopian imaginings. Thomas More’s Utopia exemplifies this archetypal gendered conceptualisation of the ideal island society where female education serves to reinforce patriarchal structures and women are essentialised in terms of their fertility. This paper addresses the relationship between the geography of Utopia and the insularity and confinement of women as dominated ‘matrixial entities’ which is further reinforced by utopian cartography. In this co...
This essay examines contemporary feminist dystopias to study the phenomenon of gender pandemics. ... more This essay examines contemporary feminist dystopias to study the phenomenon of gender pandemics. Gender pandemic narrative allegorises possible aftermaths of patriarcavirus, unleashing many natural disasters that force global biopolitics to hinder gender equality. The main objective of this essay is to explain how gender pandemics are appropriated in patriarchal utopian discourses as a pretext to control female empowerment, diagnosing women as diseased organisms that risk the state’s well-being. Moreover, the novels explore the interdependence between biology and sociality, portraying the acute vulnerability of female bodies during and after the pandemic conflicts, inasmuch as patriarchal power arranges a hierarchical value system of living that reinforces gender discrimination. Particularly, the COVID-19 emergency is analysed as a gender pandemic: the exacerbated machismo and the growing distress in the female population prove that women are afflicted with a suffocating patriarcavi...
The 20th century left as a legacy the resulting union between human cruelty and the latest techno... more The 20th century left as a legacy the resulting union between human cruelty and the latest technological advances. The World Wars and their war sequels, promising peace to humanity, were no other thing than the deceit to the masses, hiding genocide and massacre, due to the greed of the egotistical utopian dream of tyrannical powers. George Orwell was the best illustrator of the individual impotence in this suffocating situation, and the inevitable fall of the rebel hero against the corrupt state. Thus, dystopia is born, combining the!primitive brutality and a futuristic world to analyze the present. Nonetheless, it is precisely this historical analysis which has permitted other heroes not to fall in the same mistakes of the past, fighting for a more pacific and cooperative future. And this is exactly what this piece of work will try to achieve.
Many studies have investigated the notion of utopia in history, philosophy and literature. Howeve... more Many studies have investigated the notion of utopia in history, philosophy and literature. However, little attention has been devoted to its negative counterpart. Dystopia is the “utopia’s twentieth-century doppelgänger” (Gordin et al., 2010:1). This essay claims the deconstruction of traditional opposites by using Dystopology. This multifocal literary theory expands the dystopian analysis to other genres. Additionally, this paper will provide a dystopological overview of literature to better understand the pure dystopias of the era of social deception, conceiving not only the genesis of a new literature, but also another way of perceiving reality, through comics, cinema and other arts. The new millennium secured the fears of the dystopian trilogy ‒Huxley, Orwell and Bradbury. Therefore, when dystopia turns into reality, the only solution for contemporary authors is apocalypse. Following anarchic ideals, the coming generations see the destruction of society as the only opportunity for humanity to be reborn again.
The aim of this work is to show two instances of female literary characters that possess feminist... more The aim of this work is to show two instances of female literary characters that possess feminist personalities. In order to do so, it is necessary, previously, to know the origins of feminism and the role of women throughout history. Right after, the characters of Elizabeth Bennet in Pride and Prejudice and Hester Prynne in The Scarlet Letter will be analysed to demonstrate why their behaviours correspond to a feminist attitude. Finally, both characters will be briefly compared with the purpose of presenting similarities and differences between them.
Beyond Philology An International Journal of Linguistics, Literary Studies and English Language Teaching, Dec 17, 2018
Despite all variables, the subjugation of the female figure has always been the constant in the c... more Despite all variables, the subjugation of the female figure has always been the constant in the conceptualisation of patriarchal utopias. To ensure that subjugation women must undergo a process of reformation and surrender into normative sororities that are at the mercy of the state. It is argued here that such patriarchal utopias involve the elimination of solidarity with and between members of the sororal collective. This ensures the isolation of women and, consequently, eliminates the emancipation of womanhood from patriarchal idealisations. Sororities without solidarity are subjected to a comparative analysis of various classical utopian/dystopian texts and Atwood's feminist dystopia The Handmaid's Tale in order to foreground the problem concerning the construction of normative female beings. Moreover, the figure of (e)merging women in contemporary feminist utopian/dystopian discourses paves the way for female empowerment within patriarchal society by combining sorority and solidarity.