John Souza
Biography
John Souza is a doctoral student in the Comparative Literature track at CSLC. John received his Bachelors of Arts Summa Cum Laude in Archaeology and Comparative Literature from Cornell University. He has previously worked on an archaeology project at a 19th century tourist hotel in upstate New York. Recently, he has turned back to comparative literature for its broad-reaching, interdisciplinary approach to the study of literature and culture.
Education
- B.A. Comparative Literature, Cornell University, 2019
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Summary Statement of Research Interests
John is interested in exploring the ways in which what is traditionally thought of as the border between “the literary space,” and “the material space,” begins to break down within the literary realm. He is interested in exploring this through speculative fictions, especially speculative fictions of Latin America and the possibility of a speculative fiction within the Graeco-Roman canon. He is interested in what this breakdown might begin telling us about the habitus and ideologies which inform the current ecological, viral, and political crises. For these purposes, he is interested in an intersection between post-structuralism and the material semiotics developed through practice theory and whether their combination opens a possibility of thinking about rhetoric and ideology in a new way.
Research Keywords
Speculative fiction, Spanish language speculative fiction, the ancient novel, material semiotics, ecocriticism, the “ruin” in literature, continental philosophy.