Romance Languages and Literatures
Wan Sonya Tang
Assistant Professor of Hispanic Studies
Director, Asian American Studies Program
Wan Sonya Tang
Ph.D.
Contact
Lyons Hall 311B
Telephone: 617-552-1096
Email: wan.tang@bc.edu
ORCID 0000-0001-6880-3932
Education
- B.A. University of Southern California
- M.A., Yale University
- M.Phil., Yale University
- Ph.D., M.Phil., M.A., Yale University
Courses
SPAN 6607 Warrior Women of Spain, 19th-21st Centuries
SPAN 6645 Race and Representation in Spain (19th-21st Centuries)
SPAN 6649 Haunting Modernity: The Fantastic Short Story in 19th-Century Spain
SPAN 6681 Representations of the Spanish Civil War
SPAN 9919 Monsters, Specters, and the Supernatural in 19th-Century Spain
SPAN 9920 The Spanish Civil War in Word and Image
SPAN 9962 Machos ibéricos: (De)Constructing Masculinity in Contemporary Spain
Research Interests
19th–21st Century Spanish Literatures and Cultures; Benito Pérez Galdós; Gothic and the Fantastic in Spain; the Spanish Short Story; Gender Studies; Decolonial studies; Television and media studies; Hispano-Asian Studies
Profile
Wan Sonya Tang is a scholar of 19th-21st-century Spanish cultural production. Her book Specters, Monsters, and the Damned: Fantastic Threats to the Social Order in Nineteenth-Century Spanish Fiction (Vanderbilt University Press) examines how familiar Gothic tropes function within open-ended fantastic storytelling to explore fraught questions of class, gender, and race in a way that the dominant realist narrative could not. She is also the co-editor of Televising Restoration Spain: History and Fiction in Twenty-First-Century Costume Dramas (Palgrave MacMillan), which examines how Spain's relation to modernity in the late 1800s and early 1900s is explored through the heritage film/television industry.
As of 2023, Wan is the director of Asian American Studies at Boston College. In this role, she is committed to supporting AAPI students and faculty at BC, particularly by fostering positive relationships across the university and lending support to events and new initiatives on campus. Her most recent research likewise turns to Spanish representations of Asia and Asian representations of Spain, from the nineteenth century onwards.
Selected Lectures and Conference Presentations
“Cursed to Extinction: Imperialist Cultural Encounters in Emilia Pardo Bazán’s ‘El brasileño’ (1911).” Modern Language Association Annual Convention. San Francisco, CA, January 5-8, 2023.
“Monstruos, maldiciones e imperialismo en el cuento ‘Tropiquillos.’” XII Congreso Internacional Galdosiano. Casa Museo Pérez Galdós, Las Palmas de Gran Canaria, Spain. June 20-23, 2022.
“Fantastic Fiction and the Critique of Capitalism in Early Restoration Spain.” Imaginarios económicos en la literatura y el cine de España y Latinoamérica. Symposium. Lehman College, Bronx, NY. April 5-6, 2019.
“Galdosian Spain, Francoist Censorship, and the Construction of Masculinity in José Luis Borau’s Adaptation of Miau (TVE 1972).” I Symposium of the Asociación Internacional de Galdosistas. Bowdoin College, Brunswick, ME. Sept. 14-15, 2018.
“The Insufficiency of Excess and the Construction of Masculinity in Galdós’s La Sombra.” Interdisciplinary Nineteenth-Century Studies 2018 Supernumerary Conference. University of Roma Tre, Rome, Italy. June 13-15, 2018.
“Mere Shadows of Men: Gothic Conventions and Masculine Crisis in Galdós’s La sombra.” Modern Language Association Annual Convention. New York, NY. January 4-7, 2018.
“From Photos to Forensics: Technology, Modernity, and the Internationalization of Spanish History in Gran Hotel.” IV Jornadas de ALCESXXI. Residencia Pignatelli, Zaragoza, Spain. July 3-7, 2017.
“Crisis de masculinidad en la narrativa fantástica de Galdós: Hombres inseguros en La sombra y ‘¿Dónde está mi cabeza?’.” XI Congreso Galdosiano. Casa Museo Pérez Galdós, Las Palmas de Gran Canaria, Spain. June 19-23, 2017.
“Impairment of Vision and Visions of Impairment in Galdós’s Marianela.” Modern Language Association Annual Convention. Philadelphia, PA. January 5-8, 2017.
“The Aesthetic Appeal of Ahistorical History in the Spanish Television Series Gran Hotel.” Annual Kentucky Foreign Language Conference. University of Kentucky, Lexington. April 14-16, 2016.
"The Art of the Spanish Historical Drama: A Case Study of the Television Series Gran Hotel." Aquí y Ahora: TV and Film Production in Contemporary Spain Conference. Swarthmore College, Swarthmore. March 25-26, 2016.
“Two Spains in Alberto Rodríguez’s La isla minima/Marshland (2014).” Spanish Film Series. Hobart and William Smith Colleges, Geneva, NY. November 5, 2015.
“Gendered Trauma and the Spanish Civil War in La plaça del Diamant by Mercé Rodoreda.” Annual Meeting of the American Comparative Literature Association. University of Washington, Seattle. March 26-29, 2015.
“Sacred and Supernatural: Representations of Madrid in Fantastic Narratives from 19th-Century Spain.” Annual Meeting of the American Comparative Literature Association. New York University, New York. March 20-23, 2014.
“‘My Dear, These Things Are Life’: A Woman in the Spanish Civil War in La plaza del diamante.” Annual Northeast Modern Language Association Convention. Susquehanna University, Harrisburg. April 3-6, 2014.
“El retrato de las clases sociales en dos cuentos fantásticos de Galdós.” X Congreso Internacional Galdosiano. Casa Museo Pérez Galdós, Las Palmas de Gran Canaria. June 18-21, 2013.
“Haunted House/Scary Street: Crises of Self and Space in 19th-Century Spanish Fantastic Narrative.” Annual Northeast Modern Language Association Convention. Tufts University, Boston. March 21-24, 2013.
“Of Trams and Trains: Fantastic Movement Through Madrid and Spain in Galdós's Short Fiction." Mid-America Conference on Hispanic Literature. University of Nebraska-Lincoln, Lincoln. October 12-14, 2012.
“The Haunted City: Madrid in the Fantastic Fiction of Galdós.” Invited talk before the Whitney Humanities Fellows. Yale University, New Haven, CT. March 28, 2012.