ACADEMIC COURSE 2023-2024

Congratulations to Alexandra Mira

Awarded with the Doctoral Scholarship in Catalan Studies (2023-2024) from the Institut Ramon Llull and the North American Catalan Society (NACS)

Alexandra Mira Alonso is a Ph.D. Candidate in Spanish Literature and Cultural Studies in the Department of Spanish and Portuguese at Georgetown University. Her primary research interests deal with intersectionalities of gender, sexuality, and class in Spanish pop culture representations during the 20th and 21st-century. She is interested in analyzing memory, nostalgia, and the accepted elements of Spanish costumbrismo and cutrismos represented in working-class culture from a transnational perspective. Her most recent publication, “Comunidad, crisis y humor: la transmisión del costumbrismo en España a través de los memes de Covid-19” (Hispanófila, 2021), explores the role of memes made out of trash culture pictures during the covid-19 lockdown. Her dissertation, tentatively named “Radiografías de lo cutre: cultura obrera ibérica del siglo XXI,” aims to redefine “cutre” by studying trash culture as a construct arising from neoliberalism and technoglobalization. This dissertation explores Catalan-Caribbean music from its origins to present day (Bad Gyal and Rosalía), the queer performance in Barcelona during the 70’s as a “salvation” of bad taste (Nazario Luque’s comics and Ocaña’s art), and the commodification of nostalgia for “lo cutre” in TV shows such as Aquí no hay quien viva.