Professor Fabienne Viala

About

Professor Fabienne Viala completed her PhD in Comparative Literature in 2004 at the University Paris 3 Sorbonne Nouvelle, where she taught Latin American, Caribbean and Francophone Literatures and Cultures until 2008. In 2009, she joined the University of Cambridge as a Mellon Fellow in Postcolonial, Latin American and Caribbean Literatures. Fabienne has also taught Spanish, Latin American and Comparative Literatures at King's College London.

Research interests

Prof Viala has published comparative studies on the Latin American and francophone historical novel, national memory and crime fiction in Cuban, Spanish and French literatures.

Fabienne's last monograph is entitled The Post-Columbus Syndrome: Identities, Cultural Nationalism and Commemorations in the Caribbean (Palgrave Macmillan, New Caribbean Series, 2014). It examines the representation of Christopher Columbus in Hispanic, English and French Caribbean Cultural production, with a focus on literature, music and performance. It analyses the relationship between memory, historical commemoration and cultural nationalism in the Caribbean Islands since the 1990s and develops a transcultural and multilinguistic approach to the region.

Current projects

Fabienne's research looks at how coloniality and neocolonialism perpetuate an extractivist ideology of dominance that fuels both the racial discriminations and the climate urgency we are facing today all over the world. She explores creative responses, in visual arts, performance and Literature, that challenge the mainstream narratives of nature denial on one end, and extinction resignation on the other end. She currently works on the representation of climate collapse in the contemporary Caribbean and Latin American novel, through the lens of care, interdependency and vulnerable entanglements, particularly in the Southern Cone, the Hispanic Caribbean, in Guadeloupe, Martinique and Haiti.

Administrative roles

• Alumni Liaison for the School of Modern Languages and Cultures
• Head of Hispanic Studies (2021-2024)
• Member of the Yesu Persaud Centre for Caribbean Studies

Selected publications

Monographs

The Post-Columbus Syndrome: Commemorations, Identity and Cultural Nationalisms in the Caribbean since 1992 (Palgrave Macmillan, 2014)

Marguerite Yourcenar, Alejo Carpentier. Ecritures de l’histoire (Peter Lang Ed., Bruxelles, Belgium, 2008)

Le roman noir au paradis perdu : le néo-polar cubain de Leonardo Padura (L’Harmattan Ed., Paris, France, 2007)

Le roman noir à l’encre de l’histoire: Manuel Vázquez Montalbán et Didier Daeninckx (L’Harmattan Ed., Paris, France, 2006)

Alejo Carpentier, Pintando la Historia : Narrativa histórica, narrativa icnográfica (Tizona Ed., Barcelona, Spain, 2006)

Book Chapters

Cultural Agency and Anti-Racism in Caribbean Conceptual Art

Leonardo Padura's Crime Fiction, in A Companion to Latin American Crime Fiction

Justice Making and The Performance of Memory in the French Caribbean, in Routledge Handbook to Caribbean Studies, 2025

Peer-Reviewed Articles

Caribbean Cyberpunk

Qualifications

• PhD (University Paris 3 Sorbonne Nouvelle)
• Agrégation de Lettres Modernes (ENS Fontenay Saint Cloud)