Seminars

This seminar introduced the staff and students of our Faculty to new “waves” in research in the Humanities. The so-called Critical Surf Studies, a branch of the Blue Humanities, is an emerging field of research here in Spain, though it is well-established within humanities and social sciences departments at universities in the UK, North America and Australia. The interdisciplinarity of this field makes it an exciting confluence of various fields of great influence within humanities departments, among them, ocean studies, colonial and post-colonial theories, gender studies and eco-criticism. It was for this reason that the seminar was proposed as an interesting complement to studies of Anglophone literatures and cultures. Among the themes that were addressed were colonialism and the (literary and cultural) constructions of normative masculinity and femininity in diverse geographical and historical contexts through representations of the sea and surfing.