Dr Carmen Ramos Villar

BA Hons, MA, PhD

School of Languages and Cultures

Senior Lecturer in Hispanic Studies

Director of Education

Director of Portuguese Studies

Director of Postgraduate Taught Programmes (September 2019- September 2022)

Carmen Ramos Villar
Profile picture of Carmen Ramos Villar
c.ramosvillar@sheffield.ac.uk
+44 114 222 0547
Jessop West

Full contact details

Dr Carmen Ramos Villar
School of Languages and Cultures
Jessop West
1 Upper Hanover Street
Sheffield
S3 7RA
Profile

Dr Carmen Ramos Villar was an undergraduate and postgraduate at the University of Bristol, where she studied a BA Hons in Hispanic Studies and went on to specialise on Portuguese literature afterwards. Her doctoral thesis examined the theme of emigration in Portuguese literature, concentrating in the works produced by writers from the Azores islands and from the Azorean-American community. She was awarded her doctorate in 2004.

Before coming to the University of Sheffield, Dr Ramos Villar taught Portuguese Studies at Manchester University for one year.

Dr Ramos Villar's research interests have developed from her doctoral thesis to explore the life writing (autobiographical writings and biographical studies) resulting from Portuguese emigration in the United States.

She has published on the literature produced by Azorean writers, and also Portuguese American writers. She has also co-edited a volume on Azorean literature with John Kinsella, and another volume with Sheila Khan, Ana Margarida Dias Martins, Hilary Owen on Postcolonial debates in the Lusophone World. Among other projects, she is currently writing a co-authored book with Silvia Oliveira (Rhode Island College, USA) on Portuguese American life writing.

Dr Ramos Villar teaches on a variety of modules at Undergraduate and MA, mostly centred on Cultural Studies of the Portuguese-speaking world.

Carmen is the Director of Portuguese Studies in the Department.

Qualifications
  • BA Hons Hispanic Studies (University of Bristol)
  • MA in Portuguese Studies (University of Bristol)
  • PhD in Portuguese Literature (University of Bristol)
Research group

Ruth Fisher (2012-2018): ‘Resistance and Survival: Deconstructing the Narratives of Women Political Prisoners after the Spanish Civil War.’ Successful completion.

Deborah Madden (2014-2018): ‘Politics and Sexual Politics: Women's Writing in Early Twentieth-Century Spain and Portugal.’ Successful completion.

Katy Hunter (2016-2022): “Bodies in Motion: Physicality, materiality, and decoloniality in the digital age of francophone and lusophone African cinema.”

I have also supervised numerous MA Dissertations on various topics, including Angolan literature, Portuguese literature, contemporary translation studies and Intercultural Communication and International Development.

Member of the 'Migration, Culture and Community' and the 'National and Transnational Literatures and Cultures' research clusters.

Teaching activities

Dr Ramos Villar’s teaching covers the literatures and cultures of the Lusophone world, particularly that of Portugal and Lusophone Africa. She also teaches in comparative modules across languages and societies. The modules Dr Ramos Villar currently teaches are:

MDL11015: Activism and Social Change

MDL217: Hispanic Spaces

MDL222 / MDL317: Cultural Crosscurrents in the Portuguese-speaking World

MDL603 / 612: Language in Context

MDL6048 / 6053 and MDL6049/6054: Translation Skills and Genres

MDL608: Directed Reading

Dr Ramos Villar has also taught Spanish language and Spanish / Latin American literature, and has supervised undergraduate dissertations on Guiné-Bissauan, Mozambican, Brazilian and Portuguese topics, as well as supervising MA dissertations on Intercultural Communication, Translation, and Portuguese Studies topics.

Professional activities and memberships
  • Member of the University of Sheffield Discipline Committee (2008-2021)
  • Member of the Association of British and Irish Lusitanists (ABIL)
  • President of ABIL (2021-present)
  • Treasurer for ABIL (2009-2013)
  • Conference secretary for ABIL (2015-2017)
  • External examiner for PhD theses at NUI Maynooth (July 2010), Ireland and at the University of Nottingham (June 2022).
  • External examiner for Portuguese at the University of Essex (2007-2011); University of Exeter (2011-2012); University of Oxford (2015-2018); University of Cardiff (2015-2020); University of Birmingham (2018-2022); and University of Leeds (2021-present)
Publications

Book:

Ramos Villar CM (2006) The Metaphorical “Tenth Island” in Azorean Literature: The Theme of Emigration in the Azorean Imagination. Lampeter: Edwin Mellen Press.

Peer-reviewed journal articles:

Ramos Villar CM (2019) ‘Voicing the Community, or a Voice for the Community: Katherine Vaz, a Portuguese American Writer.’ Portuguese Literary and Cultural Studies, 32, 26-49. 

Ramos Villar CM (2017) ‘A Life Framed: Serafim Alves de Carvalho's Emigrar… Emigrar: as contas do meu rosário (1986).’ Portuguese Studies, 33(1), 70-84.

Ramos Villar CM (2016) ‘Filling in when memory fails: the use of stories in Portuguese American memoirs.’ Revista Configurações, 17, 139-152.

Ramos Villar CM (2015) ‘Image, Text, Self: Representation in Charles Reis Felix's Through a Portagee Gate.’ a/b: Auto/Biography Studies, 29(2), 279-297. 

Ramos Villar CM (2013) ‘Francisco Cota Fagundes: The Challenge of Autobiographies.’ Gávea-Brown. Vol. XXXIV (2013): 49-68.

Ramos Villar CM (2013) ‘Writing the Home: Charles Reis Felix's Autobiography and its Negotiation of Domestic Place and Space.’ Ellipsis, 11, 187-209. 

Ramos Villar CM (2013) ‘Janus and the Portuguese Emigrant: The Autobiographies of Portuguese Immigrants in the United States.’ Luso-Brazilian Review, 49(2), 232-250. 

Ramos Villar CM (2009) ‘Travelling, the Traveller, and the Journey Theme in Azorean Literature.’ AndarILHAgem, 6, 67-79. 

Ramos Villar CM (2008) ‘Quando uma ilha tem consciência de si própria: auto-imaginação em A ilha décima de Maria Luísa Soares.’ Teia Literária, 2, 35-48. 

Ramos Villar CM (2004) ‘War as an internal and external battleground in Alamo Oliveira's Até Hoje (Memórias de Cão).’ Portuguese Studies, 20(1), 152-168. 

Chapters in edited books:

Ramos Villar CM (2016) 'A ilha grande assombrada de Daniel de Sá’ in Francisco Cota Fagundes, S. Antunes, A. Igrejas, eds. Rememorando Daniel de Sá: escritor dos Açores e do mundo: Ver Açor, Ponta Delgada: 105-123.

Ramos Villar CM (2007) 'Anthologies and Azorean Literature: The Construction of an Azorean Identity’, in Kirsty Hooper, Stuart Davis and Helena Buffery (eds), Reading Iberia. Oxford: Peter Lang.

Ramos Villar CM (2008) 'Independence Movements (Azores and Madeira)’ in Prem Poddar et.al., A Historical Companion to Postcolonial Literatures – Continental Europe and its Empires. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press: pp. 460-61.

Ramos Villar CM (2007) 'João de Melo: a Happy Emigrant with Tears’, in John Kinsella and Carmen Ramos Villar (eds), Mid-Atlantic Margins, Transatlantic Identities: Azorean Literature in Context. Bristol: University of Bristol Press: 105-123.

Ramos Villar CM (2006) 'Eduardo Bettencourt Pinto: The Problems of Being a Double Emigrant’, in Anthony Soares (ed.), Towards a Portuguese Postcolonialism. Bristol: University of Bristol Press: 169-195.

Edited books:

Hilary Owen, Sheila Khan, Ana Margarida Dias Martins and Carmen Ramos Villar, eds. (2012) The Lusotropical Tempest: Postcolonial Debates in Portuguese. Bristol: University of Bristol Press.

John Kinsella and Carmen Ramos Villar (eds), Mid-Atlantic Margins, Transatlantic Identities: Azorean Literature in Context. Bristol: University of Bristol Press.

Reviews:

Ramos Villar, CM (2019). ‘Review of George Monteiro, There’s No Word for ‘Saudade’: Perspectives on the Literature and Culture of Portuguese America.’ Portuguese Studies, 35.1, 115–18. 

Ramos Villar CM (2006) ‘Review of Sexual/textual empires: Gender and marginality in Lusophone African literature.’ Bulletin of Hispanic Studies, 83(6), 621-621.