Maria Alexandra Arana Blas

  • PhD Student, Hispanic Languages and Literatures

Alexandra Arana Blas received her a Baccalaureate from the Hispanic Literature department at the Pontificia Universidad Católica del Perú in 2016, and studied for a year (2014-2015) in the Rhenish Friedrich Wilhelm Universität Bonn, in the departments of English and Romance languages. 

In Peru, she won two prizes for her research about the female characters in the literary work of Mario Vargas Llosa, and the construction of female queer characters in the Peruvian literature of the 90’s. She published the book En el jardín de lirios. El amor entre mujeres en la cultura pop asiática [In the Lilies Garden. The Love Between Women in Asian Pop Culture] (Crónicas de la Diversidad, 2022), where she analyzes different animes, mangas, manhwas, manhuas, and Peruvian mangas, and how they present lesbianism. 

Arana’s research interests include literature written by women, LGBTIAQ+ narratives, lesbian narratives and its history, girls’ culture, pop culture, Asian Studies, Japanese Studies, and subcultures in Peru. She hopes to contribute in the studies of literature the interrelationship between LGBTIAQ+ literatures from Europe, the United States, Japan, and Latin America.