Kelly Comfort

Director of Undergraduate Studies, Professor of Spanish

Member Of:
  • School of Modern Languages
  • ADVANCE IAC
Email Address:
kcomfort@gatech.edu
Office Location:
Swann 224
Related Links:

Overview

Dr. Kelly Comfort received her PhD in Comparative Literature with a designated emphasis in Critical Theory from the University of California, Davis. She joined the Georgia Tech faculty as an Assistant Professor of Spanish in the School of Modern Languages in 2005 and became Associate Professor in 2012.

A specialist in Latin American literature and transatlantic modernisms, Dr. Comfort's research agenda focuses primarily on the intersections between Latin American modernismo and contemporaneous turn-of-the-century literary movements in Europe such as aestheticism and decadence. 

Kelly is co-editor with Marylaura Papalas of the volume New Directions in Flânerie: Global Perspectives for the Twenty-First Century (Routldge 2021), to which she contributed the co-written introduction “Tracing the Geography, Genius, and Gender of Flânerie" and Chapter 5: "Uncivilived Flânerie: The Gaucho-Flâneur in Jorge Luis Borges’ ‘The South.’”

Kelly's textbook and anthology, Cien años de identidad: Introducción a la literatura latinoamerican del siglo XX (Georgetown University Press) received the 2019 “Most Promising New Textbook Award” from the Textbook & Academic Authors Association (TAA).

Her book, European Aestheticism and Spanish American Modernismo: Artists Protagonists and the Philosophy of Art for Art’s Sake (Palgrave MacMillan, June 2011, 192 pages) examines the changing role of art and the artist during the turn-of-the-century period and considers the multiple dichotomies of art and life, aesthetics and economics, production and consumption, and center and periphery. 

Her edited volume, Art and Life in Aestheticism: De-Humanizing and Re-Humanizing Art, the Artist, and the Artistic Receptor, (Palgrave MacMillan, 2008) rethinks the relationship in aestheticism between the aesthetic and the human realms over the past two hundred years. 

She has published the following articles and book chapters:

“Tracing the Geography, Genius, and Gender of Flânerie.” Introduction. Co-written with Marylaura Papalas. New Directions in Flânerie: Global Perspectives for the Twenty-First Century. Eds. Kelly Comfort and Marylaura Papalas. Routledge, under contract or forthcoming in 2021.

“The Flâneur and the Gaucho: From Buenos Aires to the Pampa and from Civilization to Barbarism in Jorge Luis Borges’ ‘The South.’” New Directions in Flânerie: Global Perspectives for the Twenty-First Century. Routledge, under contract and forthcoming in 2021.

“From ‘Guardia’ to ‘Guarida’ and ‘Insilio’ to ‘Exilio’: A Close (Re- )Reading of Senel Paz’s ‘El lobo, el bosque y el hombre nuevo.’” Accepted and forthcoming in Volume 17 of Letras Hispanas.

"The Flâneur in Paris and Mexico City: Manuel Gutiérrez Nájera’s Transnational Search for Modern Beauty.” Decimonónica: Journal of Nineteenth Century Hispanic Cultural Production / Revista de Producción Cultural Hispánica Decimonónica. 13.2 (2016) 1-18. 

“The Artist as Impressionistic Critic in José Asunción Silva’s De sobremesa: Transatlantic Borrowings from Walter Pater, Oscar Wilde, and British Aestheticism.”  Revista de Estudios Colombianos. 41-42 (2013) 14-22.

“The Clash of the Foreign and the Local in Martí and Carpentier: From ‘Misplaced Ideas’ to ‘Trasculturation.’”  Hipertexto  11 (2010) 51-62.

“Masculinidad rechazada: El artista recluído y no productivo en Rubén Darío y José Asunción Silva.”  Latin American Literary Review  37.73 (2009) 26-46.  (Reprinted as a book chapter in Entre hombres: masculinidades del siglo XIX en América Latina.  Eds. Ana Peluffo and Ignacio M. Sánchez Prado.  Madrid: Iberoamericana Editorial Vervuert.  2010.)

“Reflections on the Relationship between Art and Life in Aestheticism.”  Introduction.  Art and Life in Aestheticism: De-Humanizing and Re-Humanizing Art, the Artist, and the Artistic Receptor.  Ed. Kelly Comfort.  Hampshire, U.K. and New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2008: 1-20.

“The Critic as Artist and Liar: The Reuse and Abuse of Plato and Aristotle by Wilde.”  The Wildean 32 (2008).

“Art for the Artist’s Sake or Artist for Sale: Lulu’s and Else’s Failed Attempts at Aesthetic Self-Fashioning.”  Women in German Yearbook: Feminist Studies in German Literature and Culture 22 (2006) 189-210.

“Colonial Others as Cuba’s Protonational Subjects: The Privileged Space of Women, Slaves and Natives in Gómez de Avellaneda’s Sab.”  MESTER: Journal of Spanish and Portuguese Studies 32 (2003) 179-194.  (Translation by Pedro Llanes published in volume 69 of the Cuban journal Temas.  English reprint published in the multi-format library reference volume Nineteenth Century Literary Criticism.)

Dr. Comfort has a forthcoming textbook entitled Cien años de identidad: Introducción a la literatura latinoamericana del siglo XX, which is forthcoming in January 2018 from Georgetown University Press.  

Dr. Comfort frequently teaches courses on Spanish conversation and Latin American literature as well as her "Spanish Service-Learning in the Hispanic Community" and "Hispanic Community Internship" classes.  She is also faculty director of Georgia Tech's International House (a ThinkBig Living and Learning Community) as well as faculty advisor of the student organization "Gringos y Latinos: Atlanta's Spanish Service Society" (GLASSS).  Dr. Comfort received the 2010 CETL/BP Junior Faculty Teaching Excellence Award, the Class of 1940 W. Howard Ector Outstanding Teacher Award, and the 2014 University System of Georgia Board of Regents Teaching Excellence Award.

Areas of
Expertise:
  • Art For Art
  • Artist Narratives
  • Capitalism And Market Economy
  • Cuban Literature And Culture
  • Exile
  • Nation Formation In Latin America

Interests

Research Fields:
  • Literary and Cultural Studies
  • Spanish
Geographic
Focuses:
  • Europe
  • Latin America and Caribbean
Issues:
  • Aestheticism
  • Modernismo

Courses

  • INTA-4811: Special Topics
  • ML-2500: Intro Cross-Cult Studies
  • ML-2813: Special Topics
  • SPAN-2001: Intermediate Spanish I
  • SPAN-3064: Medical Spanish
  • SPAN-3101: Conversation I
  • SPAN-3102: Conversation II
  • SPAN-3151: Conversation Practicum
  • SPAN-3260: Identity In Hisp. Lit.
  • SPAN-3697: Span Health Professionls
  • SPAN-3698: Spain Health Industry
  • SPAN-4150: Spanish Service Learning
  • SPAN-4156: Span Service Abroad I
  • SPAN-4157: Span Service Abroad II
  • SPAN-4158: Diversity in Spain
  • SPAN-4251: Hispanic Internship
  • SPAN-4500: Intercultural Seminar
  • SPAN-4693: Sustainability in Span
  • SPAN-6251: Hispanic Internship
  • SPAN-6500: Intercultural Seminar
  • SPAN-6501: Theory & Foundations Sem
  • SPAN-6503: Professional Portfolio
  • SPAN-6510: Language Practicum

Additional Information

Joined Faculty In 2005

Current and
Recent
Projects:

I recently published the book European Aestheticism and Spanish American Modernismo: Artists Protagonists and the Philosophy of Art for Art’s Sake (Palgrave MacMillan, May 2011, 192 pages), which examines the changing role of art and the artist during the turn-of-the-century period and considers the multiple dichotomies of art and life, aesthetics and economics, production and consumption, and center and periphery. Through a comparative study of fictional works from Baudelaire, Wilde, Huysmans, and Mann in the European context and Darío, Silva, Casal, and Gutiérrez Nájera in the Spanish American context, this transatlantic investigation locates a shared interest in the philosophy of “art for art’s sake” in both aestheticism and modernismo. The analysis of the aims and attitudes of different types of artist protagonists considers the intersection between the artist figure and the impressionistic and creative critic (chapters 1 and 2), the producers and consumers of art (chapters 3 and 4), and the aesthete, the dandy, and the flâneur (chapters 5 and 6). It also outlines the ways in which the artist figures avoid “art for life’s sake” (Part I), protest “art for the market’s sake” (Part II), or promote “life for art’s sake” (Part III).

The book’s sixth chapter, “The Artist as Dandy-Flâneur, the World as Art in Manuel Gutiérrez Nájera and Julián de Casal” will serve as the basis for a future monograph that considers the turn-of-the-century figures of the dandy and flâneur in the Spanish American literary context in these two authors as well as Rubén Darío, José Asunción Silva, and Eugenio Cambaceres.

I am also preparing a manuscript for a book entitled Self-Exile in Cuban Literature: The Escape to Inner or Imagined Islands of Acceptance, Hybridity, and Freedom. This monograph locates a recurring process of self-exile into inner or imagined islands as the selected literary protagonists consciously create and willingly take refuge in alternative insular spaces. It is nonetheless significant that in each instance this occurs only at the personal or interpersonal level, and not at the national or political level, a shortcoming that reflects the impossibility or difficulty of overcoming the injustices and inequalities depicted, or at least their direct causes: colonialism, slavery, racism, imperialism, Castroism, communism, religious intolerance, homophobia, etc. This book treats five primary texts: Gómez de Avellaneda’s Sab, José Martí’s “La muñeca negra,” Alejo Carpentier’s El reino de este mundo, Reinaldo Arenas’ Arturo, la estrella más brillante, and Senel Paz’s “El lobo, el bosque y el hombre nuevo.”