Research Seminars

Forthcoming Series (2019-20 onwards)

Please view our Events page and filter by 'Spanish, Portuguese and Latin American Studies'

Past Series

2017-18

Research seminars and events to be held during the coming term at the Department of Spanish, Portuguese, and Latin American Studies (unless otherwise indicated) all take place in Foster Court 314 @ 1pm.

Spring Term

17/1/18: Gender, Society, and Spanish Cinema

Abigail Loxham (University of Manchester): 'Post-crisis, Post-feminist? Mediating Female Subjectivities in Contemporary Spanish Cinema'

Respondent: Jo Evans

Chair: Debbie Martin

31/1/18: Prohibition, Resistance, and 19th-Century Spanish Women Writers

Rebecca Fell (University of Cambridge): 'Gossip-mongering, Fake News and Urban Legend - Subverting the Status Quo in Emilia Pardo Bazán's Short Stories'

Gareth Wood: 'Religious Resistance and the Biblioteca de la Mujer'

7/3/2018: Doris Salcedo and Political Art (*In Cruciform Lecture Theatre 2)

Mieke Bal (University of Amsterdam), 'How can Art do Political Work?'

Chair: Maria Chiara D'Argenio

Autumn Term

11/10/17: Intersections of Poetry and Philosophy

Erika Martínez (University of Granada): 'El viaje místico en la poesía latinoamericana y española del siglo XX: un acercamiento transatlántico '

Respondent: Humberto Núñez-Faraco

27/10/17: Lecture and Launch of the Bulletin of Spanish Visual Studies (NB: 6-9pm, Gustave Tuck)

Distinguished Professor Paul Julian Smith (CUNY): 'Transmedia Spain/Queer Mexico: Cinema, Television, and Visual Studies'

1/11/17: Gender and Mysticism Through the Ages

Corinna Deppner (University of Erfurt): 'Mystic Traditions in the Modern Period: Gender & Femininity in the work of Clarice Lispector & Teresa of Ávila'

Stephen Hart (UCL): 'Santa Rosa de Lima: Peru's Unofficial Mystic'

Chair: Tyler Fisher

22/11/17: New Developments in Periodical and Childhood Studies

Lauren Rea (University of Sheffield): 'Billiken Under Perón: The Politics of Childhood in Argentina's Longest-Running Children's Magazine'

Respondent: Maria Chiara D'Argenio

2016-17

Seminar Series

Wednesday 8 March

"Nation Branding in Latin America"

Felix Lossio Chavez (Newcastle University)
Discussant: Paulo Drinot (UCL)

Wednesday 22 February	Contested Authority and Indigenous Film Collaborations: Sey Arimaku (Pablo Mora, Colombia, 2012) and O Mestre e o Divino (Tiago Campos, Brazil, 2013)' Charlotte Gleghorn (University of Edinburgh)
Wednesday 8 February	"The generation game: Podemos, Javier Cercas and the (im)possibility of progressive politics in Spain" Duncan Wheeler (University of Leeds)
Wednesday 1 February	19th-century fusion food, irony and portuguesismo: Júlio Dinis's scrambled Portuguese eggs Hazel Robins (Cambridge) 'Gathering Food Narratives: Problems, Surprises, Questions' Rhian Atkin (Cardiff)
Wednesday 7 December	Mário Peixoto: Vanguard Film and Literature in Brazil in the 1930s Maite Conde (Cambridge) and Felipe Botelho Correa (King's College London)
Wednesday 30 November	The Role of the Producer in Latin American Cinemas Sarah Barrow (University of Lincoln)
Wednesday 23 November	Francisco Umbral: discurso antinacionalista Guillermo Laín Corona (UNED, Madrid)
Wednesday 26 October	Desmembramiento de un cuerpo, deriva de un país: El caso de Rosa Faundes Cavieres Alia Trabucco (UCL) Alberto Fuguet y su novela Aeropuertos: Una lectura de la igualdad política de las mujeres en la literatura chilena de la post-transición a la democracia Denisse Lazo (Oxford)
Wednesday 19 October	Displacements, decenterings: novels without frontier (FAPESP/ British Academy) Considerations on the Brazilian rise of the novel Dr. Jorge de Almeida, Literary Theory and Comparative Literature, University of São Paulo 'Foreign Places, Strange Words: Defamiliarization and the Novel in the Burtons' Iracema and Ng's Upheaval in Far Cathay' Dr Ross G. Forman, English and Comparative Literary Studies, Warwick "Unsterning" Machado de Assiss's The Posthumous Memoirs of Brás Cubas Professor Sandra Vasconcelos, Professor of English Literature, University of São Paulo Reforming the novel in late-colonial India: Krupabai Satthianathan's Saguna Dr. Tara Puri, Lecturer in Victorian Literature, University of Bristol

2015-16

Seminar Series

Wednesday 7 October	Jason Wilson (UCL) Jorge Luis Borges and W. H. Hudson. I will glance at how much Borges knew about W. H. Hudson. He first mentioned Hudson's work in 1925 as 'más nuestras que una pena' and last mentions him in 1952. He read him in English, but saw him as part of the 'tragedia gauchesca'. But what did he read and who was Hudson?
Wednesday 20 January	Azahara Veroz (Universidad de Córdoba) Title and abstract to follow
Wednesday 24 February	Professor John Kraniauskas (Birkbeck) Narco-Culture, Narco-Accumulation In this presentation I will reflect upon a constellation of notions that together will outline the parameters of a concept: 'narco-accumulation'. I will do so with the help of cultural materials: novels and films from the USA and Mexico such as Don Winslow's The Power of the Dog and The Cartel as well 'narco-novelas' by Victor Hugo Rascón Banda (Contrabando), Elmer Mendoza (Balas de plata) and Yuri Herrera (Trabajos del reino). Crucial to such an endeavour are the geopolitical and cultural - including literary - histories of the Mexican and US hinter- and border-lands. It is particularly to the history of this non-national 'territory' that I will turn to understand the narco-present.
Wednesday 9 March	Dr Javier Muñoz Basols (University of Oxford) Del inglesismo al anglicismo: huellas y testimonios de la influencia de la lengua inglesa en la tradición hispánica En esta ponencia haremos una incursión en el análisis de la influencia croslingüística léxica (Muñoz-Basols y Salazar 2016) que de manera recíproca han ejercido el inglés y el español a lo largo de la historia. Para ello nos detendremos en el cotejo de huellas textuales y de testimonios que nos permiten entender parte de la génesis de las actitudes hacia los anglicismos en la tradición hispánica. Toda esta información nos servirá para abordar una de las preocupaciones de mayor urgencia de la lexicografía actual, la revisión del tratamiento de los extranjerismos en el Diccionario de la lengua española (DRAE), y que fenómenos como la globalización, el multilingüismo, o la emergencia de nuevas variedades dialectales, como es el caso del español estadounidense, ponen constantemente en tela de juicio.
Wednesday 16 March	Catherine O´Leary (St Andrews) Title and abstract to follow

2014-15

Seminar Series

Wednesday 11 February	Dr Patricia D' Allemand (Queen Mary University)
Wednesday 25 February	Dr Dominic Moran (Oxford) This paper suggests a hitherto unidentified source for Vallejo's famous Trilce XXXVI, a source which throws significant light on both the basic subject matter of the poem, a number of its more puzzling allusions and its most striking expressive and formal features.
Tuesday 10 March	Professor Daniel Balderston (University of Pittsburg) This talk focuses on two manuscripts of Borges's "El jardín de senderos que se bifurcan" (The Garden of Forking Paths), and will show how Borges composed, both in early stages in composition notebooks and in subsequent copies (still much corrected) which are closer to fair or presentation copies. It is part of a book I have just finished, How Borges Wrote. The talk will include a PowerPoint presentation with images of the two manuscripts.
Wednesday 11 March	Dr Francisco J Hernandez Adrian (Durham University) Excess and playfulness in Latin American film: the seascape scene from Y tu mamá también to Post tenebras lux. In a series of early 21st-century Latin American films, urban ruins and 'naturescapes' appear to be connected with images of economic catastrophe and cultural decay on the one hand, and of social reconstruction and political recovery on the other. While these images issue from specific local and national contexts, an emergent, trans-regional and globally-inflected visuality also suggests a planetary cinematic consciousness playfully exceeding long-standing approaches to Latin American national cinemas. Focusing on two films by Mexican directors Alfonso Cuarón (Y tu mamá también, 2001) and Carlos Reygadas (Post tenebras lux, 2012), this talk considers the figure of the shore or littoral zone in seascape scenes at the conceptual juncture of affective, perceptive and sensorial cultural traffickings.
Wednesday 25 March	Professor Catherine Boyle (King's College London) Translating, Feminist Knots and Cultural History With reference to the idea of strong voices, this talk will explore the relationship between the academic self and the questions that are posed through the process of translation. In respect of my recent work, this has led to the study of connections in social, labour and feminist histories between Europe and Latin America. I will pose the questions through translation processes related to three Chilean women: Gabriela Mistral, Isidora Aguirre and Violeta Parra.

2013-14

Seminar Series

Autumn Term

Dr Michael Thompson (Durham University) - Wednesday 6 November 2013: '"Cosas que hoy carecen de sentido": Echegaray and Benavente as seen by Francoist censors'. Download abstract (PDF).

Dr Gaspar Garrote Bernal (Universidad de Málaga) - Wednesday 20 November 2013: 'La poesía española de ingenio sexual (siglos XIV-XVII)'. Download abstract (PDF).

Professor C. A. Longhurst (University of Leeds) - Wednesday 4 December 2013: 'Unamuno's views on language: sense or nonsense?' Download abstract (PDF).

Spring Term

Professor Abigail Lee Six (Royal Holloway, University of London) - Wednesday 15 January 2014. Trust and Lust in Nuria C. Botey's 'Viviendo con el tío Roy' (2010): A Classic Dilemma in Vampire Garb. Download abstract (PDF).

Professor Brad Epps (Cambridge University) - Wednesday 26 February 2014. The Unbearable Lightness of Bones: Memory and Affect in Patricio Guzmán's 'Nostalgia de la luz and Chile, la memoria obstinada'. Download abstract (PDF).

Dr Maite Conde (Cambridge University) - Wednesday 19 March 2014. Download abstract (PDF).

2012-13

Seminar Series

Autumn Term:

Dr Deborah Martin (UCL) - 28 November 2012 - 'Lucrecia Martel's Politics of Perception'

Gonzalo Ceron Garcia (University of Kent) - 5 December 2012- 'The Urban Mapuche: A Question of Authenticity'

Dr Anindya Raychaudhuri (St. Andrews) - 12 December 2012 (in FC314) - 'The Phantom Limb: Lameness and Disability in Spanish Civil War Narratives'.

Spring Term:

Professor Evelyn Fishburn (UCL) - 23 January 2013 - A Kind of Private Joke? A Study of Allusion in Borges's Fiction
Professor Kevin Middlebrook (Institute of the Americas, UCL) - 30 January 2013

Niall Binns (Universidad Compultense Madrid) - 6 February 2013

2011-12

Spring 2012

8 February 2012 Gareth Stockey (University of Nottingham)"Representation and Re-presentation at the Valle de los Caídos"

22 February 2012 Stephen Roberts (University of Nottingham)"A Study in Exile: Miguel de Unamuno 1924-1930"

7 March 2012 Julia Biggane (University of Aberdeen)"The rewards of female Falangism: the Condecoración 'Y' 1939-1945"

14 March 2012 Patricia Novillo-Corvalán (University of Kent)"Transnational Modernist Encounters: Joyce, Borges, and Bolaño"

21 March 2012 Peter Evans (Queen Mary, University of London)Title: tbd; co-hosted by Centre for Intercultural Studies

Summer 2012

6 June 2012, 11am Benigno Trigo (Vanderbilt University, USA)"A Suicidal Passion: The Avant-Garde in Puerto Rico" (Wilkins Haldane Room)

2010-11

Download PDF

Early Modern Exchanges Seminars

Forthcoming events