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Biography
From 1987 till 1988 I was Lecturer in Spanish at St Hugh's College, Jesus College, Wadham College and Lady Margaret Hall, Oxford University.
From 1988 till 1990 I held the Queen Sofia Junior Research Fellowship and a Lecturership in Spanish at Exeter College, Oxford.
From 1991 till 1994 I was lecturer in Spanish at the University of Newcastle-upon-Tyne.
Since 1994, I have been Lecturer and then Associate Professor and Reader in the Department of Spanish, Portuguese and Latin American Studies, University of Nottingham.
Expertise Summary
My main research areas are the literature, culture and intellectual history of Spain in the second half of the nineteenth century and the first half of the twentieth, with a particular interest in the thought and public role of Miguel de Unamuno and in the poetry of Juan Ramón Jiménez, Federico García Lorca and others. I have also worked on cinema (John Huston, Juan Antonio Bardem, Víctor Erice, biopics). My current research deals with the phenomenon of exile.
Teaching Summary
My teaching includes the Spanish side of a survey course on the literature of Spain and Spanish America between 1840 and the present day and, at final year level, modules on Unamuno and on Literature… read more
Research Summary
I am currently completing a book dealing with Miguel de Unamuno´s time in exile (1924-1930).
My teaching includes the Spanish side of a survey course on the literature of Spain and Spanish America between 1840 and the present day and, at final year level, modules on Unamuno and on Literature and Film under Franco. I also teach translation from Spanish into English and give classes on Spanish grammar.
Past Research
My most recent research has had two strands. On the one hand, I have focused on the intellectual history of Spain between the 1880s and the 1930s. I have been particularly interested in the literature, thought and politics of Miguel de Unamuno and, centrally, his pioneering role in the emergence of the figure of the modern intellectual in Spain. I have also looked at the intellectual dialogue between Spain and Spanish America over this same period. On the other hand, I have been analysing different aspects of Spanish and Spanish American poetry of the first decades of the twentieth century, including García Lorca's poetic dialogue with the visual arts, Neruda's formal experiments, and the relationship between poetry and philosophy in Juan Ramón Jiménez. I have also worked on other aspects of Spanish and Spanish American thought (Ortega and Rodó) and on the Spanish cinema of the 1950s (Bardem) and 1990s (Erice).
Future Research
I plan to analyse the nature and function of certain generational relationships in Spanish novels of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries (including novels by Galdós, Pereda, Martínez Ruiz and Baroja).