The Spanish and Portuguese Section offers undergraduate and graduate teaching in Spanish, Portuguese, and Catalan. It is unique in its commitment to exploring the trans-historical and cross-cultural interrelations between all these language areas and their corresponding cultural formations.Ê
The research interests of its academic staff thus span a wide range of areas including Medieval and Golden Age Spanish cultures and their consolidation in dialogue with the diverse cultures and faith systems of Africa and the "New World"; the literature, art and cinema of Portugal, Brazil and Lusophone Africa; the literature of modern Spain and its relationship with the Enlightenment, colonialism, and modernity; the cinema of the Ibero-American world from early silent film through to its avant-garde, indigenous, popular and transnational dimensions today; and the culture of Catalonia from its rebirth in the Renaixena, through its resistance to Franquismo in literature and film, to its vibrant contemporary artistic, architectural and cinematographic expressions.
The Section also has one of the largest contingents of Latin American specialists in the United Kingdom, whose interests span the poetry and chronicles of the colonial period; the formation of national cultures in post-Independence Spanish America and Brazil; the experimental literatures of the Spanish American "Boom"; and the literature, cinema, and visual art produced in the interlocking contexts of post-dictatorship, mass urbanisation, narcotr‡fico and neo-liberal globalisation.Ê
The intellectual vitality of the Section is further evidenced by a dynamic research culture of public lectures, section seminars, graduate workshops and conferences, all of which add to a close-knit system of graduate supervision and mentoring that encourages both individual and collective endeavour within the section.
