Bulletin of Spanish Studies Podcast: Recent Episodes
Gemma McKenna
Experts with years of experience and those whose careers are just taking flight join in conversations about opera, nuns, Peruvian saints, drag performers, Renaissance paintings, poetry, the Spanish Civil war and the Avant Garde movement. And that’s just the beginning. The Bulletin of Spanish Studies has been showcasing world class research across the languages, literatures, cultures, histories and civilizations of Spain, Portugal and Latin America since 1923, joined in 2017 by our sister journal, the Bulletin of Spanish Visual Studies.
What has a stout, fiddle-playing Irish man got to do with Britain’s cultural diplomacy in tense 1940s Spain? Everything. Find out about the ‘soft power weapon’ that was Walter Starkie, founder of the British Council in Madrid, and learn about that institution’s role at this crucial juncture in history. Naturally, there will also be talk of spies. Dr Marina Pérez de Arcos, of the University of Oxford and LSE, tells us about ‘Education, Intelligence and Cultural Diplomacy at the British Council in Madrid, 1940–1941’, her award-winning series of articles as published in the Bulletin of Spanish Studies.
Che Cristo: the iconic 1967 post-mortem photograph of a beatific Che Guevara has never lost its potency. Thirty years later, it inspired Argentine filmmaker Leandro Katz to make the documentary El día que me quieras. This film was the subject of the award-winning article ‘Reconciling Myth with Photographic Histories in Leandro Katz’s El día que me quieras by Dr David Rojinsky, published in the Bulletin of Spanish Visual Studies. We talk to Dr Rojinsky about his first memory of the photograph (when he was 7!), his inspiration (yes, it includes teaching), how he sits down to write, and whether he ever gets that much longed-for closure on an article...
Episode 3:
Research Journeys, Part Three.
Find out how a busman’s holiday can really refresh your research perspective, while listening to four top academics from the UK and Ireland treat us to their journeys through the literature and culture of Spain and Latin America, with a particular focus on Argentine women. And, get tips on how to guest edit a journal special issue. Also, how little indulgences, less hoovering and riverside walks pave the way for great writing.
Episode 2:
Title: Research Journeys, Part Two
19th century opera, Spanish Golden Age poetry, 20th century visionaries, Renaissance religious painting, philosophy and modern art in Latin America. What do they have in common? They all make up part of the fascinating journeys that three academics from across the UK and Ireland have been on.
Episode 1:
Title: Research Journeys, Part One
Biographer of the giants of Latin American literature, teacher of the intricacies of Latin American Cinema to Cuban students and an expert on a particular 16th century Peruvian saint, Professor Stephen Hart of UCL talks about his diverse research portfolio while Dr Mary Farrelly of UCD focuses on an unholy alliance of nuns, cabaret, drag performers and the use of Twitter as a research tool.