News and Events 2013-2014
News
• NEW PROFESSOR OF SPANISH: It is with great pleasure that the Faculty of Modern and Medieval Languages, University of Cambridge, announces the appointment of Professor Bradley Epps to the Chair of Spanish from July, 2013. A well-known and much respected scholar on the international academic circuit, Brad comes to the United Kingdom after many years at Harvard. His expertise spans the length and breadth of Hispanic Studies with outstanding work in literature, film, theory, history, colonial (African and Latin American), Iberian, gender and queer studies. A fellow of King’s College, his colleagues in the Faculty and Department look forward to a long and fruitful tenure of the chair. NEW HEAD OF DEPARTMENT: On 1 January 2014, Professor Epps becomes Head of the Department of Spanish and Portuguese.
• At the end of Michaelmas Term 2013, it was announced that Professor Lisboa was one of the winners of the IV International Essay Competition (Prêmio Itamaraty de Literatura Brasileira: 2012) for an essay on the work of Lygia Fagundes Telles.
• Clare College continues the fund-raising campaign to establish The Anthony Close Scholarship in Spanish Golden Age Studies.
• ‘Thrills and chills’, a quiz, on the exhibition ‘Read all about it! Wrongdoing in Spain and England in the long nineteenth century’, was created for visitors to the exhibition during the 2013 Festival of Ideas.
• New publication: Dr Elizabeth Drayson's latest book, The Lead Books of Granada, has recently been published by Palgrave MacMillan in their Early Modern History series. The monograph evaluates the cultural status and importance of the polyvalent, ambiguous artefacts known as the lead books, which were discovered on a hillside in late sixteenth-century Granada and embody many of the dualities and paradoxes inherent in the racial and religious dilemmas of Early Modern Spain.
Local Events
• Cambridge Hispanic and Lusophone Research Seminars 2013/14. The programme for Lent Term 2014 and Michaelmas Term 2013 can be seen here.
• Ibero-Romance Linguistics Seminars 2013/14. The programme for this year can be seen here.
• Centre of Latin American Studies Seminars. Please click here to see the current programme.
Events outside Cambridge
• [17 October 2013 until 23 March 2014] Beyond El Dorado Power and Gold in Ancient Colombia at The British Museum, London.
• ¡Vamos! Latin American events in London.
Recent events in and out of Cambridge
• [29-30 November 2013] International Symposium Salvador Espriu. To mark this year's 100th anniversary of the birth of the Catalan poet Salvador Espriu, the Department of Spanish and Portuguese, University of Cambridge, the Institut Ramon Llull and the Centre for Catalan Studies, Queen Mary, University of London, are hosting a two-day/two-venue event on Friday, 29 November (at Fitzwilliam College, University of Cambridge) and on Saturday, 30 November (at the Centre for Catalan Studies, QMUL).
• [30 April until 23 December 2013] Read all about it! Wrongdoing in Spain and England in the long nineteenth century. From the Cambridge University Library WEBPAGE: Cambridge University Library is happy to announce the opening of the exhibition Read all about it! Wrongdoing in Spain and England in the long nineteenth century. Curated by Professor Alison Sinclair and Vanessa Lacey, and formally launched by Lord Williams of Oystermouth, it will run from the 30th of April until the 23rd of December 2013.
The exhibition draws on the Library's vast collection of material from both countries and reveals a catalogue of criminality from the University Library's remarkable collections of books, broadsides, penny dreadfuls and cheap, mass-produced ephemera. Both curators stress the importance of the collections to the national heritages of Britain, Spain and Europe as a whole.
The material reveals how, just like today, tales of crime and punishment were lapped up by a huge cross-section of society in the two countries: from illiterate Spanish peasants who consumed tales of wickedness and evil deeds via rudimentary picture stories to the English middle classes who devoured verbatim court reports from The Times. Themes include: 'Don't lock up your daughters', 'The glamour of bandits', and 'Monstrous criminals'.
The exhibition form part of Professor Alison Sinclair's on-going research. For a preview of all the Spanish material on display and selected English items, including Florence Maybrick's account, please visit the Cambridge Digital Library here.
For additional information about selected exhibits, and images of all the items on display, please visit the virtual exhibition here.
The University's press release about the exhibition can be found here
To read more about the University Library's pliegos sueltos collection, click here.
• [6 July until 29 September 2013] Mexico: A Revolution in Art, 1910-1940 Royal Academy exhibition, in The Sackler Wing of Galleries, Burlington House.
For information on older news and events, please contact spanport@hermes.cam.ac.uk.
