Personal profile

Personal profile

BA (Hons) (Kent), MSt (Oxon), MLitt (Oxon), MA (Cantab) PhD (London)

Senior Lecturer in Hispanic Studies; HEA Senior Fellow

Deputy Head of the Department of Languages, Literatures and Cultures

Director of Internationalisation, School of Humanities

Associate Editor of the Bulletin of Spanish Studies and of the Bulletin of Spanish Visual Studies

 

 

Arantza Mayo arrived at Royal Holloway following teaching stints at Oxford and a University Lectureship at the University of Cambridge, where she also served as Fellow of Corpus Christi College.

Arantza specialises in early modern literature and culture in Spain and colonial America, particularly religious poetry, its devotional background and the relationship between literature and the visual arts. Her work on La Lírica Sacra de Lope de Vega y José de Valdivielso has been published in the Biblioteca Áurea Hispánica series (Iberoamericana/Vervuert, 2007). She also has an interest in Bolivian literature and culture, in particular twentieth-century poetry and the social contexts of its production. Recent publications include essays on Spanish Golden Age, colonial and 20th-century Spanish American poetry.

Her current research interests include narratives of pain and the Passion (textual, visual), the performance of devotion, the works of Teresa de Jesús, and the poetry of Pedro Shimose. A monograph on Teresa of Avila is under contract with Tamesis. She is also preparing a critical edition of Alonso Jerónimo de Salas Barbadillo's Los triunfos de la beata soror Juana de la Cruz.

Arantza has won prizes for her research (the prestigious ‘Premio Conde de Cartagena’, awarded by the Real Academia Española) as well as her teaching (a 'College Teaching Fellowship Award', a Students' Union ‘Apple for the Teacher’ award plus a further nomination for the same prize).

Arantza serves on the Editorial Board of the Bulletin of Spanish Studies as well as on the Board of its sister journal, the Bulletin of Spanish Visual Studies.

Research interests

Early Modern Spanish and Spanish American Literature

Early Modern Religious Literature, Visual Arts and Material Culture in the Hispanic World

Bolivian Poetry

Arantza welcomes proposals for postgraduate study in any of her fields of study.

 

Teaching

Arantza enjoys teaching modules on Early Modern Literature and Visual Arts in Spain and Colonial America. She also teaches 20th-century Latin American Literature and Culture.

SN1105 Journeys of Identity

SN1109 Discovery, Subversion and Destruction

SN2118  From Public Display to Private Devotion: Religion and Society in the 16th- and 17th-century Hispanic World

SN 2124/3119 Conflict in 20th-century Latin American Literature and Culture

SN2107/3107 Deceit, Desire and the Self in the Early Modern Hispanic World

ML1301 Visual Arts 1: Artists and their Materials

ML2302 Visual Arts 2: Genres and Movements

External positions

Scientific Advisory Board, Revista La Perinola, Universidad de Navarra

2 Apr 2025 → …

Associate Editor, Bulletin of Spanish Studies

2017 → …

Associate Editor, Bulletin of Spanish Visual Studies

2017 → …

Keywords

  • Spanish studies
  • Early Modern Literature
  • Early Modern Visual Arts
  • Material Culture
  • Religious Culture
  • Early Modern America
  • Spanish Literature
  • Religious Literature
  • Bolivian Literature
  • Saints
  • Penance
  • Hispanic Studies

Collaborations and top research areas from the last five years

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