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 and UG Education Lead of the Department of Languages, Literatures and Cultures

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 Golden Age 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, book ownership in 17th-century Spain and the translation and reception of Cervantes's work in Britain.

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. Her monograph on Shimose is under contract with the Institute of Modern Language Studies. A monograph on Teresa of Avila is under contract with Tamesis.

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.

She is the coordinator of the Association of Hispanists of Great Britain and Ireland's Mentoring Scheme and chairs the panel for the annual Dorothy Sherman Severin Research Fellowship.

Research interests

Early Modern Spanish and Spanish American Poetry

Early Modern Spanish Religious Literature and Visual Arts

Bolivian Poetry

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

 

Teaching

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

SN1109 Comparative Hispanic Culture

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

SN3119 Conflict in 20th-century Latin American Literature

SN3121 Devotion, Deceit, Desire: Literature of the Spanish Golden Age

ML1301 Visual Arts 1: Artists and their Materials

ML2302 Visual Arts 2: Genres and Movements

ML2305 Deviance, Defiance and Disorder in Early Modern Spanish and French Literature

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