Dr Montserrat Lunati – BA (Romance Philology, UA Barcelona), PhD (University of Wales, Cardiff)
Overview
Position:
Senior Lecturer in Hispanic Studies
Email:
Lunati@cardiff.ac.ukTelephone: +44(0)29 2087 6632
Fax: +44(0)29 2087 4946
Extension: 76632
Location: Room 1.04, 65-68 Park Place
Office hours: Thursday, 15:00 - 17:00
My research focuses on contemporary Catalan and Spanish fiction, specifically on women’s writing, short story writing, the politics of discursive irony and gender studies. My work on Imma Monsó reflects these concerns, as well as a growing interest in the representation of illness in literature and cinema. The connections between text, body, and space/place (with its historical connotations), together with the construction of identity/subjectivity through gender, sexuality, nation and language are key areas of my critical work on Monsó and other Spanish and Catalan authors such as Quim Monzó, Mercè Ibarz, Núria Perpinyà or Lolita Bosch. My research is currently moving towards the field of visual studies through a projected monograph on Danish-Spanish artist Eva Koch’s video and photography installations dealing with space, the (re)construction of the past through perception and memory, and the Spanish Civil War. I am also exploring the work of Catalan photographer Mariona Giner, and the work of filmmakers such us Judith Colell, Isabel Coixet and Agustí Villaronga.
I am co-founder and co-editor with Jordi Larios of Tesserae, Journal of Iberian and Latin American Studies. The Journal was launched in 1994, it is based in the School of European Languages, Translation and Politics, Cardiff University, and is published by Taylor & Francis (Oxford).
I am the Deputy Director for Teaching and Learning of the School of European Languages, Translation and Politics, and the member of staff responsible for Student Voice.
I co-ordinate the teaching of Catalan Language and Culture in the School and I liaise with the Institut Ramon Llull, the Catalan Government’s Consortium which looks after the dissemination of Catalan Language and Culture abroad.
During the Autumn Term of 2012 I will be based at the Department of Romance Languages and Literatures of the University of Chicago as Chair Joan Corominas Visiting Professor in Catalan Studies.
Selected Projects
- Cos, espai i text: Sobre literatura, cinema i fotografia de dones catalanes d'avui [working title]. This monograph will be published in 2013 by Lleonard Muntaner Editor (Palma de Mallorca, Spain). It is an inter-related collection of essays on the interaction of text, space/place and the body in the work of contemporary Catalan women writers, photographers and filmmakers. It deals with a number of issues linking the texts studied in unexpected, stimulating and fruitful ways. These issues include the cultural and (a)political construction of illness; the literary and cinematic representation of personal trauma and its gender and historical dimensions; mourning narratives, their debt to/escape from Freud and their gendered reception; the representation of the past and the Derridean 'accommodation of its ghosts'; the challenge to include the Other without appropriating her/his voice/image; women's struggles to be seen and heard in historically male-dominated territories: either public places such as the city of Barcelona, or Woolfian private spaces where women can be creative. With identity and gender understood as relational concepts as well as concepts in dialogue with time, history and culture, I explore novels, short stories, graphic novels, cinema and photography by writers such as Imma Monsó, Mercè Ibarz, Núria Perpinyà, Lolita Bosch and Carme Guasch, photographer Mariona Giner, and filmmakers Judith Colell and Isabel Coixet. Their texts, all produced in the last fifteen years, are the object of a series of inter-connected, theory-based analyses with a feminist poststructuralist approach.
- A monograph on Danish-Spanish artist Eva Koch’s video and photography installations dealing with space/ place, the (re)construction of the past through memory and perception, and the long-lasting effects of the Spanish Civil War. I will explore issues of diaspora, gender, family mythologies, ‘post-memory’ and the plight of displaced war children in her visual work: Nini, Glimpses of a Woman's Life (1996), En face (1999), and Villar, Manuela's Children (2001).
Research Unit
Publications
Teaching
Teaching profile
Teaching at the school of European Languages, Translation and Politics, Cardiff University(Past & Present)
Undergraduate level
- EU5326 Women’s Narratives: Cinema and Literature in Contemporary Spain: Optional Triple Module offered to Year 4 BA and EUS students. It runs on a two-year cycle. It includes critical theory and literary and cinematic texts by Catalan and Spanish women writers and filmmakers.
- EU0391 Politics, Society and Memory in Contemporary Spain: Optional Triple Module offered to Year 4 BA and EUS students. It will run in 2012-2013. Together with Dr Andrew Dowling. It offers an analysis of contemporary Spanish society and explores the recuperation of the historical memory related to the Civil War by looking at a number of Spanish and Catalan texts.
- EU5350 Francoism: History and Memory: Optional Triple Module offered to Year 4 BA and EUS students in 2011-12. Together with Dr Andrew Dowling. It offers a historical survey of the Francoist period, and explores the memory of it through a number of literary and visual works.
- EU5215 Contemporary Spanish Narrative: Optional Triple Module offered to Year 2 BA and EUS students. It runs on a two-year cycle. It includes texts by contemporary Spanish, Catalan and Galician writers as well an introduction to narratology and critical theory. It also incorporates a visual component (films and documentaries).
- EU7122 European Fiction: Contribution with Catalan and Spanish texts (novels, short stories & films) to a team-taught triple module offered to all undergraduate Year 2 students of the School of European Studies (languages and politics), which looks into the European narrative tradition and covers texts – studied in translation and in the original, when possible – from Catalonia, Spain, France, Italy, Germany, Russia and Latin America.
- EU5211 Spanish Cultural Studies: Compulsory Single Module for Year 2 BA and EUS Ex Beginner students. It deals with literature, cinema and cultural issues of contemporary Spain.
- Spanish Cinema: Optional Triple Module offered to Year 2 and Year 4 BA and EUS students (1992-2001).
- Hispanic Avant-garde(s): Optional double module on Catalan and Spanish avant-garde Cinema and Narrative in Pre-Civil War Spain, taught in collaboration with Dr Jordi Larios. Module offered to Year 2 and Year 4 BA and EUS students (1999-2001).
- EU5109 Spanish Texts: Introduction to Film and Literary Studies: Compulsory Single Module for all BA Year 1 Beginner students, and Optional for EUS Year 1 Advanced students.
- EU5108 Spanish Texts: Introduction to Film and Literary Studies: Compulsory Single Module for all BA Year 1 Advanced students, and Optional for EUS Year 1 Advanced students.
- Spanish Language: Grammar, Essay Writing, Translation and Aural Comprehension. At different moments, I have taught all levels: Year 1 (Beginners, Advanced), Year 2 (Ex Beginners, Ex Advanced), and Year 4.
Postgraduate level
MA in Literature in European Studies
I co-ordinate Pathway Two: European Identities: Culture and Ideology. (The Pathway is made up of three optional 30-credit modules on Memories of the Second World War, Adaptations of Literature into Film and Nationalism in Europe.)
I co-ordinate the Optional 30-credit Module ‘EUT211 Crossing Borders: Adaptations of Literature into Film’.
I conduct seminars on Spanish and Catalan adaptations from literature to other other media such as cinema (Carmen: From Mérimée and Bizet to Saura and Gades; Elisa Kiseljak: Trauma and Gender in Literature and Cinema) for the ‘EUT Crossing Borders: Adaptations of Literature into Film’.
I conduct seminars on 'Intertextuality' for the 'EUT 319 Approaches to Text' Core Module.
MA in Translation Studies:
I conduct seminars on 'Cultural Studies and Translation' in the 'EUT 401 Theory of Translation' Core Module.
I conduct seminars on 'The poetics and politics of the Carmen myth' for the 'EUT412 Translation and Adaptation in the Arts' Optional Module.
I conduct seminars on Catalan translation (history, politics and practice) for the ‘EUT414 Minority Languages in Translation’ optional Module.
