Lecturer in Spanish

BA, MA (Nottingham), PhD (Birmingham)

Contact Details

• Email: scp10@le.ac.uk
• Telephone: +44 (0)116 252 2666
• Office: 1103
• Subject: Spanish

Research Summary

Dr Penn’s main areas of research are Mexican and Latin American literature, particularly of the ‘Boom’ and post-‘Boom’ and the cinema of Luis Buñuel. He also works on Mexican cinema and has a general interest in the applications of continental philosophy and Critical Theory. He is currently working on projects on Luis Buñuel, Carlos Reygadas and is preparing a book on the esoteric in Mexican literature since the Revolution.

Research Student Supervision

Dr Penn supervises the following students:

• Yvonne Cornejo (Latin American dystopian science fiction cinema) 
• Marc Ripley (Space in the Cinema of Luis Buñuel)

He also supervised Emma Staniland, who in 2010 completed a PhD in gender and identity in Latin American women’s writing.

Teaching and Administration 

• Latin American Society and Culture
• Latin American Literature and Film
• The Mexico-U.S. Border: History and Culture
• Contemporary Mexican Cinema
• Spanish Language, Year 4
• Boom Literature: Language and Creation
• The Cinema of Luis Buñuel

Recent Publications

'Oneiric Landscapes of Creation: Visions of Life and Death in José Gorostiza's Muerte sin fin', Romance Studies, 29/4, November 2011, pp. 665-676

‘Matter, Memory and Pre-Hispanic Myth: The Poetry of Bernardo Ortiz de Montellano', Bulletin of Hispanic Studies, 88/6, September 2011, pp. 255-268

Forthcoming

'The Time-Image in Carlos Reygadas's Stellet Licht: A Cinema of Immanence, Bulletin of Spanish Studies, 2012

'On a Road to Nowhere: Parodic Movement as Time-Image in La Voie lactée and Le Charme discret de la bourgeoisie', in The Companion to Luis Buñuel (Blackwell, 2013)

Full listing of publications