Anna Vives

Teaching Fellow in Spanish

  • Spanish, Portuguese and Latin American Studies
  • Department of European Languages and Cultures
  • School of Literatures, Languages and Cultures

Contact details

Address

Street

Room 4.15
40 George Square

City
Edinburgh
Post code
EH8 9JU

Availability

  • My office hour for students is Monday 14:00-15:00 in person. For alternative arrangements both in terms of times and modality (online / in person), please email me.

Biography

Background

Dr Anna Vives is a Teaching Fellow in Spanish. She holds a BA in Catalan Literature and Linguistics from the University of Valencia, Spain (1999), a CAP (PGCE equivalent) from the Complutense University of Madrid and a PhD in Hispanic Studies from the University of Aberdeen (2007). Her doctoral thesis focused on the representations of narcissism, genius and violence in the poetic, pictorial, essayistic and autobiographical works of Federico García Lorca and Salvador Dalí. Her postdoctoral work includes publications on the literature and painting of Spanish women artists and Catalan visual poetry. She has extensive teaching experience in the fields of Spanish and Catalan language, literature and culture and has taught at the universities of Aberdeen, Leicester, Sheffield and Lancaster in a variety of roles such as Teaching Fellow, Teaching Associate and Associate Lecturer. She was the Honorary Secretary of the Anglo-Catalan Society between December 2010 and November 2015 and an Honorary Research Fellow in Hispanic Studies at the University of Sheffield between September 2016 and August 2019.

Anna has published extensively in the field of the Spanish avant-garde, focusing on surrealism, the interaction between poetry and painting, art and politics, and urban cultural studies. Among her major publications, one finds the books Identidad en tiempos de vanguardia: narcisismo, genio y violencia en la obra de Salvador Dalí y Federico García Lorca (Oxford: Peter Lang, 2015) and Àngel Planells' Art and the Surrealist Canon (New York: Routledge, 2019). She has also catalogued a number of Planells' paintings for the Thyssen-Bornemisza Museum in Madrid. 

Anna held the AHGBI/WISPS Dorothy Sherman-Severin Research Fellowship for Early-Career Researchers in Luso-Hispanic Studies in 2009/2010, and has secured funding from the British Academy, Santander and the Association for Art History.

Qualifications

BA in Catalan Literature and Linguistics (Valencia, 1999), CAP (Madrid, 2002), PhD (Aberdeen, 2007)

Anna is currently studying part-time for a BA in Art (Open University of Catalonia/ Reina Sofía Museum).

Responsibilities & affiliations

TEACHING:

  • Foundation Spanish Language 1
  • Spanish 1A (language and literature)
  • Spanish 1B (language and literature)
  • Oral for Spanish (final year)

RESEARCH:

Anna peer-reviews book proposals for Routledge and Cambridge University Press, and articles for Bulletin of Hispanic Studies (UK), Bulletin of Spanish Studies (UK), Forum for Modern Language Studies (UK), Catalan Review (US), Crisolenguas (Puerto Rico), Studia Romanica Posnaniensia (Poland) and Vida Hispánica (UK). She is on the editorial board of the Journal of Catalan Studies. Anna was also a Contributing Editor to The Year’s Work in Modern Language Studies between April 2017 and February 2019, focusing on the Spanish literature of the period 1898-1936.

Research summary

Dr Anna Vives' research focuses on the Spanish avant-garde, especially surrealism, the interaction between poetry and painting, art and politics, and urban cultural studies. She is currently finalising a website on surrealist artist and writer, Àngel Planells that will include information on his biography, artworks, writings, exhibitions and bibliography as well as a blog. This project has been funded by a British Academy/ Leverhulme Small Research Grant.

Specific research interests are: astronomical images and the presence of Edgar Allan Poe in Àngel Planells' surrealist art; the importance of graphic magazines La Esfera (1914-1931) and Blanco y Negro (1891-1988) in the production of Spanish avant-garde artists; the portrayal of exile in the surrealist writings of Remedios Varo; the use of political elements in Salvador Dalí’s works; the image of Barcelona through minimalist urban interventions such as artistic party walls. For example: What sociocultural mechanisms are activated when a party wall is decorated with visual poetry? 

She is also starting to look to the links between the Spanish avant-garde and the cultural and artistic production of the Nordic Countries.

Knowledge exchange

  • Invited lecture on Federico García Lorca’s La casa de Bernarda Alba (Radley College, Oxford, January 2021)
  • Cataloguing of a number of  Àngel Planells’ paintings for the Thyssen-Bornemisza Museum in Madrid (completed Summer 2015)
  • Translation from English into Catalan of 10 image captions and a text for the BeautifulMars Project (part of a NASA mission called HiRISE) (November 2014 and March 2015)
  • Translations* from Catalan into English of 5 poems by Olga Xirinacs in John Gallas, 52 Euros (Manchester: Carcanet Press, 2013), pp. 178-180 (*translations re-poemed by Gallas)
  • Invited lecture on Catalan culture and Salvador Dalí (St Paul’s Catholic School, Leicester, December 2012)
  • Invited lecture on Catalan culture (the Prince’s Teaching Institute in London, November 2012)
  • Invited to chair a panel discussion on the occasion of the UK premiere of the film Barcelona Before Time Erases It, with Goya-nominated film director Mireia Ros (RichMix, London, June 2012)
  • Invited talks on Salvador Dalí and Federico García Lorca to the members of the Leicester Anglo-Hispanic Society (January 2011 and February 2012)
  • Co-organised with Dr Lucía Pintado-Gutiérrez: Hispanic Film Festival (University of Leicester, February and March 2010)

Past project grants

• British Academy/Leverhulme Small Research Grant, 16 April 2017 – 30 March 2018. Title of project: Àngel Planells’ Painting and Poetry: Reconfiguring the Canon of Hispanic Surrealism
• Learning and Teaching Development Fund Award (School of Languages and Cultures at the University of Sheffield) to deliver a paper at the 42nd Association for Art History Annual Conference, University of Edinburgh, April 2016: ‘Roland Penrose’s Secret Pleasure: Àngel Planells’ Pictorial Art’
• College Development Fund Award (College of Arts, Humanities and Law at the University of Leicester) to deliver a paper at the LX AHGBI Annual Conference, University of Exeter, April 2015: ‘Salvador Dalí and Fascism’
• Santander Travel Award for a visit to Madrid to advance research on my second monograph, November 2014. Title of project: Àngel Planells’ Painting and Poetry: Reconfiguring the Canon of Hispanic Surrealism
• Association for Art History Image Grant for Reprographic and Copyright Expenses, September 2014
• Santander Travel Award for a visit to Barcelona to advance research, February 2012. Title of project: A City's Dialogue with Its Authors: The Artistic Party Walls of Barcelona
• British Academy Overseas Conference Grant to deliver a paper at the XIII International Colloquium of the North American Catalan Society, Temple University, Philadelphia, May 2010: ‘Espais urbans en l’avantguardisme català: sinècdoques, somnis i heterotopies’
• The AHGBI/WISPS Dorothy Sherman-Severin Research Fellowship for Early-Career Researchers in Luso-Hispanic Studies, 30 September 2009 – 1 October 2010. Title of project: Capturing Urban Life: the Image of the City in Catalan Avant-garde Poetry and Art
• AHGBI Postgraduate Bursary to deliver a paper at the L AHGBI Annual Conference, Valencia, Spain, April 2005: ‘Narcisismo e identidad poética en Dalí Lorca’

Invited speaker

  • Centre for Catalan Studies Research Seminar, Queen Mary, University of London, February 2018: ‘Salvador Dalí’s Metamorphoses between 1927 and 1937’
  • Artistic Interventions in the Virtual Space, University of Birmingham, June 2015: 'Salvador Dalí and his Self-representation as a Genius'
  • Spanish, Portuguese and Latin American Studies Research Seminar, King’s College London, May 2015: ‘Lorca, Dalí and Fascism’ (joint research seminar with Professor John London, Queen Mary, University of London)
  • Simposi Internacional La modernitat cauta: Resignació, restauració, resistència. (1942-1962), Pompeu Fabra University, Barcelona, June 2013: ‘El fantàstic com a resistència: el surrealisme d’Àngel Planells (1942-1962)’
  • School of Modern Languages Research Seminar, University of Newcastle, May 2012: ‘Poetry in the City: Aesthetics and Urban Landscape in 21st Century Barcelona’
  • Una jornada dedicada a Remedios Varo: límenes maravillosos, Queen’s University Belfast, November 2010: ‘Un viaje de lo maravilloso a lo heterotópico: el espacio urbano en la pintura y la poesía de Remedios Varo’
  • Primer Simposio de Poesía Española, La Generación de la República, Queen Mary, University of London, July 2009: ‘Sobre el canon literario de la Generación del 27: Federico García Lorca y Concha Méndez tras las lentes de la memoria histórica’
  • Centre for Catalan Studies International Conference, Far-right ideologies in the work of 20th century Catalan artists and writers, Queen Mary, University of London, July 2008: ‘The Problematics of Subjectivisation: Salvador Dalí’s Ideology as Avida Dollars’ 

Organiser

  • Co-organised as part of the Anglo-Catalan Executive Committee: LXI Anglo-Catalan Society Conference (University of Glasgow, 13 – 15 November 2015)
  • Co-organised as part of the Anglo-Catalan Executive Committee: LX Anglo-Catalan Society Conference (University College Cork, 4 – 7 September 2014)
  • Co-organised as part of the Anglo-Catalan Executive Committee: LIX Anglo-Catalan Society Conference (The University of Manchester, 1 – 3 November 2013)
  • Professor Dawn Ades, ‘Demonstrating Critical Paranoia: Dalí’s Tragic Myth of Millet’s Angelus’ (University of Leicester, 5 December 2012)
  • Co-organised as part of the Anglo-Catalan Executive Committee: LVIII Anglo-Catalan Society Conference (The University of Sheffield, 9 – 11 November 2012)
  • Co-organised as part of the Anglo-Catalan Executive Committee: LVII Anglo-Catalan Society Conference (Queen Mary, University of London, 25 – 27 November 2011)
  • Co-organised as part of the Anglo-Catalan Executive Committee: LVI Anglo-Catalan Society Conference (Institut d’Estudis Catalans, Barcelona, 17 – 19 December 2010)
  • Co-organised with Dr Ann Miller and Dr Sheldon Penn: International Symposium of Cuban Studies: Space and Nation in Poetry and Cinema; keynote speakers: Dr Guy Baron, Dr Omar García-Obregón and editor Mark Weiss (University of Leicester, 1 June 2010)

Papers delivered

  • I Seminario Internacional CviArpe. Subversiones y reapropiaciones del espacio. Mujeres creadoras, Valencia International University, November 2022: 'Elementos disidentes en la poesía de Manuela Ballester Vilaseca' 

  • III Congreso Internacional Visiones de lo Fantástico: ‘El horror y sus formas’. H. P. Lovecraft y Cristina Fernández Cubas, Autonomous University of Barcelona, June 2017: ‘Entre Edgar Allan Poe y el surrealismo: el horror fantástico en la pintura de Àngel Planells’
  • Department of Hispanic Studies Research Seminar Series, University of Sheffield, April 2016: ‘The Politics of Cultural Institutions: the Fundació Gala-Salvador Dalí and the Fundació Àngel Planells’
  • 42nd Association for Art History Annual Conference, University of Edinburgh, April 2016: ‘Roland Penrose’s Secret Pleasure: Àngel Planells’ Pictorial Art’
  • LX Annual AHGBI Conference, University of Exeter, April 2015: ‘Salvador Dalí and Fascism’
  • La poesia en la contemporaneïtat: reptes genèrics, identitat i incidència pública, Fundació La Caixa, Palma, December 2014: ‘Canonicitat i metapoesia en Dos poals (2005) i Els hòmens primer (2010) de Josep Vicent’
  • Democracy and the Arts in the Contemporary Hispanic World, University of Birmingham, June 2014: ‘Back to Surrealism: Àngel Planells after 1975’
  • LIX Annual Anglo-Catalan Society Conference, University of Manchester, November 2013: ‘Espais de diàleg: les mitgeres artístiques de Barcelona’
  • 128th MLA Annual Convention, Boston, January 2013: ‘Catalan Avant-garde Poetry, Barcelona and the Global’
  • Symposium on Contemporary Latin American Women Writers, Artists and Filmmakers, University of Stirling, October 2012: ‘Surrealismo, género y ciudad en la obra pictórica y poética de Remedios Varo’
  • X Conference of the Associazione Italiana di Studi Catalani, Ciutat de l'amor: scrivere la città, raccontare i sentimenti, University of Verona, February 2012: ‘Poesia a la ciutat: el cas de les mitgeres de Carles Sindreu i Joan Salvat-Papasseit’
  • Centre for Catalan Studies, ModernArt.Cat, Queen Mary, University of London, June 2011: ‘Salvador Dalí and Àngel Planells: Influence and Confluence’
  • WISPS XI Conference (jointly organized with WIGS), Swansea University, November 2010: ‘Real and Imaginary Cityscapes in the Catalan Avant-garde: An Aesthetic Approach to Gender Perceptions’
  • XIII International Colloquium of the North American Catalan Society, Temple University, Philadelphia, May 2010: ‘Espais urbans en l’avantguardisme català: sinècdoques, somnis i heterotopies’
  • LV Annual AHGBI Conference, King’s College London, April 2010: ‘Las mujeres, el vanguardismo catalán y la fascinación por la metrópolis moderna: ¿el idilio que no pudo ser?’
  • LV Annual Anglo-Catalan Society Conference, University of Edinburgh, November 2009: ‘La imatge de la ciutat en la poesia de Joan Salvat-Papasseit, Carles Salvador i Carles Sindreu’
  • LIII Annual AHGBI Conference, University of Sheffield, March 2008: ‘Sex and the City: Lorca's Poeta en Nueva York’
  • LIII Annual Anglo-Catalan Society Conference, Swansea University, November 2007: ‘L’experiència ecfràstica de Dalí: a cavall entre la pintura i la poesia’
  • School of Modern Languages Research Seminar, University of Leicester, December 2006: ‘Violence in New York: Lorca’s Poetic Reaction to Modernity’
  • IV International Conference on the Hispanic Poetry of Europe and the Americas, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, May 2006: ‘El genio, el duende y el elitismo en la poesía de Lorca y Dalí’
  • L Annual AHGBI Conference, Valencia, Spain, April 2005: ‘Narcisismo e identidad poética en Dalí y Lorca’
  • Hispanic Studies Research Seminar, University of Aberdeen, March 2002: ‘Surrealist Works by Salvador Dalí and Federico García Lorca’
  • XLVI Annual Anglo-Catalan Society Conference, Autonomous University of Barcelona, December 2000: ‘Salvador Dalí: breu història de la seua petjada en el surrealisme anglès’

BOOKS

  • Àngel Planells’ Art and the Surrealist Canon (New York: Routledge, 2019)
  • Identidad en tiempos de vanguardia: narcisismo, genio y violencia en la obra de Salvador Dalí y Federico García Lorca (Oxford: Peter Lang, 2015)

EDITED VOLUMES

  • Asparkía. Investigació feminista, 43 (2023). Deconstrucción y reapropiación feminista del espacio en el arte (co-edited with Andrea Luquin Calvo and Alberto Ferrer García)
  • Romance Studies, 29.4 (2011). Special issue: Spatial Practices (guest editor)

BOOK CHAPTERS

  • In preparation: ‘Feminist Dissidence in Manuela Ballester Vilaseca’s Poetry'
  • ‘Salvador Dalí: The Fascist Genius?’ in TOTalitarian ARTs: The Visual Arts, Fascism(s), and Mass-society, ed. by Mark Epstein, Fulvio Orsitto and Andrea Righi (Newcastle: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2017), pp. 217-233
  • ‘Le Surréalisme au service de la Révolution?: la pintura d’Àngel Planells als anys quaranta i cinquanta’ in La modernitat cauta: 1942-1963. Resistència, resignació, restauració, ed. by Antoni Marí and Albert Mercadé (Barcelona: Angle Editorial, 2014), pp. 145-158
  • ‘La problemàtica de la subjectivització: La ideologia de Salvador Dalí com a Avida Dollars’ in La cara fosca de la cultura catalana: la col.laboració amb el feixisme, ed. by Jordi Larios (Palma: Lleonard Muntaner Editor, 2013), pp. 293-304
  • ‘Narcisismo e identidad poética en Dalí y Lorca’ in Antes y después del Quijote: en el cincuentenario de la Asociación de Hispanistas de Gran Bretaña e Irlanda, ed. by Robert Archer, Valdi Astvaldsson, Stephen Boyd and Michael Thompson (València: Biblioteca Valenciana, 2005), pp. 783-791

ARTICLES

  • In preparation: ‘Weegee’s Photographs of Salvador Dalí and the Material Turn’

  • Co-authored with Andrea Luquin Calvo and Alberto Ferrer García: ‘Deconstrucción y reapropiación feminista del espacio en el arte: una aproximación’, Asparkía: Investigació feminista, 43 (2023), pp. 17-35

  • ‘Spanish Studies: Literature, 1898-1936’, The Year’s Work in Modern Language Studies, 79 (2019), pp. 261-269
  • ‘Reassembling the Social in Barcelona through Minimalist Urban Interventions: Visual Poetry and the Rehabilitation of Party Walls (2004-2009)’, Bulletin of Hispanic Studies, 96.5 (2019), 513-531
  • ‘Spanish Studies: Literature, 1898-1936’, The Year’s Work in Modern Language Studies, 78 (2018), pp. 188-197 
  • ‘Heterotopía y género en los poemas del mar de Concha Méndez’, Bulletin of Spanish Studies, 93.6 (2016), pp. 947-964
  • ‘Canonicitat i metapoesia en Dos poals (2005), Els hòmens primer (2010) i Ei, que ja sé francés! (2014) de Josep Vicent’ in Incidències. Poesia catalana i esfera pública, special issue of Rassegna Iberistica, ed. by Elisabet Gayà, Mercè Picornell and Maria Ruiz (Venezia: Edizioni Ca’Foscari, 2016), pp. 37-54
  • ‘El fantàstic com a resistència: el surrealisme d’Àngel Planells entre el 1942 i el 1963’, Quadern de les idees, les arts i les lletres, 192 (2013), pp. 19-22
  • ‘Surrealismo, género y ciudad en la obra pictórica y poética de Remedios Varo’, Ángulo Recto. Revista de estudios sobre la ciudad como espacio plural/ A Journal of Studies on the City as a Plural Space, 5.1 (2013), pp. 179-195
  • ‘The Seductive Power of the City and its Intrinsic Modernity: Barcelona and Valencia in Catalan Avant-garde Poetry’, Romance Studies, 29.4 (2011), pp. 242-254
  • ‘Joan Miró torna a la Tate Modern de Londres: la politització de l’art i la negació de la negació’, Lluc: Revista de Cultura i d'Idees, 877 (Palma: L'Espurna edicions, 2011), pp. 58-60. Also in English version: ‘Joan Miró Returns to the Tate Modern in London: the Politicisation of Art and Negation of Negation’, Transfer: Journal of Contemporary Culture, 7 (València: Publicacions de la Universitat de València/ Institut Ramon Llull, 2012), pp. 54-58
  • ‘Urban Spaces in the Catalan Avant-garde: Synecdoches, Dreams and Heterotopias’, Catalan Review, XXIV, 2010, pp. 295-309
  • ‘La persistència de la memòria: Dalí a 20 anys de la seva mort’, Lluc: Revista de Cultura i d'Idees, 868 (Palma: L'Espurna edicions, 2009), pp. 45-48
  • ‘L’experiència ecfràstica de Dalí: a cavall entre la pintura i la poesia’, Journal of Catalan Studies (University of Cambridge, University of Kent and Open University of Catalonia, 2008), pp. 1-15
  • ‘El genio, el duende y el elitismo en Lorca y Dalí’, AErea: Anuario Hispanoamericano de Poesía, ed. by Daniel Calabrese & Eleonora Finkelstein, 9 (Santiago de Chile, Valparaíso & Buenos Aires: RIL editores and the University of Georgia, 2006), pp. 270-275

EXHIBITION REVIEW

  • Review of Dalí: All of the Poetic Suggestions and All of the Plastic Possibilities, Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía, Madrid, 27 April – 2 September 2013, Papers of Surrealism, Issue 10 (Summer 2013), pp. 1-7

BOOK REVIEWS

  • Barcelona: Visual Culture, Space and Powerby Helena Buffery and Carlota Caulfield (eds.), Bulletin of Spanish Studies, 91.6 (2014), pp. 952-953
  • A Companion to Catalan Culture by Dominic Keown (ed.), Bulletin of Hispanic Studies, 90.3 (2013), pp. 373-374
  • Lluís Montanyà: defensa de l’avantguardisme by Joan Herrero Senés (ed.), Catalan Review, XXV, 2011, pp. 311-313
  • El espacio urbano en la narrativa del Madrid de la Edad de Plata (1900-1938) by Christián H. Ricci, Bulletin of Hispanic Studies, 88.7 (2011), pp. 831-833
This article was published on