University of Sydney / Faculty of Arts / Department of Spanish and Latin American Studies / Staff / Academic Staff

Anne L. Walsh

MA, PhD (NUI Cork), DipTrans (Institute of Linguists, London)
Senior Lecturer
Room 540, Brennan MacCallum Building A18

+61 2 9351 6819

I worked in the Department of Hispanic Studies at University College Cork, Ireland for many years as well as spending time (Jan-June 1998) as Honorary Associate in the School of Languages and Linguistics (Spanish & Latin-American Studies), University of New South Wales.

Research Areas

My research interests focus on the narrative trends produced in Spain in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. As such, they follow the development of such themes as that of memory, war, history, disillusionment, crime (and so on) and examine how these themes reflect Spanish culture. These themes are viewed in the light of contemporary narrative criticism particularly, but not exclusively, the ideas of ‘postmodernism’ and ‘reader response’.

  • Contemporary Spanish Narrative (Novel and/or Film)
  • Translation Studies

Current Projects

  • Further Investigation of trends in contemporary Spanish narrative. Working title: ‘Chaos and Coincidence in Contemporary Spanish Narrative’. This analysis looks particularly at a selection of work by Camilo José Cela, Ana María Matute, Carmen Martín Gaite, Arturo Pérez-Reverte, Rosa Montero, Javier Marías, Pedro Almodóvar, Carlos Ruiz Zafón, Isaac Rosa.

Selected Publications

Books

  • Arturo-Pérez-Reverte: Narrative Tricks and Narrative Strategies (Woodbridge: Tamesis, 2007)
  • Guerra y memoria en la España contemporánea/War and Memory in Contemporary Spain, eds Alison Ribeiro de Menezes, Roberta Quance and Anne L Walsh (Madrid: Verbum, 2009)

Articles

  • ‘Belief and Disbelief as part of Narrative: Gonzalo Torrente Ballester’s Don Juan, a Road less Travelled’, Bulletin of Hispanic Studies (Liverpool) LXXVI (1999) pp.349-58
  • ‘Gonzalo Torrente Ballester’s Don Juan: A Novel Both Before and After its Time?’, in Selected Interdisciplinary Essays on the Representation of the Don Juan Archetype in Myth and Culture, edited by Andrew Ginger, John Hobbs, Huw Lewis (New York Ontario, Lampeter: Edwin Mellen, 2000) pp.215-35
  • ‘Remembering Madrid in the Fiction of Joaquin Leguina and Arturo Pérez-Reverte’ Crime Scene Spain: Essays on Post-Franco Crime Fiction, edited by Renée Craig-Odders and Jackie Collins (Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 2009), 134-46
  • ‘El capitán Alatriste: un enigma narrativo’, in Alatriste: la sombra del héroe (Madrid: Alfaguara, 2009) eds: José Belmonte Serrano and José Manuel López de Abiada.
  • ‘The Inescapable Nature of Memory: The Case of El lápiz del carpintero (Manuel Rivas) and El vano ayer (Isaac Rosa)’, in Guerra y memoria en la España contemporánea/War and Memory in Contemporary Spain, edited by Alison Ribeiro de Menezes, Roberta Quance and Anne L Walsh (Madrid: Verbum, 2009), pp. 229-41
  • ‘Questions of Identity: An exploration of Spanish Detective Fiction (with particular reference to Arturo Perez-Reverte’s El club Dumas’, in Investigating Identities: Questions of Identity in Contemporary International Crime Fiction, edited by Marieke Krajenbrink and Kate M. Quinn (Amsterdam: Rodopi, 2009), pp. 44-57
  • ‘Cervantes and the Contemporary Spanish Novel: Fictional Histories or Historical Fictions?’ in Tradition and Modernity: Cervantes’s Presence in Contemporary Spanish Literature, edited by Idoya Puig (Oxford and New York: Peter Lang, 2009), pp. 48-57

Areas of Teaching and Research Supervision

Teaching

  • Span 3602 Advanced Spanish 2
  • Span 3622 Introduction to Spanish Translation
  • Span 4103 Spanish and Latin American Studies

Supervision

Completed PhD theses
Areas supervised to date include analyses of post-Spanish-Civil-war narratives as well as investigation of the effects of various narrative themes and techniques on the reader/viewer of transition, post-transition and contemporary Spanish fiction.

Masters
Supervised Masters theses have investigated areas such as the translation of novels into English or into film, investigation of the use of setting, space, female characters, intertextuality, the self, fictional autobiography, symbolism, testimony in a selection of contemporary and post-civil-war writers or film directors, including Manuel Vázquez Montalbán, Lucia Etxebarría, Arturo Pérez-Reverte, Miguel Delibes, Ana María Matute, Dulce Chacon, Julio Llamazares, Carmen Laforet, Pedro Almodóvar,

Conference Activity

Organisation of International Conferences

  • September 2005: War Memories – Memory Wars: Violence in Contemporary Spain. Organised in conjunction with Dr Alison Menezes de Ribeira (UCD) and Dr Roberta Quance (QUB).
  • February 2004: ‘Narrative Tricks, Narrative Strategies’, Symposium, UCC.
  • March 2004: Association of Hispanists of Great Britain and Ireland Annual Conference (AHGBI), Liaison, On-site organiser.

Conference Presentations (2000-2009)

  • April 2009: ‘Coincidence and Chaos in Contemporary Spanish Fiction’, Association of Hispanists of Great Britain and Ireland Annual Conference, Queen’s University, Belfast.
  • November 2007: ‘El capitán Alatriste: un enigma narrativo’, Salón de Actos, CajaMurcia, Murcia (invited speaker).
  • October 2007: ‘The Story of Film in Spain: Challenges, Conflicts and Achievements’ Cork City Library (invited speaker).
  • November 2006: ‘Los personajes masculinos y femeninos de Arturo Pérez-Reverte: dos maneras de ver el mundo’, Universidad de Alicante (invited speaker).
  • March 2005: ‘“Siempre la misma guerra”: The War Novels of Arturo Pérez-Reverte’, School of Languages, Cultures and Linguistics, Monash University, Melbourne, Australia (invited speaker).
  • March 2004: ‘The Postmodern Heroines of Arturo Pérez-Reverte’. Part of Panel on Modern Spanish Novel at the Annual Conference of the Association of Hispanists of Great Britain and Ireland, Cambridge
  • Dec. 2003: ‘The Cinema of Arturo Pérez-Reverte’
    Paper presented at conference entitled Hispanic Cinema: the Local and the Global, organized by the Institute of Romance Studies and held at University of London, England
  • June 2002: ‘When is a Detective not a Detective?: The Particular Cases of Quizá nos lleve el viento al infinito by G. Torrente Ballester and La tabla de Flandes by A. Pérez-Reverte’. Paper presented at the conference entitled The Hispanic Detective held in Royal Holloway, University of London, England
  • April 2002: ‘The Postmodern Heroes of Arturo Pérez-Reverte’. Paper presented at the annual conference of the Association of Hispanists of Great Britain and Ireland, hosted by University College Cork
  • February 2002: ‘Post-modern Literary Games: What are Spanish Authors Playing at?’. Paper presented as part of the Dept of Hispanic Studies research seminar series, UCC.
  • July 2001: ‘The Literary Games of Postmodern Spain, with particular reference to Arturo Pérez-Reverte and Manuel Vázquez Montalbán’. Paper presented at the biennial conference of the Association of Iberian and Latin American Studies entitled Global Challenges – Local Initiatives, hosted by the University of Western Sydney, Australia
  • February 2000: ‘Territorio comanche: Entering a No-Man’s Land of Literature’. Paper presented as part of seminar series organized by the Department of Hispanic Studies, National University of Ireland (Cork)

Other Professional Contributions

  • Association of Iberian and Latin American Studies of Australasia (AILASA).
  • Association of Hispanists of Great Britain and Ireland (AHGBI)
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