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Mark Millington

Professor of Latin American Studies, Faculty of Arts

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Teaching Summary

Underpinning all my teaching is a belief that what matters is active learning. My job is to engage students and stimulate them to take active control of their own learning. The world of Spanish,… read more

Research Summary

My current research centres on intellectual life in Mexico in the twentieth century. This is a relatively new project and something of a change of focus from my previous mainly literary work. Broadly… read more

Recent Publications

  • M I MILLINGTON, 2010. Love in the Novels of García Márquez. In: PHILIP SWANSON, ed., The Cambridge Companion to Gabriel García Márquez Cambridge University Press. 113-28
  • M I MILLINGTON, 2010. Configuring the Self as Public Intellectual in José Vasconcelos. In: VICTORIA CARPENTER, ed., A World in Words, A Life in Texts: Re-visiting Latin American Cultural Heritage Peter Lang. 37-61
  • M I MILLINGTON, 2009. Cuando ya no importe o el insoportable peso del ser. In: DANIEL BALDERSTON, ed., Juan Carlos Onetti: Las novelas cortas Colección Archivos. 629-40
  • M I MILLINGTON, 2009. Cabrera Infante, Guillermo (1929–2005). In: Oxford Dictionary of National Biography Oxford University Press.

Underpinning all my teaching is a belief that what matters is active learning. My job is to engage students and stimulate them to take active control of their own learning. The world of Spanish, Portuguese and Latin American Studies is very diverse and absolutely centre stage in the contemporary world. Promoting understanding of and involvement with what makes the Department's areas of expertise so important today is what my teaching is all about. It has been astutely said that learning is not a spectator sport.

The areas covered by my teaching are quite diverse and have evolved a good deal over time. The three main areas which I currently cover are:

  1. Translation from Spanish to English. I teach Advanced Spanish Translation, a module designed to develop students' ability to operate in a practical way with sophisticated texts in Spanish drawn from literature and from intellectual and historical writing. As well as developing students' capacity to improve their grasp of vocabulary and grammar, the aim is to explore the broad cultural dimensions involved in translating texts and in operating on the borderline between two languages. An integral key part of the activity is reasoned reflection on the specific problems of translation presented by Spanish texts and explaining what solutions are available in English to address them.
  2. Twentieth-Century Latin American narrative. The bulk of my research throughout my career has been on the Latin American novel and short story. I have covered a wide range of fiction from the twentieth century and from all areas of the region. My research has been the bedrock of my teaching as has my conviction that literature is a crucial way to understand Latin Americans' values and way of life. Not the least advantage of studying contemporary Latin American literature is the immense boost which it gives to students' linguistic skills: reading high-quality writing in Spanish is essential to improve understanding of the varieties of the language in use around the world today.
  3. Spanish and Latin American Cinema. The cinema industry in the Spanish-speaking world has had many ups and downs over the last seventy to eighty years and working out the reasons for that tells us a great deal about underlying social, economic and cultural conditions of the different countries at different points in time. I teach film on an introductory module on Hispanic Visual Culture which gives students, often coming to film studies for the first time, a chance to explore formally an important cultural phenomenon of which they usually have considerable prior experience. Most students bring to the module a significant latent knowledge of film which can be brought to the surface and developed in relation to outstanding recent Hispanic films. In addition, I teach a final-year module on Auteurist Cinema in Spain, Mexico and Argentina which examines the work of leading directors and analyses the cultural and political circumstances of their filmmaking, their characteristic themes and their technical skills.

Current Research

My current research centres on intellectual life in Mexico in the twentieth century. This is a relatively new project and something of a change of focus from my previous mainly literary work. Broadly I am exploring the public role(s) which were available to intellectuals and whether these may have changed over time, and the nature of their intellectual formation and ideological orientation. I have published one article so far, a study of politics and the role of the intellectual as explored in Martín Luis Guzmán's La sombra del caudillo and José Revueltas's Los días terrenales. My current focus is on José Vasconcelos (1882-1959), and in particular his four-volume autobiography. On the one hand, my interest is in how he uses his autobiography to configure a self-image as intellectual and public figure and in the degree to which that image is coherent. On the other hand, I am interested in the rather more difficult task of trying to identify the nature of his political thinking and ideology in his autobiography, and relating these dimensions of his outlook to the rapidly changing political and institutional environment of early twentieth-century Mexico. From a theoretical point of view, the challenge of studying both these aspects of Vasconcelos is to understand the interplay of the personal and the public, of the self and the other, to maintain a clear sense of the individual but to understand how that individual was embedded in collective social and cultural processes.

Past Research

Recent Publications

Transculturation: Cities, Spaces and Architectures in Latin America: Cities, Space and Architecture in Latin America: v. 27 (Critical Studies)Hombres in/visibles. La representacion de la masculinidad en la ficcion latinoamericana, 1920-1980

My research is focused on Spanish American culture and particularly its literature. My main interests are in the short story and the novel in the twentieth century. I have taken a special interest in using contemporary theoretical approaches both to the form and content of literary production, and these approaches have ranged from narratology through to psychoanalysis. It is my conviction that critical work should focus on trying to understand the literary work in ways in which it cannot understand itself, in other words critical analysis must go beyond the text to grasp its conditions of possibility and its presuppositions. I have published two books and numerous articles on Juan Carlos Onetti, but in addition I have published on many other Spanish American and Brazilian authors: Carpentier, Piñera, Monterroso, Gallegos, García Márquez, Rivera, Borges, Güiraldes, Donoso, Vargas Llosa, Ramos, Fonseca, Trevisan etc. My most recent book, Hombres (in)visibles: la representación de la masculinidad en la literatura latinoamericana 1920-1980 (Fondo de cultura económica, 2007) is a study of a range of novels and stories from all over the sub-continent. Drawing substantially on psychoanalysis, the book aims to bring the surface many unspoken or invisible presuppositions about the nature of men and expectations of how they perform their gender identity. The frequently implicit but nonetheless clear and often damaging impact of their performance both on themselves and on others is a major concern of the book. In addition, I have published a number of articles on cultural difference in Latin America and on the ethical and political issues at stake in reading cross-culturally. I have a specific interest in the theoretical issue of transculturation and, as well as publishing articles on the subject, I have co-edited a book on transcultural architecture in Latin America.

  • M I MILLINGTON, 2010. Love in the Novels of García Márquez. In: PHILIP SWANSON, ed., The Cambridge Companion to Gabriel García Márquez Cambridge University Press. 113-28
  • M I MILLINGTON, 2010. Configuring the Self as Public Intellectual in José Vasconcelos. In: VICTORIA CARPENTER, ed., A World in Words, A Life in Texts: Re-visiting Latin American Cultural Heritage Peter Lang. 37-61
  • M I MILLINGTON, 2009. Cuando ya no importe o el insoportable peso del ser. In: DANIEL BALDERSTON, ed., Juan Carlos Onetti: Las novelas cortas Colección Archivos. 629-40
  • M I MILLINGTON, 2009. Cabrera Infante, Guillermo (1929–2005). In: Oxford Dictionary of National Biography Oxford University Press.
  • MILLINGTON, M.I., 2007. Hombres in/visibles: la representación de la masculinidad en la ficción latinoamericana, 1920-1980 Bogotá: Fondo de Cultura Económica.
  • MILLINGTON, M.I., 2007. Misteriosa Buenos Aires y el imaginario porteño de Mujica Lainez. In: , ed., Manuel Mujica Lainez: Misteriosa Buenos Aires Paris: UNESCO.
  • MILLINGTON, M.I., 2005. Transculturation: taking stock. In: HERNANDEZ, F., MILLINGTON, M.I. and BORDEN, I., eds., Transculturation: cities, spaces and architectures in Latin America Amsterdam: Rodopi. 204-233
  • HERNANDEZ, F., MILLINGTON, M.I. and BORDEN, I., eds., 2005. Transculturation: cities, space and architecture in Latin America Amsterdam: Rodopi.
  • MILLINGTON, M.I., 2004. "The state we're in: Spanish American literary studies today" Journal of Romance Studies. 4(1), 111-18
  • MILLINGTON, M.I., 2002. Historias de deseo, amor y masculinidad en Cristina Peri Rossi y Elena Poniatowska Dossiers Feministes. 6, 37-50
  • MILLINGTON, M.I., 2002. El género sexual en García Marquez: poder y marginalidad en <em>Crónica de una muerte anunciada</em>. In: SIERRA, A., ed., <em>Me gustas cuando callas ...: los escritores del "Boom" y el género sexual</em> San Juan: Editorial de la Universidad de Puerto Rico. 131-54
  • MILLINGTON, M.I., 2000. On metropolitan readings of Latin American cultures: ethical questions of postcolonial critical practice. In: FIDDIAN, R., ed., Postcolonial perspectives on the cultures of Latin America and Lusophone Africa Liverpool: Liverpool University Press. 27-50
  • MILLINGTON, M.I., 1999. Otherwise, or Reading Onetti with Borges. In: SAN ROMAN, G., ed., Onetti and others: comparative essays on a major figure in Latin American literature New York: State University of New York Press. 51-64
  • MILLINGTON, M.I., 1999. Identidad, violencia y masculinidad: la institución militar en tres novelas argentinas de los años 80. In: FORASTELLI, F. and TRIQUELL, X, eds., Las marcas del género: configuraciones de la diferencia en la cultura Córdoba: Centro de Estudios Avanzados. 169-188
  • MILLINGTON, M.I., 1998. La ventriloquia y el otro en <I>El hablador de Vargas Llosa</I>. In: KOHUT, K., MORALES SARAVIA, J. and ROSE, S.V., eds., Literatura peruana hoy: crisis y creación Madrid: Iberoamericana. 331
  • MILLINGTON, M.I., 1998. [Review of] The postmodern debate in Latin America, ed. John Beverley, Jose Oviedo and Michael Aronna. London: Duke University Press, 1995 Bulletin of Hispanic Studies (Liverpool). 75(3), 387
  • MILLINGTON, M.I., 1997. Review of Philip Swanson, <em>The new novel in Latin America: politics and popular culture after the Boom</em> Tessera. 3(2), 205-206
  • MILLINGTON, M.I., 1997. Lo fluido y lo sólido: el género y su subversión en 'La casa inundada' de Felisberto Hernández Fragmentos. 6(1), 55-68 (In Press.)
  • MILLINGTON, M.I., 1997. Lendo/lutando: Onetti com/contra Borges. In: MACIEL, M.E. and MARQUES, R., eds., Borges em dez textos Rio de Janeiro: Sette Letras. 78-91
  • MILLINGTON, M.I., 1996. Gender monologue in Carpentier's Los pasos perdidos MLN: Modern Language Notes. 111(2), 346-367

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