Dr Daniel Mourenza, PhD (Leeds University)Assistant Professor
Daniel Mourenza received his MA and PhD from Leeds University. Before joining Trinity College Dublin, Mourenza taught at Aston University and Newcastle University. He also worked as an editorial assistant for the Bulletin of Spanish Studies at Queen’s University Belfast. He holds the position of Assistant Professor in Spanish at Trinity College Dublin, where he teaches modules on Spanish and Latin American cinema and Spanish history and culture. His research focuses on theoretical and political debates around popular cinema and, more generally, popular culture. He is particularly interested in how film theory and criticism address questions of aesthetics and politics in popular films and genres. Currently, Mourenza is doing research on the use of melodrama to explore trauma in post-conflict settings by looking at films by Juan Antonio Bardem in Spain and Lucrecia Martel in Argentina. Mourenza has worked and published extensively on Walter Benjamin’s film writings. His book Walter Benjamin and the Aesthetics of Film will be published in 2020 by Amsterdam University Press. He has also published a special issue of parallax on the theme of ‘Barbarism’, taking Benjamin’s ‘new, positive concept of barbarism’ as its standpoint. Finally, Mourenza has written on the political cartoons of Andrés Rábago ‘El Roto’ and his role as a ‘traditional intellectual’ in Spain, from the Transición to date.