Carlos Van Tongeren

My research broadly concerns the cultural production of Spain and Latin America with a focus on literary narrative, essays and performative forms. As a scholar and musician, I am currently working on a series of interrelated projects about flamenco. In a short monograph, under contract with Cambridge University Press, I will explore the musical and cultural dimensions of rhythm and heritage in modern flamenco guitar. I am also working on a full-length monograph, tentatively called Flamenco after Franco: Performances of Memory in the Spanish Transition. In this book, I draw on theories and methods from cultural studies, performance studies and musicology to examine how flamenco music became a medium for artists and wider communities to express personal and collective memories of the Franco-dictatorship (1939-1975) during Spain’s transition to democracy. 

My previous outputs about flamenco were presented in the Journal of Spanish Cultural Studies (18.2) and during lectures delivered with the Plataforma Independiente de Estudios Flamencos Contemporáneos, the Flamenco Biënnale Nederland, and the Instituto Cervantes in Manchester. Since September 2021, I am the Principal Investigator of the AHRC-funded project 'Flamenco after Franco: New Interdisciplinary Approaches to Performances of Memory in Post-Dictatorial Spain', in collaboration with Dr Pedro Ordóñez Eslava from the University of Granada and with scholars and artists based in Spain, the United Kingdom and elsewhere.

Before coming to Manchester, I worked as an assistant professor in Hispanic Studies at Radboud University, Nijmegen (the Netherlands). As part of previous research projects, I published articles in Confluencia and The Bulletin of Hispanic Studies on Roger Bartra's essay works on the intellectual history of melancholy. My first book, on the intersections between comedy and melancholy in Hispanic detective fiction, entitled Comedia y melancolía en la narrativa neopoliciaca (Vázquez Montalbán, Taibo II, Padura), was published with Brill-Rodopi in 2019.