Faculty of Modern and Medieval Languages and Linguistics Raised Faculty Building University of Cambridge Sidgwick Avenue Cambridge CB3 9DA United Kingdom
Before coming to Cambridge, Leo Temple completed an undergraduate in English Literature and Creative Writing at the University of East Anglia (starred First). In the academic year 2018-19, he undertook the MPhil in European, Latin American and Comparative Literature and Culture (passing with High Distinction). In October 2024, he commenced a Research Fellowship at Jesus College.
Leo's doctoral thesis charts the changing role of technology in the Latin American vanguard imagination of the 1920s. Drawing upon literary movements in Brazil, Mexico and Peru, the thesis moves from technological figuration of modern optimism to the melancholy machines of the end of the decade, coinciding with economic and political turbulence and increased sensitivity to colonial legacies. The mournful reimagining of mechanisation provides a new path into emergent literary forms in Latin America as well as a situated critique of technological development at the intersection of postcolonial and media history.
Leo also co-organised the Cambridge Hispanic and Lusophone Research Seminars 2021-22 with Diego Azurdia.
In Portuguese, Leo lectures and supervises widely on literary topics in PG1 and PG4 (Clarice Lispector, Pagu, Mário de Andrade, Oswald de Andrade, Carlos Drummond de Andrade). In 2024-25, he also supervises on SP12, in the Spanish section, as well as running a poetry workshop for the module.
Leo is always keen to hear from students working on projects related to his research interests, very broadly understood.
- Modern Latin American and Lusophone poetry (after Romanticism, especially the vanguard period)
- Poetic form and/as social form
- Postcolonial history and theory
- Media theory
- Sousândrade and O Guesa
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Temple, Leo (forthcoming). "Brazil’s Missing Theatre and Cinema’s Extra-Cinematic Repertoire in Antônio de Alcântara Machado’s Pathé Baby (1926)", Modernism/Modernity
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Temple, Leo (2020). ‘Que nos diluísse em materia de nojo: moeda viva e a (de)sacralização da casa-grande em Crônica da casa assassinada de Lúcio Cardoso’. Opiniães, (17), 318-339.
Selected Conference Papers:
- ‘The Colonial Lacunae of Instants’ delivered virtually at BRASA XVI (February 2022, Georgetown)
- ‘Photogénie and Extractivism: Cinepoetic Resistance in Brazilian Modernismo’ delivered at the AHRC International Conference on ‘Hybridity’ (Sept 2022, St. Catherine’s, Cambridge)
- ‘Cosmopolitan Cœnesthésie to “Common Sense” Nationalism: Mário de Andrade and Brazilian Modernismo’ on the panel, ‘‘Re-Thinking Transgression: Cultural Critique, Art Theory, and the Emergence of the Historic Avant-gardes’, at the American Comparative Literature Association (March 2023, Chicago)
- ‘Towards a Queer Grammatology: Mário de Andrade’s Conventional Transitoriness’ at the CRASSH conference, Queer & Trans Philologies (March 2024, Cambridge English Faculty)
