Overview
I work on late medieval and early modern Spanish literature with a particular emphasis on sixteenth- and seventeenth-century poetry, spanning both the Iberian Peninsula and Spanish Americas. Through the lenses of critical empire studies, material culture studies, and affect theory, I ask how poetry navigates epochal transitions and stimulates alternative understandings of history. In the classroom, I view my students as co-readers and co-creators of meaning, and invite them to approach historical texts by drawing connections to their own lived experiences.
My first book project, Despojos: Poetry and the Spoils of History in the Early Seventeenth-Century Hispanic World, examines how poetry negotiated the aesthetic and moral ideologies shaped by the empire during the reign of Philip III (1598–1621) and the so-called Pax Hispanica. Central to this exploration is the term “despojos,” a word favored by early modern poets, which I position as key to capturing both the poetic style and historical context of the early seventeenth century. I argue that the layered meanings of the word—(1) the spoils of war, (2) the remains of the past, and (3) the recycled materials of a demolished edifice—reveal how imperial practices (such as warfare, temporal construction, and global expansion) evoke feelings, which in turn crystallize into poetic mechanisms of plundering, contemplating, and rebuilding.
During the 2024–25 academic year, I am focusing on four article-length projects that address different topics: the threads of race in a short story from El conde Lucanor; the echoes of qaṣīdah—an Arabic ode tradition with roots in pre-Islamic Bedouin culture—in El Abencerraje; the sensorial intersections between commerce, traffic, and noise in Grandeza mexicana; and the reciprocal imaginations between early modern Mexico and Venice. Concurrently, as a short-term fellow at the John Carter Brown Library and a member of the Digital Humanities CoLab at Cornell’s Olin Library, I am tracing the semantic and moral transformation of “interés” in Spanish print sources at the turn of the seventeenth century, all while engaging with broader inquiries into the early global capitalism.
Research Focus
Spanish poetry in the 16th and 17th centuries; critical empire studies; history of ideas; affect theory; poetic materialism
Publications
“‘Entre él y mí grandes cosas pasaron’: Secretary-Lord Friendship in Cárcel de amor.” Hispanic Review, vol. 91, no. 2, 2023, pp. 273–296.