I am a scholar of Spanish literature and culture. My research answers the question: how did religious culture shape literary themes and forms through the rise and decline of the Spanish Empire? Particularly I study moral theology in combination with poetry, novels, and treatises to interpret social roles and relationships. I recently co-edited, with Professor Dale Shuger of Tulane University, a special issue of Religions, "Theology and Aesthetics in the Spanish and Portuguese Empires," which features essays by eight internationally recognized scholars of the early modern world. A forthcoming essay, "Josefa Amar’s Enlightened Silences: Drawing Divisions with a Peculiar Catalogue of Early Modern Women" will be published in Spring 2025 in issue 50.1 of Revista de Estudios de Género y Sexualidades/Journal of Gender and Sexuality Studies. See my selected publications below for links to books and recent articles on Spanish early modern literature and the spiritual author, Francisco de Osuna.
In my courses, students gain proficiency in Spanish while studying classic Spanish texts by siglo de oro, or 'Golden Age,' authors, medieval and colonial works, and contemporary reworkings of these traditions using literary theory. Romance Languages undergraduates and graduate students who wish to become more proficient at primary source research by using UGA's Special Collections archives, such as the Hargrett Rare Book & Manuscript Library, are welcome to contact me for individual guidance. Regularly taught courses are SPAN 3030 Texts in Global Contexts; SPAN 4040 Literary Adventures in Spain; SPAN 8180 Literary Theory. Graduate students please read my guidelines for working together.
Current course, new for Spring 2025: ROML 4001 Careers for Language Majors.
Research
16th and 17th century Spain, treatises, conduct books, lyric poetry, Franciscan studies, women writers, Baroque aesthetics.
Frequently Taught Courses
Selected Publications
BOOKS
- Francisco de Osuna’s Norte de los estados in Modernized Spanish: A Practical Guide to Conjugal Life in Sixteenth-Century Europe. Leeds, UK: ARC Humanities Press, 2019. 360 pp.
- Heretical Mixtures: Feminine and Poetic Opposition to Matter-Spirit Dualism in Spain, 1531-1631. Valencia, Spain: Albatros-Hispanófila Siglo XXI, 2007. 229 pp. (on Luis de Góngora's poetics).
ARTICLES AND BOOK CHAPTERS
- "Waste, Exclusion, and the Responsibility of the Rich: A Franciscan Critique of Early Capitalist Europe." Religions. 13.9 (2022): 18pp. https://doi.org/10.3390/rel13090818
- "Winds, Heart, and Heat in Premodern Franciscan and Nahua Concepts of 'Soul.'" Colonial Latin American Review. 27.3 (2018): 296-315. https://doi.org/10.1080/10609164.2018.1527525
- “‘Your Clogs will be My Stairway to Heaven:’ A Wife’s Spiritual Goodness in Francisco de Osuna’s Reformist Dialogue on Marriage, Norte de los estados.” Paradigm Shifts during the Global Middle Ages and Renaissance. Ed. Albrecht Classen. Turnhout, Belgium: Brepols, 2019: 255-78.
- “Social Class.” In Using Primary Sources: A Practical Guide for Students. Ed. Jonathan Hogg. Liverpool University Press and University of Liverpool Library in partnership with KISC, 2017. An Open Access e-textbook.
- “Jealousy in María de Zayas’s Intercalated Poetry: Lyric Illness and Narrative Cure.” In Golden Age Poetry in Motion. Eds. Jean Andrews and Isabel Torres. Woodbridge, England: Tamesis, 2014: 145-163.
- “Conceptualización de la naturaleza creativa: Góngora y Luis Martín de la Plaza en Flores de poetas ilustres (1605).” In Los géneros poéticos del Siglo de Oro: Centros y periferias. Eds. Rodrigo Cacho Casal y Anne Holloway. Woodbridge, England: Tamesis, 2013: 295-312.
- “Humanist and Mystical Understanding in Luis de León’s ‘Noche serena’ and John of the Cross’s ‘La noche oscura.’” In Approaches to Teaching Teresa of Avila and the Spanish Mystics. Ed. Alison Weber. New York: Modern Language Association, 2009: 232-239.
- “Fray Luis de León.” In Dictionary of Literary Biography Volume 318: Sixteenth-Century Spanish Writers. Ed. Gregory B. Kaplan. Columbia, SC: Bruccoli, Clarke & Layman, Inc., 2006: 138-146.
- “Sixteenth-Century Spanish Humanism.” In Dictionary of Literary Biography Volume 318: Sixteenth-Century Spanish Writers. Ed. Gregory B. Kaplan. Columbia, SC: Bruccoli, Clarke & Layman, Inc., 2006: 296-304.
- “The Early Modern Sonnet's Lessons of Petrarchism and Militarism.” Ed. Edward Friedman. Calíope 11.2 (2005): 33-43.
- “Góngora’s Invocation of Prudente Cónsul: Censorship and Humanist Doubts about his Lyric Language.” Hispanófila 142 (2004): 1-19.
- “Scripted Oralities circa 1607-1617: Language and Intention in Góngora’s Las firmezas de Isabela and Lope’s Lo fingido verdadero.” Bulletin of the Comediantes 55.1 (2003): 47-67.
- “Shipwreck as Heresy: Placing Góngora’s Poetry in the Wake of Renaissance Epic, Fray Luis and the Christian Kabbala.” Hispanic Review 70.3 (2002): 413-432.
