Research 

I specialize in early modern Spanish literature and early twentieth-century German theories of the baroque. My first monograph-length project reconstructs the dialogue between German philosopher and literary critic Walter Benjamin (1892–1940) and Spanish dramatist Calderón de la Barca (1600–81). Benjamin’s postdoctoral thesis on baroque drama, Ursprung des deutschen Trauerspiels (The Origin of German Tragic Drama, 1928), illuminates the study of baroque literature and drama and its cultural and religious context. Importantly, my forthcoming monograph (Legenda 2025) contributes to scholarly discussions on the reading experience and the role of affect in literary criticism. It presents Ursprung as a work of the imagination exploring the excitingly different worldview of a remote period.

I am now developing a new research project which expands my interest in early modern religion by exploring the beatification case for Father Pedro Claver (1580–1654). He evangelized (and thus indoctrinated) the enormous number of enslaved people that disembarked in the port city of seventeenth-century Cartagena de Indias. He worked along a number of enslaved Black translators as well as his fellow Jesuit master Alonso de Sandoval (1576–1652), who published a pro-slavery treatise in 1627 and revised it in 1647.

Teaching

I teach lectures, seminars, and tutorials on early modern Spanish thought and literature (1543–1695) for the FHS in Spanish, as well as the Prelims Spanish course. I have also taught tutorials on modern German thought for the FHS in German.

Publications

Book

Walter Benjamin's Calderón: Literary Criticism and the Baroque, Series in Comparative Literature, 58 (Legenda, 2025). 

Journal articles

'Meta-theatre and the World as Stage in Calderón’s El mágico prodigioso (1637)', Bulletin of Hispanic Studies (forthcoming)

'Walter Benjamin interpreta a Calderón: inmanencia y transcendencia en El príncipe constante (1629)', Bulletin of the Comediantes, vol 75., no. 2 (2024) (forthcoming).

'Baroque Sovereignty Reconsidered: Walter Benjamin Quotes Diego Saavedra Fajardo', Modern Language Review, vol. 119, no. 1 (2024), 1–15. 

'Calderón y el drama barroco según Walter Benjamin en El origen del Trauerspiel alemán (1928)', Bulletin of Hispanic Studies, vol. 100, no. 7 (2023), 675–90. 

'Propaganda e imperio: el asesinato de Albrecht von Wallenstein según El prodigio de Alemania (1634), de Calderón de la Barca,' eHumanista, vol. 55 (2023), 37–49.