Research

My research focuses on medieval Iberian literature and culture, with particular emphasis on how representations of sex and sexuality illuminate both historical power dynamics and their enduring legacy in modern society. My forthcoming monograph, Sex on Trial in Medieval Spain, examines how sexuality was regulated and contested across medieval Iberia, revealing both systems of intimate surveillance and acts of resistance that often led to transgressors' downfall. By critically reexamining the concept of "natural" sexuality and tracking the collapse of male/female, individual/society, and nature/culture binaries in medieval Iberian discourses and narratives, the work demonstrates how these historical conceptualisations of sexual difference continue to influence contemporary Western attitudes toward sexuality and gender.

Teaching

Loreto is a Lecturer in Spanish at the University of Exeter, where she teaches across all language proficiency levels along with content-focused modules in her research field, medieval Iberian culture.

Publications

“Celestina’s Erasmian Turn.” Accepted for publication by Revista Canadiense de Estudios Hispánicos. Forthcoming.

“Black Ethics: Skin Color and Courtly Love in Feliciano de Silva’s Segunda Celestina.” Accepted for publication in Black Timescapes: Tapestries of Africa in Premodern Iberia, a special issue of La Corónica edited by Nicholas R. Jones. Forthcoming.

“Sentimental, Byzantine, and Moorish Fiction.” In the Oxford Handbook of Golden Age Literature, edited by John A. Garrido-Ardila. Forthcoming.

“Rapture and Horror: Reading Celestina in Sixteenth-Century Spain.” In The Routledge Companion to the Iberian Middle Ages: Unity in Diversity, edited by E. Michael Gerli and Ryan D. Giles. Routledge, 2021.

“‘Y qué çena es ésta donde my pasyón porfía de mi llevar?’: Espiritualidad conversa y elogio del cristiano nuevo en el banquete de la salvación de Arboleda de los enfermos.” Bulletin of Hispanic Studies, 2019, 96.4: 347–364.

“The Likely Origins of The Boxer Codex: Martín de Rada and the Zhigong Tu.” eHumanista 40, 2018, 117-133.