Skip to main content
Skip to main menu Skip to spotlight region Skip to secondary region Skip to UGA region Skip to Tertiary region Skip to Quaternary region Skip to unit footer

Slideshow

Elizabeth Wright

Professor Elizabeth Wright
Blurred image of the arch used as background for stylistic purposes.
Distinguished Research Professor, Spanish Literature
Editor, Bulletin of the Comediantes (comediantes.org)

Elizabeth R. Wright (Ph.D., Spanish literature, Johns Hopkins University, 1998).  See below for current courses, books, links to selected articles, and a list of grants and awards.

Elizabeth Wright studies and teaches about early modern Spain in the context of imperial expansion. She is also editor of the Bulletin of the Comediantes, the international journal devoted to the study of early-modern Spanish theater. Her most recent book, The Epic of Juan Latino: Dilemmas of Race and Religion in Renaissance Spain (University of Toronto Press, 2016), traces how this one-time slave secured higher education, freedom, and social prominence. Now she is centering her focus on the Portuguese-Spanish cultural nexus for Iberia's Atlantic Households: Slavery and Diaspora in the Age of Empire (1444-1640). This book in preparation asks how a new mode of slave trafficking that did not fit Mediterranean traditions of just war slavery became integrated into the fabric of economic life, language, and humor despite the widespread awareness of its manifest cruelty and dubious legality.  Earlier projects have included:

  • examinations of the literary career of poet-and-playwright Lope de Vega in a monograph (Pilgrimage to Patronage: Lope de Vega and the Court of Philip III, Bucknell University Press, 2001) and in an annotated critical edition of Los ramilletes de Madrid (in Parte XI de las Comedias de Lope de Vega, vol. 1 of 2, Gredos, 2012).
  • the collaborative study of how a mestizo priest descended from Aztec royalty reinterpreted Spanish theater in Nahuatl, the most widely spoken Amerindian language of colonial Mexico (co-editor with Louise Burkhart and Barry Sell of Spanish Golden-Age Drama in Mexican Translation, Nahuatl Theater Set, vol. 3, University of Oklahoma Press, 2008).
  • an edition and translation of neo-Latin poetry that circulated in Spain and Italy in the wake of the Battle of Lepanto, prepared with Sarah Spence and Andrew Lemons (The Battle of Lepanto, I Tatti Renaissance Library, Harvard University Press, 2014).

Wright’s research has been supported with grants from the John Carter Brown Library, the Newberry Library, the American Philosophical Society, the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH), the Renaissance Society of America, the Rockefeller Foundation’s Bellagio Center, the Fulbright, and the Gilder Lehrman Center for the Study of Study of Slavery, Resistance, and Abolition. 

Recent Courses

Don Quijote en las encrucijadas (Span 4080)

Imperio y alteridad:  identidades minoritarias en el mundo hispano (doctoral seminar)

El sujeto rebelde y la modernidad incipiente (doctoral seminar)

Introduction to literature (Span 3030)

 Books and Scholarly Editions:

The Epic of Juan Latino: Dilemmas of Race and Religion in Renaissance Spain.  University of Toronto Press (2016).

http://www.utppublishing.com/The-Epic-of-Juan-Latino-Dilemmas-of-Race-and-Religion-in-Renaissance-Spain.html.

The Battle of Lepanto.  Co-editor with Sarah Spence and Andrew Lemons.  I Tatti Renaissance Library, vol. 61.  Cambridge:  Harvard University Press, 2014. http://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog.php?isbn=9780674725423.

Los ramilletes de Madrid, by Lope de Vega.  Critical edition.  In Parte XI de las Comedias de Lope de Vega, coord. Laura Fernández. Madrid:  Gredos, 2012.

Coeditor with Louise M. Burkhart and Barry D. Sell, Spanish Golden-Age Drama in Mexican Translation. Norman, OK:  University of Oklahoma Press, 2008.

Pilgrimage to Patronage: Lope de Vega and the Court of Philip III, 1598-1621. Lewisburg, PA:  Bucknell University Press, 2001.

Articles (selected):

“Juan Latino, “On the Birth of Untroubled Times,” research note forthcoming in Open Iberia/América Teaching Anthology, editor David Wacks. openiberiaamerica.hcommons.org/. Temporary posting in Spanish at http://dx.doi.org/10.17613/er2t-9h66; and in English, http://dx.doi.org/10.17613/k2e9-bx77.

Escenas de cautiverio y cautivas en escena: un modelo portugués para la comedia española.” In Esclavas y cautivas en el Mediterráneo occidental, ed. Aurelia Martín Casares, pp. 179-96.  Granada: Editorial Universidad de Granada, 2016.

“Epic Temptation: Lope de Vega’s Battle of Lepanto.” In The Early Modern Hispanic World: Transnational and Interdisciplinary Approaches, edited by Kimberly Lynn and Erin Rowe, pp. 319-40.  Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2017.

"Modern War, Ancient Form: Lessons from Lepanto for a Latin Seminar in post-Bellum Granada."  In Representing Imperial Rivalry in the Early Modern Mediterranean, edited by Barbara Fuchs and Emily Weissbourd, pp. 126-44. Toronto:  University of Toronto Press, 2015.

“Religious Drama [Spain].” In Lexicon of the Hispanic Baroque:  Transatlantic Exchange and Transformation. Edited by Evonne Levy and Kenneth Mills. Austin:  University of Texas Press, 2013. 281-283.

“Enredos historiográficos:  Lope ante Lepanto.”  Anuario Lope de Vega 18 (2012): 146-174 (www.revistes.uab.cat/anuariolopedevega).

Co-author with José María Anguita.“Sombras de la onorosa praeda: un exemplo virgiliano para un aula granadina.”  Criticón 115 (2012):  105-123.

“Scrutinizing Early Modern Warfare in Latin Hexameters: The Austrias Carmen of Joannes Latinus (Juan Latino).”  In Poiesis and Modernity in the Old and New Worlds, Edited by Anthony J. Cascardi and Leah Middlebrook, pp. 139-158. Nashville:  Vanderbilt University Press, 2012.

“Narrating the Ineffable Lepanto: the Austrias Carmen of Joannes Latinus (Juan Latino).”  Hispanic Review 77.1 (Winter 2009):  71-91. (Link to article on Project Muse: http://muse.jhu.edu/login?auth=0&type=summary&url=/journals/hispanic_review/v077/77.1.wright.html.)

“New World News, Ancient Echoes: A Cortés Letter and a Vernacular Livy for a New King and His Wary Subjects (1520–23).”  Renaissance Quarterly 61.3 (2008):  711-49. Link on Project Muse (http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/renaissance_quarterly/toc/ren.61.3.html).

“From Drake to Draque:  A Spanish Hero with an English Accent.” In Material and Symbolic Circulation between Spain and England, 1554-1604, edited by Anne J. Cruz, pp. 29-38. Hampshire:  Ashgate, 2008.

Co-author with Louise M. Burkhart and Barry D. Sell, “Lope de Vega in lengua mexicana (Nahuatl):  don Bartolomé de Alva Ixtlilxochitl’s Translation of  La madre de la mejor (1640).”  Bulletin of the Comediantes 55.2 (2003):  pp. 163-190. https://muse.jhu.edu/journals/bulletin_of_the_comediantes/summary/v055/55.2.burkhart.html

“Capital Accumulation and Canon Formation in Lope de Vega’s De cosario a cosario.” Bulletin of the Comediantes 54.1 (2002):  pp. 33-56.  https://muse.jhu.edu/journals/bulletin_of_the_comediantes/summary/v054/54.1.wright.html

Co-author with Louise M. Burkhart and Barry D. Sell (homage to Stefano Arata): “Inspiración italiana y contexto americano:  El gran teatro del mundo traducido por don Bartolomé de Alva Ixtlilxóchitl.”  Criticón 87-89 (2003):  pp. 925-934. http://cvc.cervantes.es/literatura/criticon/2003.htm.

“El enemigo en un espejo de príncipes:  Lope de Vega y la creación del Francis Drake español.”  Cuadernos de Historia Moderna 26 (2001):  pp. 115-130. http://revistas.ucm.es/index.php/CHMO/article/view/CHMO0101110115A

“Virtuous Labor, Courtly Laborer: Canonization and a Literary Career in Lope de Vega’s Isidro.”  Modern Language Notes 114 (1999):  pp. 223-240.  http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/mln/toc/mln114.2.html#articles2.

Grants and research awards (selected):

Albert Christ-Janer Creative Research Award, University of Georgia. 2019.

National Endowment for the Humanities, Summer Stipend. May – July 2018.

Creative Research Medal, University of Georgia. 2017.

M. G. Michael Award, Franklin College of Arts and Sciences. 2017.

Gilder Lehrman Center for the Study of Slavery, Resistance, and Abolition at Yale University. Fellowship awarded for March 2015.

American Philosophical Society, Franklin Research Grant, May to July, 2014.

Rockefeller Foundation Bellagio Center Residency. Co-recipient with Sarah Spence. June 23 – July 21, 2011.

National Endowment for the Humanities, Scholarly Edition and Translation Grant, Crosscurrents and Confluences:  An Annotated Edition and Translation of Latin Poetry on the Battle of Lepanto (1571), principal investigator. 2010-2012. 

Fulbright, Honorary Senior Scholar Research Award. Awarded by the Comisión Fulbright (Spain) for January–June 2008.

Renaissance Society of America, Research Grant for Senior Scholars. May–June 2007.

Newberry Library, National Endowment for the Humanities Fellowship. Scholar in Residence from September 2004 to June 2005.

National Endowment for the Humanities, Collaborative Research Grant, 2003-2005, for Nahuatl Theater Project. Co-recipient (principal investigator Louise M. Burkhart).

American Philosophical Society, Franklin Research Grant. Awarded April 2003.

John Carter Brown Library at Brown University. Andrew W. Mellon post-doctoral fellowship. Scholar in residence from January through July, 2002.

Fulbright Grant: Madrid, Spain. September, 1995 - July, 1996; and May, 1997 –June, 1997.

  •  

 

Research Interests:

Elizabeth R. Wright (Ph.D., Spanish literature, Johns Hopkins University, 1998).  See below for books, links to selected articles, and a list of grants/awards.

Elizabeth Wright studies and teaches about early modern Spain in the context of imperial expansion. She is also editor of the Bulletin of the Comediantes, the international journal devoted to the study of early-modern Spanish theater. Her recent book, The Epic of Juan Latino: Dilemmas of Race and Religion in Renaissance Spain (University of Toronto Press, 2016), traces how this one-time slave secured higher education, freedom, and social prominence. Now she is centering her focus on the Portuguese-Spanish cultural nexus for Stages of Servitude in Early Modern Iberia. This book in preparation asks how a new mode of slave trafficking that did not fit Mediterranean traditions of “just war” slavery became integrated into the fabric of economic life, language, and humor despite the widespread awareness of its manifest cruelty and dubious legality.  Earlier projects have included:

  • examinations of the literary career of poet-and-playwright Lope de Vega in a monograph (Pilgrimage to Patronage: Lope de Vega and the Court of Philip III, Bucknell University Press, 2001) and in an annotated critical edition of Los ramilletes de Madrid (in Parte XI de las Comedias de Lope de Vega, vol. 1 of 2, Gredos, 2012).
  • the collaborative study of how a mestizo priest descended from Aztec royalty reinterpreted Spanish theater in Nahuatl, the most widely spoken Amerindian language of colonial Mexico (co-editor with Louise Burkhart and Barry Sell of Spanish Golden-Age Drama in Mexican Translation, Nahuatl Theater Set, vol. 3, University of Oklahoma Press, 2008).
  • an edition and translation of neo-Latin poetry that circulated in Spain and Italy in the wake of the Battle of Lepanto, prepared with Sarah Spence and Andrew Lemons (The Battle of Lepanto, I Tatti Renaissance Library, Harvard University Press, 2014).

Wright’s research has been supported with grants from the John Carter Brown Library, the Newberry Library, the American Philosophical Society, the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH), the Renaissance Society of America, the Rockefeller Foundation’s Bellagio Center, the Fulbright grant, and the Gilder Lehrman Center for the Study of Study of Slavery, Resistance, and Abolition. 

Books and Scholarly Editions:

  • The Battle of Lepanto.  Co-editor with Sarah Spence and Andrew Lemons.  I Tatti Renaissance Library, vol. 61.  Cambridge:  Harvard University Press, 2014. 
    • http://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog.php?isbn=978067472542.
  • The Epic of Juan Latino: Dilemmas of Race and Religion in Renaissance Spain. University of Toronto Press (2016).  http://www.utppublishing.com/The-Epic-of-Juan-Latino-Dilemmas-of-Race-and-Religion-in-Renaissance-Spain.html

  • Los ramilletes de Madrid, by Lope de Vega.  Critical edition.  In Parte XI de las Comedias de Lope de Vega, coord. Laura Fernández. Madrid:  Gredos, 2012.
  • Coeditor with Louise M. Burkhart and Barry D. Sell, Spanish Golden-Age Drama in Mexican Translation. Norman, OK:  University of Oklahoma Press, 2008.
  • Pilgrimage to Patronage: Lope de Vega and the Court of Philip III, 1598-1621. Lewisburg, PA:  Bucknell University Press, 2001.

Articles (selected):

  • "Modern War, Ancient Form: Lessons from Lepanto for a Latin Seminar in post-Bellum Granada."  In Representing Imperial Rivalry in the Early Modern Mediterranean, edited by Barbara Fuchs and Emily Weissbourd, pp. 126-44. Toronto:  University of Toronto Press, 2015.
  • “Religious Drama [Spain].” In Lexicon of the Hispanic Baroque:  Transatlantic Exchange and Transformation. Edited by Evonne Levy and Kenneth Mills. Austin:  University of Texas Press, 2013. 281-283.
  • “Enredos historiográficos:  Lope ante Lepanto.”  Anuario Lope de Vega 18 (2012): 146-174 (www.revistes.uab.cat/anuariolopedevega).
  • Co-author with José María Anguita.“Sombras de la onorosa praeda: un exemplo virgiliano para un aula granadina.”  Criticón 115 (2012):  105-123.
  • “Scrutinizing Early Modern Warfare in Latin Hexameters: The Austrias Carmen of Joannes Latinus (Juan Latino).”  In Poiesis and Modernity in the Old and New Worlds, Edited by Anthony J. Cascardi and Leah Middlebrook, pp. 139-158. Nashville:  Vanderbilt University Press, 2012.
  • “Narrating the Ineffable Lepanto: the Austrias Carmen of Joannes Latinus (Juan Latino).”  Hispanic Review 77.1 (Winter 2009):  71-91. (Link to article on Project Muse http://muse.jhu.edu/login?auth=0&type=summary&url=/journals/hispanic_review/v077/77.1.wright.html)
  • “New World News, Ancient Echoes: A Cortés Letter and a Vernacular Livy for a New King and His Wary Subjects (1520–23).”  Renaissance Quarterly 61.3 (2008):  711-49. Link on Project Muse (http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/renaissance_quarterly/toc/ren.61.3.html).
  • “From Drake to Draque:  A Spanish Hero with an English Accent.” In Material and Symbolic Circulation between Spain and England, 1554-1604, edited by Anne J. Cruz, pp. 29-38. Hampshire:  Ashgate, 2008.
  • “Between Instrument and Mirror of Evangelization:  Three Spanish Dramas for a Mexican Mission.”  Vanderbilt e-Journal of Luso-Hispanic Studies 2 (2005):  pp. 185-198 http://ejournals.library.vanderbilt.edu/index.php/lusohispanic/issue/view/160.
  • Co-author with Louise M. Burkhart and Barry D. Sell, “Lope de Vega in lengua mexicana (Nahuatl):  don Bartolomé de Alva Ixtlilxochitl’s Translation of  La madre de la mejor (1640).”  Bulletin of the Comediantes 55.2 (2003):  pp. 163-190. https://muse.jhu.edu/journals/bulletin_of_the_comediantes/summary/v055/55.2.burkhart.html
  • “Capital Accumulation and Canon Formation in Lope de Vega’s De cosario a cosario.” Bulletin of the Comediantes 54.1 (2002):  pp. 33-56.  https://muse.jhu.edu/journals/bulletin_of_the_comediantes/summary/v054/54.1.wright.html.
  • Co-author with Louise M. Burkhart and Barry D. Sell (homage to Stefano Arata): “Inspiración italiana y contexto americano:  El gran teatro del mundo traducido por don Bartolomé de Alva Ixtlilxóchitl.”  Criticón 87-89 (2003):  pp. 925-934. http://cvc.cervantes.es/literatura/criticon/2003.htm.
  • “El enemigo en un espejo de príncipes:  Lope de Vega y la creación del Francis Drake español.”  Cuadernos de Historia Moderna 26 (2001):  pp. 115-130. http://revistas.ucm.es/index.php/CHMO/article/view/CHMO0101110115A
  • “Virtuous Labor, Courtly Laborer: Canonization and a Literary Career in Lope de Vega’s Isidro.”  Modern Language Notes 114 (1999):  pp. 223-240.  http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/mln/toc/mln114.2.html#articles2

EXTERNAL GRANTS (selected):

  • Gilder Lehrman Center for the Study of Slavery, Resistance, and Abolition at Yale University. Fellowship awarded for March 2015.

  • American Philosophical Society, Franklin Research Grant. Awarded March 2014.

  • Rockefeller Foundation Bellagio Center Residency. Co-recipient with Sarah Spence. June 23 – July 21, 2011.
  • National Endowment for the Humanities, Scholarly Edition and Translation Grant, Crosscurrents and Confluences:  An Annotated Edition and Translation of Latin Poetry on the Battle of Lepanto (1571), principal investigator. 2010-2012.
  • Fulbright, Honorary Senior Scholar Research Award. Awarded by the Comisión Fulbright (Spain) for January–June 2008.
  • Renaissance Society of America, Research Grant for Senior Scholars. May–June 2007.
  • Committee for Cultural Cooperation between Spain and the United States, Book Subvention. Co-recipient with Burkhart and Sell, on behalf of the University of Oklahoma Press. July 2006.
  • Committee for Cultural Cooperation between Spain and the United States. Research Grant, July 2005.
  • Newberry Library, National Endowment for the Humanities Fellowship. Scholar in Residence from September 2004 to June 2005.
  • National Endowment for the Humanities, Collaborative Research Grant, 2003-2005, for Nahuatl Theater Project. Co-recipient (principal investigator Louise M. Burkhart).
  • American Philosophical Society, Franklin Research Grant. Awarded April 2003.
  • John Carter Brown Library at Brown University. Andrew W. Mellon post-doctoral fellowship. Scholar in residence from January through July, 2002.
  • Fulbright Grant: Madrid, Spain. September, 1995 - July, 1996; and May, 1997 – June, 1997.
Articles Featuring Elizabeth Wright

Congratulations to Jorge García-Granados, who has successfully defended his dissertation, La travesía de tres Faustos andinos: Dramas de condenación en el Perú colonial del…

More of My Students

PhD Student, Hispanic Studies & Italian, Teaching Assistant of Spanish

My Graduate Students

Jorge

Jorge García-Granados

Lecturer of Spanish
Fernán Gómez Monedero

Fernán Gómez-Monedero

Instructor of Spanish

Support us

We appreciate your financial support. Your gift is important to us and helps support critical opportunities for students and faculty alike, including lectures, travel support, and any number of educational events that augment the classroom experience. Click here to learn more about giving.

Every dollar given has a direct impact upon our students and faculty.