Research

​Illustrated Editions of Don Quixote of La Mancha

The core of my research revolves around Miguel de Cervantes’s novel Don Quixote of la Mancha (part I 1605; part II 1615), and more specifically, the novel’s narratives in relation to the book illustrations that portray them. The manner by which Cervantes wrote Don Quixote is superlative. His narratives are descriptive, to the point of creating what I call iconographic moments in the storyline that simply beg to be reinterpreted visually. As we read the novel, these narratives become vivid in our mind's eye, and as a result, they exist in the social imaginaries of the world's cultures, even when many have not read the novel. "Quixotic iconography" therefore results in many forms: literary reinterpretations, such as in novels and plays, and visual reinterpretations in book illustrations, films, graphic novels, children's books, and even gaming. Such iconography can be found almost anywhere.

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The print history of illustrating Don Quixote spans more than four hundred years, and my approach to this history is formed primarily through holistic analyses of book illustrations created by a great variety of artists throughout the centuries. I take into consideration not only the illustrations themselves, but also the artists – who are also readers of the novel – and the stylistic conventions that guide their interpretations of Cervantes's text.

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The exploration of book illustrations by these artists – that is, what the artists compose and what the viewers observe in their illustrations – has expanded my scholarship to include art history and its movements, stylistic conventions, techniques, leitmotifs, tropes, and other categorizations. This natural progression places me in an exciting and intriguing space framed by book history, culture studies, literature, narratology, and art history. Because the print history of Don Quixote spans the world's languages and cultures for over four hundred years, my focus is multi-temporal and trans-oceanic, which allows me to engage with many illustrated editions of the novel in Spanish, alongside the many translations to other languages.

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Salvador Dali as Surrealist Illustrator

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My first monographic study regarding Don Quixote and book illustration, Quixotic Quests: Salvador Dalí's First Illustrated Don Quixote (forthcoming 2025), centers on Catalan artist Salvador Dalí and his first illustrated Don Quixote published in 1946 by Random House and The Illustrated Modern Library. Indeed, Dalí illustrated Cervantes's novel for the first time while living in exile in the United States in the 1940s, collaborating with Random House to produce this special 1946 edition. Quixotic Quests examines the material history of the edition by bridging art history, book history, literature, and narratology, while exploring Dalí’s role as its illustrator and the reception of both by mid-century popular culture, art historians, and literary scholars.

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Positing that much of Dalí’s life was quixotic in nature, the book investigates his quest to illustrate the novel with an unprecedented level of pictorial didacticism, despite challenges that the artist and Random House faced during and after World War II. It details his resolute passion to integrate surrealism with classicism, visual art with narrative, sexuality with sublimation, and privacy with public persona. Contrasting Dalí’s visual achievements with other artists and stylistic movements, Quixotic Quests sheds new light on the niche that Dalí created for himself as a surrealist illustrator of Don Quixote. Consulting his autobiographical narratives, it analyzes Dalí’s unique artistic contributions to the four-hundred-year print history of the novel, while emphasizing the artist’s heartfelt appreciation and respect for his book illustrations.

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This book represents a significant expansion of my doctoral dissertation. To further support the book's proposed arguments, I researched the Random House records at Columbia University's Rare Book & Manuscript Library in the Butler Library, revealing archival documents that chronicle  behind the scenes information regarding the book's planning, organization, illustration, and publication. These documents inspired the connection between the book's material history and Dali's life and his work as quixotic in nature, which provided insight into the contemporaneous reception of both Dalí and the book in mid-century United States and Spain.

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In a broader sense,  I look forward to completing a series of volumes that holistically examine iconic narratives from the novel in book illustration throughout the centuries. Upcoming monographic studies will explore themes including Dalí's many other illustrated books and the rise of Don Quixote tourism throughout the centuries.​​​

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Latin America, Mexican Vanguard, and Gender

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I carry forward two other primary areas of expertise that allow me to further diversify my research and pedagogy: Latin American Studies and Medical Interpretation and Translation. My MA research provided foundational scholarship in gender studies, encompassing Latin America with special emphasis on the Mexican Vanguard literary movement after the Mexican Revolution of 1910, exploring authors such as Salvador Novo, and later Carlos Monsiváis. I also expanded my initial passion for visual arts through analyses of the fear of life and death - as a metaphor for authoritarianism - as viewed in Brazilian graphic novels. 

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Artificial Intelligence

I have recently expanded my focus on Digital Humanities projects in my courses, further engaging students with visually stimulating opportunities for presentational writing and speaking. To prepare for this, I have researched issues that surround the use of Generative Artificial Intelligence (Gen-AI) in world languages literature courses (forthcoming, Hispania) and am actively investigating Gen-AI use and its consequences for academic publishing and the peer review process.​​

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Medical Interpretation and Translation

I first attended medical interpreter training  in 2006 and 2007, which immediately inspired me to return to university to pursue my degrees in Spanish. It also instilled in me the value of volunteerism, as I served as President of the North Carolina Professional Interpreting Association (NCPIA), incorporated it, and formed a Board of Directors. Although I went on to study Latin American and Spanish literature in my higher degrees, I could not leave medical interpretation in my past. It meant too much to me.

Once I began my graduate studies, I was approached to pursue training to teach the same courses I had taken as a student. I succeeded, and began teaching the three core courses that made up the original curriculum written by the University of North Carolina at Greensboro, Center for New North Carolinians (UNCG-CNNC) to train bilingual individuals as interpreters to serve their AmeriCorps program. I began teaching these courses in 2012, writing an additional course to complete the education of North Carolina interpreters: not only to make them better interpreters but also to help those who seek national certification to achieve their 40 hours of medical interpretation coursework as one of the pre-requisites.

What resulted is a decades-long passion for medical interpretation and translation that continues undiminished in my pedagogy. I continue to develop university courses on Spanish for Global Health, Beginning Spanish for Healthcare Professions, and Medical Interpretation Practicum. Apart from the university, I actively instruct and mentor fully bilingual, working medical interpreters in their pursuit of foreign language national certification, as well as those who are investigating medical interpretation as a possible career.

In Sum

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These three primary areas of research interest guide my pedagogy, inspiring me to create courses in interpretation and translation, intercultural competence for pre-med and nursing students, early modern Spanish surveys, Don Quixote in cultural production in English or Spanish, and courses that explore early modern or contemporary Spain and Latin America. With many language programs in crisis, the ability to offer a variety of courses for our students is crucial.

Other research interests include Don Quixote in cultural production (outside of book illustration) in which narrative and visual arts overlap (film, graphic novel, and travel guides). I have also explored other topics including the Black Legend in cultural production.

 
Academic journals in which I have published include: Cervantes: Bulletin of the Cervantes Society of America, Laberinto Journal, Renaissance Quarterly, Asociación Internacional Siglo de Oro, Studies in Latin American Popular Culture, Hispania, Estudios mexicanos, Chasqui. Revista de literatura y cultura latinoamericana e indígena, Mester, Brasiliana,  Cuadernos de Literatura Hispanoamericana y del Caribe, Hispanic Journal, and Rocky Mountain Review of Language and Literature.