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Maria Willstedt, Ph.D.


Department of English
Department of Spanish

Education

Ph.D. in Spanish, Yale University
M.A. in Spanish, Yale University
TEFL Certificate, Center for Intensive English Studies, Florida State University
M.A. and B.A. in Latin and Romance languages, Åbo Akademi University (Turku, Finland)

Practice Areas

  • Cultural semantics in first and second-language acquisition environment. Reading comprehension strategies.
  • Framed-tale narrative tradition (Eastern to Western, medieval to modern).
  • Female characters and the female body in medieval and early modern Spanish literature.
  • Don Quixote (relationship between truth, reality, and fiction; self-determination and hybridity; melancholy and justice).
  • Spanish medievalism and medievalism more broadly, especially in popular culture.

Publications and Media Placements

Articles

"Gregorio Mayans y el manuscrito Add. 9939 de la British Library de Londres," Bulletin of Hispanic Studies 92.6 (2015): 619-634.

"La poesía medieval y los orígenes de la historiografía literaria nacional: los Orígenes de la poesía castellana (1754) de Luis José Velázquez." Revista de Estudios Hispánicos 41 (2007): 323-343.

Reviews and Translations

Review: Cognitive Approaches to Early Modern Spanish Literature. Jaén, Isabel and Julien Jacques Simon, editors. New York: Oxford UP, 2016. In Bulletin of the Comediantes 69.1 (2017): 151-154.

Review: Silent Music: Medieval Song and the Construction of History in Eighteenth-Century Spain. Boynton, Susan. New York: Oxford UP, 2011. In AARHMS (American Academy of Research Historians of Medieval Spain) Newsletter. March 2012.

Translation: Zaid, Gabriel. "La carretilla alfonsina." In Essayists on the Essay: Four Centuries of Commentary. Ed. by Carl H. Klaus and Ned Stuckey-French. Iowa City: U of Iowa P, 2012. 125-128.

Review: De La Mancha a la pantalla: Aventuras cinematográficas del Ingenioso Hidalgo. España, Rafael de. Barcelona: Publicacions i Edicions de la Universitat de Barcelona, 2007. In Anuario de Estudios Cervantinos 5 (2009): 371-373.

Translation: Menocal, María Rosa. "Del verdadero autor del Quijote… seguido de otras tragedias." Ed. Eduardo Subirats. Américo Castro y la revisión de la memoria. Madrid: Ediciones Libertarias, 2003.

Review: The Kharjas: A Critical Bibliography. Hitchcock, Richard and Consuelo López Morillas. Supplement 1. Research Bibliographies & Checklists, 20.1. London: Grant & Culler, 1996. In Al-Masaq 13 (2001): 141-143.

Selected Conferences and Presentations

"Women Writers at the Mirror: Marguerite de Navarre and María de Zayas Reflect on the Adulterous Wife. A Comparison Reading between Heptameron 32 and Desengaño 4." Hamilton College, April 15, 2018.

"From Fairy Tale to Novella: The Substitute Bride Motif in María de Zayas." Renaissance Society of America Annual Meeting, Chicago, March 30-April 1, 2017.

"Moorish Girls and Cross-Dressing Pages: Chasing the Nymph in Cervantes's Don Quixote." Hamilton College "Highlighting the Humanities" conference series, November 12, 2015.

"Martín Sarmiento: A Medievalist at the Court of the Spanish Bourbon Kings." 50th International Congress on Medieval Studies. Western Michigan University, Kalamazoo, May 14-17, 2015.

"From Castilian to Spanish to Spanglish: A Historical Example of Translation versus Globalization." Translation versus Globalization Symposium. UNC Charlotte Center City, NC, February 20-21, 2015.

"Pascual de Gayangos and the Spanish Middle Ages: The Arabist Perspective." 42nd International Congress on Medieval Studies, Kalamazoo, MI, May 10-13, 2007.

"Excessive Exemplarity: The Immured Wife in María de Zayas." 122nd MLA Annual Convention, Philadelphia, December 27-30, 2006.

"Spain's Early Medievalism: The Work of Tomás Antonio Sánchez (1725-1802)." 20th Annual International Conference on Medievalism. Towson University, Baltimore, MD, October 14-15, 2005.

"Florebit amygdalus et impinguabitur locusta: Covarrubias y la interpretación." Symposium "Voces de Covarrubias." King Juan Carlos I of Spain Center, New York University, March 1-2, 2002.

"Strategies for teaching Cervantes's Don Quixote." Teaching staff of the Literature Humanities Course at Columbia University, March 27, 2000. Invited presentation.

Service

Senior MLA field bibliographer. Spanish and Italian sections. 2006-