Expertise: Spanish and Portuguese
My main area of research is early modern Spanish literature and culture, and specifically, the analysis of textual expressions of mental phenomena, including emotional experience (disgust and jealousy), sensory perception (sight, taste and smell), and non-human animal cognition (emotions, sensations, theory of mind, phenomenal consciousness, etc.). As a humanities scholar, I examine specific cultural products created by sixteenth- and seventeenth-century literary authors including Cervantes, Calderón, De Zayas, and Garcilaso; non-fiction writers such as Martínez Espinar and Fernández de Oviedo; and visual artists such as Velázquez and De Gheyn.
I am interested in the beliefs that people have held about the cognitive faculties of non-human animals and I evaluate to what extent these beliefs fall in line with current scientific understanding of these faculties in animals.
In other recent research, I explore the cognition of human literary characters.
Specializations
- Early Modern/Golden Age prose, poetry and theater
- Cognitive and Philosophical Approaches to Literature
- Animal Studies
- Literature, the Emotions and the Senses
- Art and Literature
Research Interests
- early modern Spanish literature and culture; cognitive approaches to literature; philosophy and literature; art and literature
Expertise:
- Art
- Literature
- Philosophy
- Portuga
- lSpain
