Faculty Earns National Prize

Yolanda Gamboa, Ph.D., was recently awarded the 2020 Vern Williamsen Comedia Book Prize for "Making Sense of the Senses: Current Approaches in Spanish Comedia Criticism," Juan de la Cuesta, 2017, a co-edited volume with Bonnie Gasior, California State University, Long Beach, Calif.

The book is a fetshcrift in honor of Charles Ganelin, professor, in Purdue University and University of Miami, Ohio, who was a pioneer in the application of critical approaches based on the senses to comedia studies (16th and 17th century Spanish Theater) and it contains articles from 11 major critics in Spanish comedia studies today, dealing with the senses and cognition.

Since the book itself is a product of collaboration, the book cover chosen by the editors is a reproduction of a painting hosted in Museo del Prado, Spain, called, “Hearing,” 1617-1619, from the Series on, “The Senses,” a collaborative work between Jan Brueghel I and Peter Paul Rubens.

“In honoring our professor and mentor we wanted to stay away from a traditional fetshcrift and write a book that could stand on its own, so we were careful to tell possible contributors to adhere to the topic. Their articles had to deal with some aspect of cognition or the senses, the two sections in which the book is divided. This way, we trust the book will be of interest to scholars outside our discipline, be it english, theater, or cognitive studies. In the Introduction we wrote we provided a brief historical summary of the field of cognitive literary criticism in order to frame the different contributions," Gamboa said.

Gamboa’s primary research is 16th and 17th century Spanish literature and early modern cultural studies, with an emphasis on women as cultural producers. She has written on the pedagogical applications of early modern texts, and the impact of architecture, chocolate, and Naples. Gamboa's current book project in-progress is “Spanish Women and Culture in early modern St. Augustine,” which includes cultural analysis and archival research.

Gamboa combines her research with literary translation. Her other books are "Cartografía social en la narrativa de María de Zayas," translates to "Social Cartography in Maria de Zayas’ Prose Works," Biblioteca Nueva, 2009, a study of the famous Spanish woman writer of novellas and of her time; and her translation of "Rafael Argullol’s El Fin del Mundo Como Obra de Arte," translates to "The End of the World as a Work of Art," Bucknell, 2005. The latter book includes an introduction to the Spanish contemporary essay and a critical afterword, and was nominated to the 2006 MLA Aldo and Jean Scaglione Award for a translation of a literary work.

– Story courtesy of Dorothy F. Schmidt College of Arts and Letters