Javier Irigoyen-García

Early Modern Iberian Literature and Culture

My research focuses on the representation of race, ethnicity, and class difference in early modern Spain. My first book The Spanish Arcadia: Sheep Herding, Pastoral Discourse, and Ethnicity in Early Modern Spain (University of Toronto Press, 2013) analyzes the social and ethnocentric uses of the pastoral romances by revealing their interrelation with discourses on race, animal husbandry, and nation building in sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Spain. My second book, “Moors Dressed as Moors”: Clothing, Social Distinction, and Ethnicity in Early Modern Iberia (University of Toronto Press, 2017) studies the production, circulation, and consumption of Moorish clothing among both Old Christians and Moriscos to show that it was a sign of status which conditioned sartorial practices, discourses on social preeminence, and literary representations. I am currently working on a project, tentatively entitled Utopias of Infamy, dealing with the political value of insults as a source of collective identity in the early modern Spanish imaginary.

PhD in Romance Languages. University of Pennsylvania
MA in Spanish. University of Colorado at Boulder
BA in Hispanic Philology. Universidade de Santiago de Compostela

2016-2021. Conrad Humanities Scholar. College of Liberal Arts and Sciences
2014-2015. Helen Corley Petit Scholar. College of Liberal Arts and Sciences