Chair

Department of Spanish and Portuguese

Professor

Department of Spanish and Portuguese

Education

PhD, Hispanic Languages and Literatures, University of California, Berkeley

MA, Romance Languages and Literatures, University of Chicago

BA, Music, University of California, Davis

BA, Spanish, University of California, Davis

Biography

Mary Quinn is Professor of Spanish at the University of New Mexico, where she specializes in the literature and culture of early modern Spain. Her research takes an interdisciplinary approach, moving across literature, music, visual culture, performance, and sensory history. She has authored three books: Don Quixote: Wandering, Misreading, and the Creation of the Modern Novel (forthcoming, Cambridge University Press); Sense and Spectacle in the Age of Philip IV: Performing Empire in Word, Music, and Image (Routledge, 2024); and The Moor and the Novel: Narrating Absence in Early Modern Spain (Palgrave Macmillan, 2013). She has also co-edited Aural Culture and Poetics in the Early Modern Hispanic World(Bulletin of Spanish Studies, 2023), and published numerous articles and review essays. Her current research explores early modern pilgrimage, relics, and sacred images alongside sensory and embodied devotion. An award-winning teacher, Quinn relishes helping students engage with challenging works, especially Don Quixote and Baroque poetry.

Research Interests

• Miguel de Cervantes and early modern Spanish literature
• Music, sound, and performance, especially Baroque zarzuela and opera
• Visual culture and painting
• Court, festival, and ritual culture
• Local religious practices in the early modern Hispanic world, from Spain to New Mexico