My research explores the cultural and literary worlds of Spain, Latin America, and the Philippines, with particular attention to how literature, film, and historical memory shape collective identity. Over the course of my career, I have worked extensively on Ecuadorian literature and culture, examining questions of nationalism, urban modernity, poetic experimentation, and the relationship between art and political life. In recent years, I have expanded my scholarship to include Spanish-language writing in the Philippines during the colonial period, especially drama and poetry from the nineteenth century. This work investigates how writers in Manila engaged Spanish humanist traditions while articulating early forms of cultural and political resistance. Whether analyzing contemporary Andean poetry, Mexican cinema, or Filipino Enlightenment thought, I am interested in how literary texts respond to colonialism, migration, religion, and modernity, and how they continue to speak to debates about identity and belonging.

A defining feature of my scholarship is the close relationship between research and teaching. Many of my projects grow directly out of immersion courses and collaborative student experiences in Spain, Ecuador, the Dominican Republic, Argentina, and the Philippines. I am particularly interested in what I think of as “pedagogical pilgrimage,” the idea that encountering places, landscapes, and cultural practices firsthand can deepen our understanding of literature and history. My recent archival research at the Newberry Library led to the discovery of an unpublished nineteenth-century Manila comedy, opening a new line of inquiry into colonial satire and manuscript culture. Across these varied projects, my goal remains consistent: to illuminate how cultural production travels across oceans and centuries, and to invite students and readers alike to see the Hispanic world as a dynamic, interconnected field of ideas, languages, and artistic expression.