Elizabeth R. Wright, Associate Professor of Spanish, University of Georgia
A Brown-Bag Lunchtime Seminar, Thursday February 11, 12:00 (Keene-Flint 05—History Conference Room)
Scholars of the African Diaspora celebrate Juan Latino (ca. 1516 – ca. 1590) as the first sub-Saharan African to publish a book of poems in a European language. Elizabeth Wright will discuss how Latino’s epic poem on the Battle of Lepanto (October 7, 1571) renegotiates his own freedom and upward mobility in Granada. What are the lessons learned from the life and death of a magnanimous and skilled Muslim commander? What are the implications of Spanish tactics in which overwhelming artillery fire trumps aristocratic military arts?
Elizabeth Wright teaches the literature and culture of early modern Spain at the University of Georgia. Her publications explore Spain’s dramatic expansion of geographic and cultural horizons in the 16th and 17th centuries, and the accompanying emergence of new modes of racial prejudice directed at black Africans and Amerindians.
This event is made possible with generous support from:
Department of Spanish and Portuguese Studies
Center for the Humanities and the Public Sphere (Rothman Endowment)
Department of Classics
Department of History