Chad M. Gasta

Degrees

• Ph.D., Spanish, Michigan State University
  
• M.A., Spanish, Michigan State University
• B.A., Political Science, Michigan State University
• B.A., Spanish, Michigan State University
  

Biography

Chad M. Gasta is professor of Spanish and chair of the Department of Languages, Literatures, and Cultures. Until 2022, he served as professor and chair of the Department or World Languages and Cultures at Iowa State University where he also served as director of International Studies, co-director of the Languages and Cultures for Professions (LCP) program. He also founded and co-directed Iowa State's largest study abroad program, the ISU on the Mediterranean – Summer in Valencia, Spain, program.  

Gasta teaches a wide array of courses including Spanish for Global Professionals, Spanish Conversation for Professionals, Spain Today, Spanish Civilization and Culture as well as advanced courses on the literatures and cultures of early modern Spain and Latin America. He welcomes the opportunity to work with graduate students interested in Spain's early modern period.

His research focuses on the intersection of arts and sciences and material cultures and early modern Spanish and Latin American literature, in particular early opera and musical culture, the comedia, Cervantes, and the picaresque. He also writes on global education and international engagement through study abroad. 
 

Honors and Awards

Iowa State University Outstanding Department Leadership Award (2022)

Iowa State University Outstanding Early Achievement in Departmental Leadership (2016)

Iowa State University International Service Award (2012)

College of Liberal Arts & Sciences International Service Award (2011)

College of Liberal Arts & Sciences Master Teacher (2009)

Iowa State University Foundation Award for Outstanding Early Achievement in Teaching (2006)

College of Liberal Arts & Sciences Award for Outstanding Early Achievement in Teaching (2005)

Cassling Family Faculty Award for Outstanding Teaching (2005)​

Publications

Books

• Transatlantic Arias: Early Opera in Spain and the New World. Iberoamericana, 2013.
• La vida de Lazarillo de Tormes. Annotated Critical Edition. Ed. Chad M. Gasta. Waveland Press, 2013.
• Imperial Stagings: Empire and Ideology in Transatlantic Theater of Early Modern Spain and the New World. University North Carolina Press, 2012.
• Studies in Golden Age Literature in Honor of Robert L. Fiore. Ed. Chad M. Gasta and Julia Domínguez-Castellano. Juan de la Cuesta Hispanic Monographs, 2009.

Articles and Book Chapters (most recent)

• with Nicolás M. Vivalda. “Teaching El licenciado Vidriera through the Medical Discourses of Early Modern Spain” Approaches to Teaching Cervantes’s Theater and Novelas ejemplares. New York: Modern Language Association of America. In press.
• “Other Worlds and Alternate Realities: Cervantes and the Scientific Revolution in La gitanilla.” Cervantes's Dialogic Creativity in a Global Context. Ed. Carmela Mattza and Carmen Hsu. University of Toronto Press. In press.
• “Empire, Politics, and Literature.” Oxford Handbook of Spanish Golden Age Literature. Ed. J.A. Garrido Ardila. Oxford University Press.  In press.
• “The King on Stage: Philip IV and the Projection of Power in Lope de Vega’s opera La selva sin amor.” Comedia Performance 21 (2024): 141-55.
• “Opera in Early Modern Iberia.” Routledge Encyclopedia of the Renaissance World.