University of Delaware Logo

Julia Domínguez

Languages, Literatures & Cultures

Julia Domínguez

Professor of Spanish
Director of the Center for Global and Area Studies (CGAS)
dulcinea@udel.edu
 

Office:107 Jastak-Burgess Hall

Resources and Links

Courses Taught

Biography

​Julia Domínguez is a Professor of Spanish, Director of the Center for Global and Area Studies (CGAS), and a Fellow in the ACHIEVE Program at the University of Delaware. ​

Her research focuses on early modern Spanish literature with a particular emphasis on Cervantes from the standpoint of the rise of science in the Renaissance. She is especially interested in how Cervantes and other authors of the time reflected the individual’s relationship to their body, mind, and environment in their literary works due to the renewed scientific and philosophical discourses and the impact of new technologies. ​ Her research also explores memory and the arts of memory, with a focus on the historical significance of Renaissance memory palaces and their connection to contemporary discussions on knowledge production, information manipulation, and alternative realities.

She is the author of Quixotic Memories: Cervantes and Memory in Early Modern Spain (U of Toronto P, 2022), which treats the plurality and complexity of memory’s cultural scope through the lens of Cervantes and explores the many spaces that memory created for itself in Early Modern Spain. She has published a collection of essays about Cervantes and his works entitled Cervantes in Perspective (Iberoamericana/Vervuert, 2012), and she is also the co-editor of the volume Hispanic Studies in Honor of Robert L. Fiore. She has also published numerous articles on early modern Spanish literature, memory studies, science fiction, film, and Cervantes. ​

Her latest book, Mental Libraries: The Reception of the Arts of Memory in Literature and Culture (Routledge, 2025) is a scholarly volume that traces the enduring legacy and transformation of mnemonic systems from classical antiquity through the early modern period. This volume emerged from a collaboration with the Society of Mnemonic Studies and offers a wide-ranging and interdisciplinary investigation into the dynamic afterlives of memory systems in the premodern world.

Her current research focuses on her book manuscript Mnemonic Marvels: The Arts of Memory in Early Modern Spain and Latin America (in progress), which explores the historical significance of Renaissance memory palaces and establishes connections to contemporary discussions on artificial intelligence, systems of knowledge production, information manipulation, and the presentation of alternative realities.

In 2021–2022, she was awarded the Biruté Ciplijauskaité Research Fellowship from the Institute for Research in the Humanities at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. In 2020, she received the University Teacher Award from the American Association of Teachers of Spanish and Portuguese, where she currently serves on the Board of Directors (2024–2027). She is a member of the Editorial Board of the University of Delaware Press and serves as general co-editor of its series The Early Modern Exchange. She also serves on the Board of Directors of Delaware Humanities.

 

Honors and Awards

 

  • Series General co-editor, The Early Modern Exchange, UD Press (2025-present)
  • Editorial Board of the University of Delaware Press (2024-present)
  • Board of Directors of the American Association of Teachers of Spanish and Portuguese (AATSP) College/University Representative (2024-2027).
  • Biruté Ciplijauskaité Research Fellow, Institute for Research in the Humanities, University of Wisconsin-Madison (2021-2022).
  • AATSP American Association of Teachers of Spanish and Portuguese - College/University Teacher of the Year (2020)
  • ISU Exemplary Faculty Mentor (2022)
  • Cassling Innovation Award, College of Liberal Arts and Sciences (2020)
  • ISU Award for Outstanding Achievement in Teaching, Iowa State University (2018)
  • College of Liberal Arts and Sciences Shakeshaft Master Teacher Award in Humanities and Social Sciences (2018)
  • Member of the Executive Council for the Cervantes Society of America (2017-2020)
  • ISU International Service Award, Iowa State University (2014)
  • ISU Award for Early Excellence in Teaching, Iowa State University (2010)
  • Cassling Family Faculty Award, Early Achievement in Teaching, College of Liberal Arts and Sciences (2010)
  • College of Liberal Arts and Sciences Award for Early Excellence in Teaching (2009)

 

Publications

Books

  • Mnemonic Marvels: The Arts of Memory in Early Modern Spain and Latin America. In progress.
  • Mental Libraries: The Reception of the Arts of Memory in Literature and Culture. Ed. Julia Domínguez. Routledge, 2025.
  • Quixotic Memories: Cervantes and the Culture of Memory in Early Modern Spain. University of Toronto Press, 2022
  • Cervantes in Perspective. Ed. Julia Domínguez. Madrid: Iberoamericana-Vervuert, 2013.
  • Studies in Golden Age Literature in Honor of Robert L. Fiore. Ed. Julia Domínguez-Castellano and Chad M. Gasta. Newark, Delaware: Juan de la Cuesta Hispanic Monographs, 2009.
Expand

Articles and Book Chapters

 

  • “Sacred Carvings, Shattered Selves: Sculpture, Identity, and Mnemonic Ekphrasis in Cervantes.” Invited for Cervantes and Ekphrasis. Edited by Frederic de Armas and Daniel Holcombe for University of Toronto Press. In progress. 
  • “Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz, Athanasius Kircher and the Tradition of the Art of Memory.” In progress. 
  • “Manual Computation and Embodied Time in Early Modern Europe.” In progress. 
  • “The Hand as the Mirror of Salvation: Visual Mnemonics and Embodied Theology in a Late Medieval Woodcut.” In progress.
  • “Towards a Cervantine Poetics of Memorialization: Traumatropism and Affective Memory in La Numancia.” Invited for Cervantes and the Unsayable. Eds. Stephen Hassel and Ryan Schmitz. 
  • “The Allure of Teaching Los tratos de Argel and La Numancia through Visual / Material Culture and Artificial Intelligence.” Invited for MLA Volume on Teaching Cervantes Novelas ejemplares and Theater. Eds. Carmela Mattza and Carmen Hsu. Forthcoming.
  • “Carceral Soundscapes: Affective Memory in Cervantes’ Los baños de Argel.” Submitted for Cervantes’s Dialogic Creativity in a Global Context. Eds. Carmen Hsu and Carmela Mattza. Under contract with U Toronto P.
  • “Memory in Early Modern Spain.” The Routledge Encyclopedia of the Renaissance World.
  • “Mental Libraries.” Mental Libraries: The Reception of the Arts of Memory in Literature and Culture. Ed. Julia Domínguez. New York: Routledge, 2025. 1-20.
  • “Curious Knowledge: Diego Valadés’ Rhetorica Christiana as a Cabinet of Curiosity.” Humanities 14, no. 6 (2025): 121. https://doi.org/10.3390/h14060121. Published in the special issue The Rise of Curious Knowledge in Early Modern Spain, edited by Marina Brownlee. 
  • “A Window onto the Heart: Cervantes and the Cardiocentric Self.” Hispanic Review 91.4 (2023): 517-539.
  • “Cervantes’s Algorithms: Science, Paranoia and Media Manipulation in El Retablo de las Maravillas.” Handling the Truth: A Debates Volume on What Would Cervantes Do? Navigating Post-Truth with Spanish Baroque Literature. Eds. Stephen Hassel and Brian Philips. Hispanic Issues On Line Debates 11 (2023).
  • “Writing to Rescue from Oblivion: The Phantasms of Captivity in Cervantes’s El Trato de Argel.” Drawing the Curtain: Cervantes’s Theatrical Revelations. Eds. Adrienne Martin and Esther Fernández. U Toronto P, 2022. 99-125.
  • “Cervantes and the Mother of the Muses: Views of Memory in Early Modern Spain.” Cervantes and the Early Modern Mind. Ed. Julien Simon and Isabel Jaén. New York: Routledge, 2021. 118-137.
  • “Imaginar mundos: memoria y ciencia ficción en la obra de Cervantes” Special issue on Cervantes and Science Fiction in Cervantes: Bulletin of the Cervantes Society of America 40.2 (2020): 33-51.
  • “'Básteme tener el Christus en la memoria para ser buen gobernador:’ Sancho y las cartillas de instrucción áurea" (Special issue Yo no le trocaría con otro escudero:” Sancho Panza ante la crítica in eHumanista/Cervantes 7 (2019): 97-114.
  • “The Internal Senses in Don Quixote and the Anatomy of Memory.” Beyond Sight. Ed. Steven Wagschal and Ryan Giles. Toronto: U of Toronto P, 2018. 47-65.
  • “La medicina política en Cervantes: el gobierno del cuerpo en Don Quijote.” El Segundo Quijote (1615): Nuevas interpretaciones cuatro siglos después. Ed. Conxita Domenech and Andrés Lema Hincapié. Madrid: Iberoamericana/Vervuert, 2018. 285-308.
  • “The ‘Janus Hypothesis’ in Don Quixote: Memory and Imagination in Cervantes.” Cognitive Approaches to Early Modern Spanish Literature. Ed. Julien Simon and Isabel Jaén. Oxford: Oxford UP, 2016. 74-90.
  • “Leer con pluma en mano: escritura, lectura y memoria en Cervantes.” El Quijote en América. Cervantes, autor universal. Ed. María Isabel López Martínez & Rosa Eugenia Montes Doncel. Madrid: Renacimiento, 2016. 11-36.
  • “Introduction”. In Cervantes in Perspective. Ed. Julia Domínguez. Madrid: Iberoamericana/Vervuert, 2013. 9-13.
  • “‘¿Qué grandeza es mandar en un grano de mostaza, o qué dignidad o imperio el gobernar a media docena de hombres tamaños como avellanas?’: la visión celestial de Sancho y el Theatrum Orbis Terrarum de Abraham Ortelius.” Hispánofila 166 (2012): 19-37.
  • “Espacios legibles en La vida del Lazarillo de Tormes: valoración del mapa mental en la psicología cognitiva del pícaro.” Revista de Estudios Hispánicos 45 (2011): 259-81.
  • “Coluros, líneas, paralelos y zodíacos: Cervantes y el viaje por la cosmografía en El Quijote.” Cervantes: Bulletin of the Cervantes Society of America 29.2 (2009): 139-57.
  • “El laberinto mental del exilio en Don Quijote: el testimonio del morisco Ricote.” Hispania 92.2 (2009): 183-92.
  • “Los escenarios de la memoria: psicodrama en El trato de Argel de Cervantes.” The Bulletin of Comediantes 61.1 (2009): 1-24.
  • “Cuando la picaresca ‘determinó de pasarse a Indias:’ el caso de Mi tío Atahualpa.” Hispanic Studies in Honor of Robert L. Fiore. Newark, Delaware: Juan de la Cuesta Hispanic Monographs, 2009. 149-62.
  • “Introduction” with Chad Gasta. In Hispanic Studies in Honor of Robert L. Fiore. Newark, Delaware: Juan de la Cuesta Hispanic Monographs, 2009. 11-24.
  • “Luces, cámara, inacción en Lost in La Mancha: la realidad de una ficción que nunca existió.” Cervantes: Bulletin of the Cervantes Society of America 27.2 (2007): 23-42.
  • “A Culture-Based Entrepreneurship Program: Impact on Student Interest in Business Ownership” with Chad M. Gasta, Leland L’Hote and Howard Van Auken. International Journal of Family Business 4 (2007): 17-30.
  • “La superposición de mapas cognitivos en la ‘Historia del Cautivo:’ el espacio discursivo en la convivencia de culturas.” 1605-2005: Don Quixote across the Centuries. Coord. John P. Gabriele. Madrid: Iberoamericana, 2005. 115-24.
  • “La estética manierista en Guzmán de Alfarache.” Ed. Alejandro Cortázar and Christian Fernández. Proceedings of the 23rd Louisiana Conference on Hispanic Languages and Literatures. Baton Rouge, LA: Department of Foreign Languages and Literatures, Louisiana State University, 2003.
Collapse
Media mentions
  • Illustration two people building bridge with puzzle pieces

    Bridging Cultures and Classrooms

    July 11, 2025 | Written by Language Magazine
    We’re proud to share that program director Julia Domínguez and colleague Basia Moltchanov have coauthored an article in Language Magazine titled “Bridging Cultures and Classrooms: Intercultural Competence Through Study Abroad.”

  • Mental Libraries: The Reception of the Arts of Memory in Literature and Culture

    June 06, 2025 | Written by CAS Communication Staff
    Exploring the enduring legacy of mnemonic systems across literature, visual arts, pedagogy and cultural production.

  • The power of three

    April 01, 2025 | Written by Margo McDonough
    Triple major gives UD junior a competitive edge
Read more media mentions

Colleges

College of Arts & Sciences

RESOURCES

Connect