Julia Domínguez (Ph.D., University of Arizona) is Associate Professor of Spanish at Iowa State University. Her research focuses on early modern Spanish literature with a special emphasis on Cervantes from the standpoint of the rise of science and speculative thought in the Renaissance. She is especially interested in how Cervantes reflected the individual’s relationship to their body, mind (specifically memory), and environment in his literary works as a result of the renewed scientific and philosophical discourses, and the impact of new technologies.

She completed a book project entitled Quixotic Memories: Cervantes and Memory in Early Modern Spain (currently under review) on the plurality and complexity of memory’s cultural scope through the lens of Cervantes, and specifically through his novel Don Quixote where she 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 with more than 30 essays. She has also published a good number of articles on early modern Spanish literature, the picaresque, film, and Cervantes.

In 2016 she became a member of the Cervantes Society of America executive board. She is also the 2020 recipient of the American Association of Teachers of Spanish and Portuguese (AASPT) University Teacher Award.

For the 2021-2022 academic year, she has been awarded the prestigious Biruté Ciplijauskaité Research Fellowship from the Institute for Research in the Humanities (IRH) at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. There she will be working on her new book project The Arts of Mnemosyne: Expressions of Mnemonic Culture in Renaissance Spain on the influence of the art of memory on poetry in early modern Spain.