Faculty of Modern and Medieval Languages and Linguistics
Raised Faculty Building
University of Cambridge
Sidgwick Avenue
Cambridge
CB3 9DA
United Kingdom
Maya Feile Tomes is Lorna Close Lecturer in Spanish and Fellow of Murray Edwards College, as well as Director of Studies in Modern & Medieval Languages and Bye-Fellow at Peterhouse. She is also an Affiliate Lecturer in the Faculty of Classics, Cambridge. She took up her current post as Lorna Close Lecturer in 2021 after a stint as Teaching Associate in Colonial Latin American Literary and Cultural Studies here in the Spanish & Portuguese Section, prior to which she was a Junior Research Fellow (JRF) at Christ’s College, Cambridge. Her research revolves around the literary culture of the early modern Iberian world, focusing on transatlantic dialogues, multilingual dynamics (Spanish, Portuguese, Italian, Latin), and classical reception. She also has a special interest in translation, both teaching and practice, and has recently been shortlisted for the Sundial Literary Translation Award (2024) and twice longlisted (2019, 2023) for the John Dryden Literary Translation Prize. Her PhD thesis won both the Association of Hispanists of Great Britain and Ireland (AHGBI) & Spanish Embassy Dissertation Publication Prize (UK) and the Hare Prize in the Faculty of Classics, Cambridge. She has been a keynote speaker at conferences from Germany to Brazil.
Early modern Iberian global literature
Comparative literature
Poetry and poetics
(Post)colonial studies
Literary culture of the Southern Cone (esp. Argentina)
Classical reception
Translation studies
Edited volumes
Sepúlveda on the Spanish Invasion of the Americas: Defending Empire, Debating Las Casas, ed. Luke Glanville, David Lupher and Maya Feile Tomes. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2023.
Brill’s Companion to Classics in the Early Americas, ed. Maya Feile Tomes, Adam J. Goldwyn and Matthew Duquès. Leiden/Boston: Brill, 2021.
Chapters and articles
2023. ‘Una heroica dama? The Discurso en loor de la poesía (1608) in context and the case for Diego Mexía as “Clarinda”’, Colonial Latin American Review 32.4, 452–80.
2023. ‘Carthaginian America: Classical Encounters in Early Ibero-American Epic’ International Journal of the Classical Tradition 30.1 (special issue: The Global Dissemination of Classical Learning, ed. Erik Hermans), 66–104.
2021. ‘The Other Arena: Poetics Goes Global in the Early Modern Iberian Atlantic, 1500-1650(+)’, Classical Receptions Journal 13.1 (special issue: Artes Poeticae: Formations and Transformations 1500-1650, ed. Micha Lazarus and Vladimir Brljak), 126–48.
2021. ‘Introduction. Synecdoche in Reverse: America’s Transhemispheric Classics’, pp. 1–49 in Brill’s Companion to Classics in the Early Americas, ed. M. Feile Tomes, Adam J. Goldwyn and Matthew Duquès. Leiden/Boston: Brill.
2020. ‘Plurilingual Poetry and the Hinterland of Intertextuality: Europeanising Reading Culture in the Early Modern Iberian World’, pp. 227–48 in The Edinburgh History of Reading, Vol. 1: Early Readers, ed. Mary Hammond. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.
2019. ‘The Angel and Ameri(c)a: Performing the “New World” in José Manuel Peramás’s De Invento Novo Orbe (1777)’, pp. 121–46 in Changing Hearts: Performing Jesuit Emotions between Europe, Asia and the Americas, ed. Yasmin Haskell and Raphaële Garrod. Leiden/Boston: Brill.
2018. ‘Südamerika: Die spanischsprachigen Länder’, pp. 920–32 in Der neue Pauly. Das 18. Jahrhundert: Lexikon zur Antikerezeption in Aufklärung und Klassizismus, ed. Joachim Jacob and Johannes Süßmann. Stuttgart/Weimar: J. B. Metzler.
2015a. ‘News of a Hitherto Unknown Neo-Latin Columbus Epic – Part I: José Manuel Peramás’s De Invento Novo Orbe Inductoque Illuc Christi Sacrificio (1777)’, International Journal of the Classical Tradition, 22.1, 1–28.
2015b. ‘News of a Hitherto Unknown Neo-Latin Columbus Epic – Part II: José Manuel Peramás’s De Invento Novo Orbe Inductoque Illuc Christi Sacrificio (1777)’, International Journal of the Classical Tradition 22.2, 223–57.
2015c. ‘Further Points on Peramás: An Erratum and two Addenda’, International Journal of the Classical Tradition 22.3, 383–9.
Translations
2023. Macarena Areco, ‘Imaginaries of Technology and Subjectivity: Representations of AI in Contemporary Chilean Science Fiction’, pp. 192–209 in Imagining AI: How the World Sees Intelligent Machines, ed. Stephen Cave and Kanta Dihal. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
2020. Leslie Nancy Hernández Nova – ‘The Conquest in Cultural Memory: Peruvian Migrants in Europe’, pp. 264–76 in Transnational Perspectives on the Conquest and Colonization of Latin America, ed. Jenny Mander, David Midgley and Christine Beaule. New York & London: Routledge.
2020. Diego Stefanelli – ‘Italian Scientists in South America: Argentina as Constructed by Paolo Mantegazza and Pellegrino Strobel’, pp. 61–72 in Transnational Perspectives on the Conquest and Colonization of Latin America, ed. Jenny Mander, David Midgley and Christine Beaule. New York & London: Routledge.
Reviews & Other
2022. ‘The End of Emergence? Next Steps for Ibero-American Classics’ – Hespérides Network ~ Classical Reception Studies Network (CRSN) guest blogpost.
2019. Review of Andrew Laird and Nicola Miller, ed., Antiquities and Classical Traditions in Latin America (Wiley, 2018), Bryn Mawr Classical Review.
2017. Review of Robert Goodwin, Spain: The Centre of the World, 1519-1682 (Bloomsbury, 2015), History 102.3, 503–6.
2017. Review of Shane Butler, ed., Deep Classics: Rethinking Classical Reception (Bloomsbury, 2016), Classical Review 67.2, 561–3.
2015. Review of Christiane Pérez González, Bilingualität auf der Jesuitenbühne. Latein und Volkssprache im spanischen Schultheater des 16. und 17. Jahrhunderts (Rhema, 2014), Journal of Jesuit Studies 2.2, 329–32.
