Early Modern Spain was an era in which reputation was paramount, and fiction played a seminal role in the form of pamphlets, laudatory and satirical poetry, and prefaces to books. But the question of infamy still remains largely unexplored, as the field has traditionally focused on how its elements (writers, texts, printing presses) worked, not on how they failed. Famous / Infamous will gather seven exciting and cutting-edge scholars working in the domains of literature, aesthetics, performance, and cultural history. Our goal is to shed new light on a neglected side of an epoch in which failure mattered greatly.

Conference Schedule

Hatcher Gallery, Hatcher Graduate Library
10:00 AM Opening Remarks by Enrique García Santo-Tomás (University of Michigan)
Cervantine Politics of Fame
Presenter: Patricia Marín Cepeda (Universitat Pompeu Fabra)
10:00 AM María Dolores Morillo (University of Michigan) “The Famously Infamous Playwright: the Cervantine Anomaly”
10:30 AM Javier Irigoyen-García (University of Illinois) “Policing Infamy and Its Risks: The Case of Sancho’s sambenito”

11:00-11:30: Coffee Break

The Drama of Infamy
Presenter: Mayte Green-Mercado (University of Michigan)
11:30 AM María Chouza-Calo (Central Michigan University) “How to Defend One’s Reputation, According to Lope de Vega”
12:00 PM Alejandro García Reidy (Syracuse University) “Infamy, Rumors, and Scandals among Early Modern Spanish Performers”

1:00 PM Lunch, Gallery Lab, Hatcher Graduate Library

Writing Reputation
Presenter: Juan Udaondo (University of Michigan)
2:30 PM Miguel Martínez (University of Chicago) “Diego García de Paredes: The Afterlives of a Renaissance Thug”
3:00 PM Javier Castro-Ibaseta (University of Michigan) “The Menippean Structure of Political Infamy: The Count Duke of Olivares”

4:00 PM Tour of the Hatcher Graduate Library Special Collections, Pablo Álvarez, Curator

5:00 PM Keynote lecture
Screening Room, Shapiro Library
Presenter: Enrique García Santo-Tomás (University of Michigan)
Barbara Fuchs (UCLA)
“Recuperating Infamy: La Lozana Andaluza and the Limits of the Picaresque”