D.Phil (Doctor of Philosophy)
Professor of Classics and Humanities,
Professor of Hispanic Studies and Director, Center for the Study of the Early Modern World, Brown University, Providence, Rhode Island 02912, USA.
Education:
He obtained the degree of MA in Literae Humaniores [Greek and Latin Literature and Philosophy] from Magdalen College, Oxford (1986) and a second MA in Classics from King’s College London (1987), prior to his doctoral research at the University of Oxford, where he was awarded the D.Phil in April 1992 for a thesis entitled Modes of reporting speech in Latin fictional narrative.
Research Interests: His research interests extend from Greek and Roman classical literature and poetics to humanism and the history of scholarship in early modern Europe (especially Italy and Spain) and to colonial Spanish America. His work currently focuses on the role of Latin humanism in mediating native languages and legacies in sixteenth-century Mexico.
Visiting Positions and Fellowshlps
Plumer Visiting Research Fellowship, St Anne’s College, University of Oxford, 2019
Margo Tytus Fellowship in Classics, University of Cincinnati, 2001–2002
Solmsen Fellowship, Institute for Research in the Humanities, Univeristy of Wisconsin: Madison, 2003–2004
Cátedra Extraordinaria Méndez Plancarte, Faculty of Philosophy and Letter, National Autonomou University of Mexico [UNAM], Mexico, 2008–2009
Webster Distinguished Lecturer and Visiting Professor, Classics, Stanford University, 2012
Humanities Initiative Visting Professor, Brown University, 2015–2016
Awards and distinctions
Fellow by Examination in Classical Literature at Magdalen College, Oxford (1992)
Leverhulme Trust Three-Year Major Research Fellowship awarded for ‘The Culture of Latin in Colonial Mexico: Creole Humanism and Native Memory’ (2007)
Loeb Classical Library Foundation Fellowship (2021–202)
Scholarly Publicatios: over 100 publications, including 3 monographs and several edited volumes.
Major Works
Monographs
- Aztec Latin: Renaissance learning and Nahuatl traditions in early colonial Mexico (New York: Oxford University Press, 2023 forthcoming)
- Powers of Expression, Expressions of Power (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999).
- The Epic of America. (London: Duckworth, 2006).
Edited and co-edited volumes
- Orazio, L’Arte Poetica, a cura di Augusto Rostagni, ristampa con aggiornamenti. Saggio introduttivo di Andrew Laird. (Bologna, Bononia University Press, 2020)
- Antiquities and Classical Traditions in Latin America. (Bulletin of Latin American Research Monographs (Oxford and Malden, MA, Wiley Blackwell, 2018).
- The Role of Latin in the Early Modern World: Latin, linguistic identity and nationalism 1350-1800. (Aarhus and Copenhagen, Renaessanceforum, 2010).
- Italy and the Classical Tradition: Language, Thought and Poetry 1300-1600 (London, Duckworth, 2009).
- Ancient Literary Criticism (Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2006).
- A Companion to the Prologue of Apuleius’ Metamorphoses (Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2001).
Selected Articles
- “Love and Death in Renaissance Latin Bucolic: The Chronis and its Origins (Biblioteca Nacional de México Ms. 1631).” Love and Death in Roman Literature, ed. Stavros Frangoulidis and Stephen Harrison, Berlin and Boston, De Gruyter, 2018, pp. 251-274. In English.
- “A Mirror for Mexican Princes: Reconsidering the Context and Latin Source for the Nahuatl Translation of Aesop’s Fables”, for: Brief Forms in Medieval and Renaissance Hispanic Literature, ed. Barry Taylor and Alejandro Coroleu, Newcastle upon Tyne, Cambridge Scholars Pubishing, 2017, pp. 132–167. In English.
- “Orator, sage and patriot: Cicero in colonial Spanish America and Brazil.” The Afterlife of Cicero, ed. G. Manuwald. London, Bulletin of Institute of Classical Studies Supplement, 2017, pp. 122–143. In English.
- “Classical Letters and Millenarian Madness in Post-Conquest Mexico: The Ecstasis of Fray Cristóbal Cabrera (1548).” International Journal of the Classical Tradition, 24.1, April 2017, pp. 78–108. In English.
- “Aztec and Roman Gods: Strategic uses of classical learning in Sahagún’s missionary ethnography.” Altera Roma: Art and Empire from Mérida to Mexico, ed. John Pohl and Claire Lyons, Los Angeles, Cotsen Institute of Archaeology, 2016, pp. 147–167. In English.
- “Nahua humanism and political identity in sixteenth century Mexico. A Latin letter from Antonio Cortés Totoquihuatzin, native ruler of Tlacopan, to Charles V (1552).” Latin, Linguistic Identity and Nationalism II. Aarhus & Copenhagen, Renæssanceforum 9, 2016, pp. 127–172. In English.
- “Nahua humanism and ethnohistory: Antonio Valeriano and the Latin letter from the rulers of Azcapotzalco to Philip II.” Estudios de Cultura Náhuatl, 52, 2016, pp. 23–74. In English.
- “Colonial Spanish America and Brazil.” The Oxford Handbook of Neo-Latin, ed. Sarah Knight and Stefan Tilg. Oxford, OUP, 2015, pp. 525–540. In English.
- “Columbus, the Lily of Quito and the Black Legend. The context of José Manuel Peramás’ epic on the discovery of the New World.” De invento novo orbe inductoque illuc Christi Sacrificio, Dieciocho: Journal of the Hispanic Enlightenment, 38.1, Spring 2015, pp. 7–32 [co-authored with Desiree Arbo]. In English.
- “Les Métamorphoses et le métissage religieux. L’influence d’Apulée dans l’écriture latine, espagnole et nahuatl 1540–1680.” La réception de l'ancien roman de la fin du moyen âge au début de l’époque classique, Actes du colloque de Tours, 20–22 octobre 2011, ed. Cécile Bost-Pouderon, Lyon, Maison de l’Orient et de la Méditerranée, 2015, pp. 163–179. In French.
- “The classical foundations of Utopia in sixteenth-century Mexico: Lucian, Virgil, More, and Erasmus in Vasco de Quiroga’s Información en derecho (1535).” Comparatismes en Sorbonne 6-2015: Les Classiques aux Amériques, Paris, 2015, pp. 1–9. In English.
- “Nahuas and Caesars: Classical learning and bilingualism in post-conquest Mexico; An inventory of Latin writings by authors of the native nobility.” Classical Philology, 109, 2014, pp. 150–169. In English.
- “Humanism and the humanity of the peoples of the New World: Fray Julián Garcés, De habilitate et capacitate gentium, Rome 1537. A study, transcription and translation of the original imprint in the John Carter Brown Library.” Studi Umanistici Piceni, 34, 2014, pp. 183–225. In English.
- “Latin in Latin America [chapter 61].” Brill Encylopedia of the Neo-Latin World, ed. Philip Ford, Charles Fantazzi and Jan Bloemendahl, Leiden and Boston, Brill, 2014, vol. I, pp. 821–832. In English.
- “The teaching of Latin to the native nobility in Mexico in the mid-1500s: Contexts, methods and results.” Latin and Greek as second languages from antiquity to the present day, ed. Jonathan Gnoza, Elizabeth Archibald, William Brockliss. Cambridge, CUP and Yale Classical Studies, 2014, pp. 118–135. In English.
- “Franciscan humanism in post-conquest Mexico: Fray Cristóbal Cabreraʼs epigrams on classical and Renaissance authors (Vat. Lat. 1165).” Studi Umanistici Piceni, 33, 2013, pp. 195–211. In English.
- “Patriotism and the Rise of Latin in Eighteenth-Century New Spain: Disputes of the New World and the Jesuit constructions of a Mexican legacy.” The Role of Latin in the Early Modern World: Latin, linguistic identity and nationalism 1350–1800. Renaessanceforum 7. Aarhus & Copenhagen, Forum for Renaissance Studies, 2012, pp. 163–193. In English.
- “Niccolò Perotti, I Rudimenta grammatices e le Cornu copiae nel Michoacan del XVI secolo.” Studi Umanistici Piceni: Atti dei Congressi, (32) Sassoferrato, 2012, pp. 55–73.
Teaching career
Fellow by Examination in Classical Literature and Lecturer in Latin, Magdalen College, Oxford, 1989–1992
Lecturer in Latin, University of Newcastle upon Tyne, United Kingdom 1992–1996
Lecturer and Reader in Classical Literature, Warwick Univeristy, United Kingdom 1996–2006
Professor of Classical Literature, Warwick Univeristy, United Kingdom 2007–2016
John Rowe Workman Distinguished Professor of Classics and Humanities, Professor of Hispanic Studies, Brown University, Rhode Island, 2016–
