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Paul Firbas

paul firbas magellan pf

Associate Professor, Chair
Humanities Building 1146
paul.firbas@stonybrook.edu

View CV: curriculum vitae

Personal web page


Paul Firbas is associate professor in the Dept of Hispanic Languages and Literature at Stony Brook University, affiliated with the Department of History, and former director of the Latin American and Caribbean Center (LACC). He specializes in Spanish-American texts of the colonial period. Before coming to Stony Brook in 2007, he was assistant professor at Princeton University (2001-2007) and visiting professor at Columbia University (spring 2007). 

His research deals with epic poetry, textual criticism, historiography and the colonial geography of transatlantic South America. In 2006 he published a study and a critical edition of  Armas antárticas , epic poem written by Juan de Miramontes Zuázola (Lima: PUCP, 2006). He is also the editor of a volume of essays on Ibero-American epic texts in the colonial word  Épica y colonia  (Lima: Univ. de San Marcos, 2008).  In 2016 he co-edited with Esperanza Lopez Parada and Marta Ortiz a catalog of the exhibit they curated at the National Library of Spain: La biblioteca del Inca Garcilaso (Madrid: BNE, 2016); and with José A. Rodríguez Garrido, he published an annotated edition and study, in two volumes, of the first known set of periodical news-sheets published in the Americas: Diario de noticias sobresalientes en Lima y Noticias de Europa (1700-1711) (New York: IDEA, 2017 and 2023). The study and edition of the Lima news-sheets are also part of a digital humanities project on the circulation of news and networks in Early Modern Peru and Spain (see website here).

He has published several articles on epic poetry and cultural traditions in colonial Peru and Chile, on Sarmiento de Gamboa narratives on the Strait of Magellan, on Miguel Cabello Balboa writings and his expedition to Esmeraldas, on Inca Garcilaso's work, etc. He is currently working on a book on colonial moral geography; on a study and mapping of the circulation of information and news between Europe and South America in the early 18th century; and on a series of essays on memory and excavation in the Andes. 

He has also co-edited with Pedro Meira Monteiro a book on documentary film maker Andres Di Tella: Cine documental y Archivo personal Conversación en Princeton (Buenos Aires: Siglo XXI, 2006); and with Arcadio Díaz Quiñones, a book of conversations with Ricardo Piglia, La forma inicial  (Talca, Chile: Univ Talca, 2015; varios reprints and Portuguese translation).

Recently taught courses (View descriptions)

  • SPN 652 Utopian texts in the Andes
  • SPN 652 Matter and Voice in Colonial Textualities
  • SPN 652 Colonial moral geographies
  • SPN 551 Early Latin-American Literature
  • SPN 510 Hispanic Cultures in Contact [Mestizo Studies]
  • SPN 435 Fictions of Communities in the Andes
  • SPN 435 Civilization and Barbarism
  • SPN 453 Literature, Non Fiction and Journalism in Latin America
  • SPN 415 Latin American History trough Fiction
  • SPN 399 Communication, Media and Journalism in Spanish [visit course blog]
  • SPN 395 Introduction to Latin American Literature: Colonial Period
  • SPN 396 Introduction to Latin American Literature: Modern Period
  • HUS 254 Latin America Today
Publications (see full list)

Armas antarticas Epica y colonia firbas di tella cover talca

Diaria de Noticias Sobresalientes en Lima y Noticias de Europa La Biblioteca del Inca Garci Laso de la Vega

 

[See new personal website here. Go here for old website]