Dana Bultman

Blurred image of the arch used as background for stylistic purposes.

Professor of Spanish Literature and Culture

Department Head

My research answers the question: how did religious culture shape literary themes and forms through the rise and decline of the Spanish Empire? Particularly I study moral theology in combination with poetry, novels, and treatises to interpret social roles and relationships. I recently co-edited, with Professor Dale Shuger of Tulane University, a special issue of Religions, "Theology and Aesthetics in the Spanish and Portuguese Empires," which features essays by eight internationally recognized scholars of the early modern world. The forthcoming essay, "Josefa Amar’s Enlightened Silences: Drawing Divisions with a Peculiar Catalogue of Early Modern Women" will appear in Fall 2025 in issue 50.1 of Revista de Estudios de Género y Sexualidades/Journal of Gender and Sexuality Studies.

Students in my courses study classic Spanish texts by siglo de oro 'Golden Age' authors as well as contemporary reworkings of these traditions while immersed in the language. Graduate students please read my guidelines for working together.

Fall 2025 SPAN 8010: Powers of the the Humanities
This course employs collaborative methods to investigate the impact and value of cultural and literary studies. Using as a case study the contemporary reception in Latin American and the United States of Oráculo manual by the Baroque author Baltasar Gracián, we will articulate the trans-historical powers of the humanities, understood as those disciplines dedicated to “exploring, interpreting, and preserving the diversity of cultures, ideas, practices, and human experiences.” We will ask: How can we define and measure “the powers” of our objects of study and the activities of the field itself? We will analyze discursive patterns tied to control, propaganda, deception, and disinformation, contrasting them with concepts of freedom and the construction of better worlds, both within and beyond national boundaries. Readings in the second half of the semester will focus on Enrique Dussel’s The Theological Metaphors of Marx.

If you are interested in working on public humanities and rural engagement, my vertically integrated research project team will accept new student members for Spring 2026. VIPR: Humanities in Public Life: A Multilingual Inquiry. The Fall 2025 team is complete.

Spring 2026: ROML 4001 Careers for Language Majors.

Research

Research Areas:

Latin American, Iberian & Latinx Studies

Literary Aesthetics & Poetics

Research Interests:

16th and 17th century Spain, treatises, conduct books, lyric poetry, Franciscan studies, women writers, Baroque aesthetics.

Frequently Taught Courses

Courses Regularly Taught:

Selected Publications

Selected Publications:

BOOKS

Francisco de Osuna’s Norte de los estados in Modernized Spanish: A Practical Guide to Conjugal Life in Sixteenth-Century Europe. Leeds, UK: ARC Humanities Press, 2019. 360 pp.
Heretical Mixtures: Feminine and Poetic Opposition to Matter-Spirit Dualism in Spain, 1531-1631. Valencia, Spain: Albatros-Hispanófila Siglo XXI, 2007. 229 pp. (on Luis de Góngora's poetics).

ARTICLES AND BOOK CHAPTERS

"Waste, Exclusion, and the Responsibility of the Rich: A Franciscan Critique of Early Capitalist Europe." Religions. 13.9 (2022): 18pp. https://doi.org/10.3390/rel13090818
"Winds, Heart, and Heat in Premodern Franciscan and Nahua Concepts of 'Soul.'" Colonial Latin American Review. 27.3 (2018): 296-315. https://doi.org/10.1080/10609164.2018.1527525
“‘Your Clogs will be My Stairway to Heaven:’ A Wife’s Spiritual Goodness in Francisco de Osuna’s Reformist Dialogue on Marriage, Norte de los estados.” Paradigm Shifts during the Global Middle Ages and Renaissance. Ed. Albrecht Classen. Turnhout, Belgium: Brepols, 2019: 255-78.
“Social Class.” In Using Primary Sources: A Practical Guide for Students. Ed. Jonathan Hogg. Liverpool University Press and University of Liverpool Library in partnership with KISC, 2017. An Open Access e-textbook.
“Jealousy in María de Zayas’s Intercalated Poetry: Lyric Illness and Narrative Cure.” In Golden Age Poetry in Motion. Eds. Jean Andrews and Isabel Torres. Woodbridge, England: Tamesis, 2014: 145-163.
“Conceptualización de la naturaleza creativa: Góngora y Luis Martín de la Plaza en Flores de poetas ilustres (1605).” In Los géneros poéticos del Siglo de Oro: Centros y periferias. Eds. Rodrigo Cacho Casal y Anne Holloway. Woodbridge, England: Tamesis, 2013: 295-312.
“Humanist and Mystical Understanding in Luis de León’s ‘Noche serena’ and John of the Cross’s ‘La noche oscura.’” In Approaches to Teaching Teresa of Avila and the Spanish Mystics. Ed. Alison Weber. New York: Modern Language Association, 2009: 232-239.
“Fray Luis de León.” In Dictionary of Literary Biography Volume 318: Sixteenth-Century Spanish Writers. Ed. Gregory B. Kaplan. Columbia, SC: Bruccoli, Clarke & Layman, Inc., 2006: 138-146.
“Sixteenth-Century Spanish Humanism.” In Dictionary of Literary Biography Volume 318: Sixteenth-Century Spanish Writers. Ed. Gregory B. Kaplan. Columbia, SC: Bruccoli, Clarke & Layman, Inc., 2006: 296-304.
“The Early Modern Sonnet's Lessons of Petrarchism and Militarism.” Ed. Edward Friedman. Calíope 11.2 (2005): 33-43.
“Góngora’s Invocation of Prudente Cónsul: Censorship and Humanist Doubts about his Lyric Language.” Hispanófila 142 (2004): 1-19.
“Scripted Oralities circa 1607-1617: Language and Intention in Góngora’s Las firmezas de Isabela and Lope’s Lo fingido verdadero.” Bulletin of the Comediantes 55.1 (2003): 47-67.
“Shipwreck as Heresy: Placing Góngora’s Poetry in the Wake of Renaissance Epic, Fray Luis and the Christian Kabbala.” Hispanic Review 70.3 (2002): 413-432.

Articles Featuring Dana Bultman

Congratulations to Erin Bolívar!

Tuesday, March 7, 2023 - 9:20pm

Erin Bolívar was awarded a Spring 2023 Willson Center for Humanities and Arts Graduate Research Award for her dissertation research on the portrayal of the Virgin Mary in Spanish and Italian painting and poetry.

Felicitationes & Complimenti!