Paulina León researches and teaches on the cultural history of early modern Spain and colonial Latin America, with a particular focus on plague literature and medical cultures. She is also interested in historiography, book history and material culture, autobiographical writing, and poetry.
She holds a B.A. in History from Universidad Iberoamericana (Mexico City) and a Ph.D. in Hispanic and Luso-Brazilian studies from the University of Chicago. Her work has been supported by numerous fellowships, including the John Carter Brown Library, the Franke Institute for the Humanities at the University of Chicago, the Renaissance Society of America, the Newberry Library, the Biblioteca Historicomèdica “Vicent Peset Llorca” at the Universitat de València and the Society for Renaissance and Baroque Hispanic Poetry.
Her current book project, Writing Contagion: Cultures of Plague in the Early Modern Spanish Empire is a cultural and literary history of epidemics across the Spanish empire. It argues that epidemic outbreaks led to significant literary and cultural transformations, fostering new social, political and professional roles of writing in times of crisis.
Recent Publications:
“The Sick Sun: Poetics of Contagion in Seventeenth-Century Mexico City,” Kunsttexte (forthcoming)
“Yo regiré la danza. Memoria y Pestilencia en la Nueva España,” Fractal. Revista de teoría y cultura, núm. 95, Febrero 2025.
“How to End an Epidemic: The Politics of Poetry in Seventeenth-Century Cádiz,” Calíope:
Journal of the Society for Renaissance and Baroque Hispanic Poetry, no. 29.2, December 2024.
