Lingua Franca Speakers Series

Dr. Manuel Olmedo Gobante, an assistant professor at the University of Arkansas, will give a talk in English on “Reclaiming Black Iberia: New Perspectives and Methodologies for the Study of Race in Early Modern Spain.”

Dr. Olmedo Gobante’s scholarly interests include martial arts, soldierly theatre, and Afro-Hispanic cultural history. He is the editor of a Spanish-English bilingual critical edition of The Valiant Black Man in Flanders, a seventeenth-century Spanish play that features an Afro-Spanish hero who challenges systemic racism and succeeds (Liverpool University Press, 2023). He is also co-editing a collaborative reader of early modern Afro-Iberian literary and archival sources titled Black Iberia. Sources for a New History of the African Diaspora and finalizing a monograph titled Sword Lines: The Literature of Fencing in the Spanish Golden Age (Vervuert). His next book project, Early Modern Afro-Futurisms, draws heavily from the fields of Africana and Black Studies to delve into the understudied corpus of early modern Spanish plays that feature Afro-Hispanic rebels, Black Saints, and other forms of racialized heroism.

While on campus, Dr. Olmedo Gobante will also talk about translating race with Dr. Marta Albalá Pelegrín's SPN 3120: Introduction to Translation and Interpretation class. For more information, contact Dr. Albalá Pelegrín.