Nicolás Vivalda

Nicolás M. Vivalda is an Assistant Professor of Spanish culture and literature in the department of Hispanic studies. He received a BA in Literature from the Universidad Nacional de Rosario (Argentina) and a MA, and a PhD in Hispanic Languages and Literatures from the University of Pittsburgh.

Mr. Vivalda has just successfully defended his dissertation dealing with the relation between experience, knowledge and representation in Seventeenth Century Spanish literature. His research interests include the relation between philosophical discourse and literary representations of the notions of experience, perception and “engaño a los sentidos” (a Spanish baroque term that defines the idea of the mind being deceived and tricked by the grossness of bodily senses).

His research and publications include Golden Age Peninsular novel and theatre, contemporary Latin American and Spanish prose, and trans-Atlantic perspectives on Golden Age Peninsular topics such as the Latin American recreation of the Spanish Picaresque novel tradition.

He is currently working on a series of articles closely linked to his dissertation (“Picaresca y modos de la alegoría en La vida de Guzmán de Alfarache. Atalaya de la vida humana” and “Basilio o el ocaso del monarca astrólogo: juegos de la similitud en La vida es sueño”). Among the courses taught by Mr. Vivalda are “Framing Poverty and Social Mobility: the Picaresque Novel in Spain and Latin America” and “Postmodern Sexual Identities in Post-Franco Spain”.