Biography
Robin Bower, Ph.D., associate professor of Spanish, teaches courses in Spanish, world literature, art history, and philosophy.
Trained as a medievalist, Dr. Bower brings a unique perspective to courses on contemporary topics including punk rock, pop culture, and witches and magic in art and history. Her perspective is informed by the intersection of her deep immersion in classical, biblical, and medieval sources, her intensive study of contemporary theoretical models of literary, cultural, and religious expression, and her love of popular culture.
Students in Dr. Bower’s classes can expect to find new ways of looking at familiar things, question their own assumptions, share their perspectives, and hear their classmates’ points of view, all through engaging in lively discussions.
Dr. Bower’s literature and art classes prepare students to think creatively and critically about the world they live in and the professions they enter, seeing the connections that run through all areas of practical endeavor from entrepreneurship and technological innovation to art and design. Language classes instill a mental agility and intellectual creativity that transfers to problem-solving and generative thinking in all fields of study and work.
Research Interests
- Medieval literature and cultural studies
- Early Modern Iberian literature and cultural studies
- Intersections of medieval and early modern literature and cultural studies with religious history, gender, and translation.
- Popular devotions, magic and miracles, and the ways folk belief and official religious cultures intersect in art, literature, devotional practice, and popular culture.
Publications
Introduction: Critics and Clerks - September, 2024
Collaborator: Matthew Desing
Prequels and Afterlives: The Exemplarity of "Fernán González" - September, 2024
A Companion to Mester de Clerecía Poetry - September, 2024
Collaborator: Matthew Desing
In the Doorway of All Worlds: Gonzalo de Berceo's Translation of the Saints - July, 2024
"Nunca mayor sobervia comidió Lucifer", Hispanófila - December, 2022
Artistic Responses to the Zong Massacre - January, 2021
Collaborators: Magali Armillas-Tiseyra; Janet Neigh; Tembi Charles, Student Author
Sugar and Servitude: The Taste of Color - January, 2021
Collaborator: Sabine Doran, Co-Author
Gonzalo de Berceo, La Vida de San Millán de la Cogolla - October, 2018
Gonzalo de Berceo, La Vida de Santo Domingo de Silos - July, 2018
Review of Patricia Timmons and Robert Boening, Gonzalo de Berceo and the Latin Miracles of the Virgin: A Translation and Study, Speculum - 2015
The Body Embattled: Hagiographic Carnality and the Reception of Injury in Medieval Spain, La Corónica - 2013
Review of Anthony Lappin, "Gonzalo de Berceo: The Poet and His Verses", Bulletin of Hispanic Studies - 2010
Review of Julian Weiss, The ‘Mester de Clerecía”: Intellectuals and Ideologies in Thirteenth-Century Castile, Speculum - 2008
Remembering the Past: Reading History, Writing Memory, and the Poetics of Agency in Ernesto Cardenal, Bulletin of Hispanic Studies - 2008
Ca fallescio el libro: Ascetic Reading and Restorative Hermeneutics in La vida de Santo Domingo de Silos, Hispanic Review - 2005
Review of Robert Folger, Generaciones y Semblanzas: Memory and Genealogy in Medieval Iberian Historiography, La Corónica - 2004
Prescriptions for Reading: The Medicinal Prologues of Gonzalo de Berceo's Saints' Lives, Modern Language Notes (MLN) - 2003
Education
Ph. D., Spanish Literature, Columbia University
M. Phil., Spanish and Portuguese , Columbia University
M.A., Medieval Iberian Literature, Columbia University
BA, Foreign Languages, West Chester University