Elvira L Vilches, Associate Professor

Elvira L Vilches

My teaching and research interests include early modern Spanish and Colonial Latin American cultural history and literature. My scholarship explores early Iberian capitalism in a new way. It studies the interface of practitioner knowledge, economic thought and ideologies, and cultural associations. 

Most recent undergrad and graduate courses include Cervantes and Money, The Baroque, Don Quixote for Beginners, Fictitious Truths, Cervantes and the Ethics of Migration, and Global Humanities.  

 I study how economics, science, and culture share a universe in the writing practices of Spanish Renaissance scholars and authors that shaped broader secular registers grappling with the new economic experiences of colonial wealth and global capitalism. I analyze how mercantile technologies, business writing, and various segments of print culture naturalized capitalism by informing the production of economic knowledge as social practice.

This inquiry into economic and intellectual history through the lenses of critical political economy and literary criticism also expands to the understanding the ways in which economic activities are influenced by moral-political norms and sentiments

Recent publications explore shifting value systems in the Iberian Atlantic; money and public trust; the experiences of financial crisis past and present; as well as monetary practices and the spread of numeracy. My book New World Gold: Monetary Disorders and Cultural Anxiety in Early Modern Spain (Chicago University Press, 2010; was the winner  of Choice List of Outstanding Books 2011).

My research has been supported by the The National Endowment for Humanities, the American Council of Learned Societies, The John Carter Brown Library, The Kluge Center, and the Folger Research Institute.




Office Location:  218 Language Center, Box 90257, Durham, NC 27708
Office Phone:  +1 919 660 3107
Email Address: send me a message

Teaching (Spring 2024):

Education:

Ph.D.Cornell University1998
Keywords:

Didactic literature, Spanish • Economics and literature • History

Recent Publications

  1. Vilches, E, Accounting for Finance and Affect in Early Modern Spain, European Journal of Economic History, (2023),, vol. no.2 (2023), pp. 95-101
  2. Vilches, E, The Character and Cultures of Credit in Early Modern Spanish Texts: Matters of Belief, Trust, and Uncertainty, in The Routledge Hispanic Studies Companion to Early Modern Spanish Literature and Culture, edited by Cacho, R; Egan, C (2022), pp. 124-124-139., Routledge, ISBN 9780815358671 (translated by Vilches, E.)  [abs]
  3. Vilches, E, Figures of Arithmetic: Numeracy, Calculation, and Accounting in the Comedia, in Science on Stage in Early Modern Spain, edited by García Santo-Tomás, E (March, 2019), pp. 179-209, University of Toronto Press, ISBN 9781487504052  [abs]
  4. Vilches, E, Doing Things with Money in Early Modern Spain, in A Companion to the Spanish Renaissance, edited by Kallendorf, H (2019), pp. 508-508, Brill  [abs]
  5. Vilches, E, Business Tools and Outlooks: The Culture of Calculation in the Iberian Atlantic, Journal for Early Modern Cultural Studies, vol. 19 no. 2 (2019), pp. 16-51, Project MUSE [doi]