Research Bio

Paulina León specializes in the cultural and literary histories of early modern Spain and colonial Latin America, with a focus on the diverse—and often conflicting—medical cultures of the Spanish empire. Her research brings together literary analysis, print culture, writing practices, and healthcare paradigms. She has published on festive poetry commemorating deliverance from pestilence in seventeenth-century Cádiz and on theatrical representations of mass mortality in sixteenth-century Mexico City. Her current book project, Writing Contagion: Cultures of Plague in the Early Modern Spanish Empire, offers a cultural and literary history of epidemics. Drawing on archival and printed sources, it argues that outbreaks transformed literary practice and reshaped collective understandings of contagion, care, and the role of writing itself.

At UC Berkeley, León is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Spanish & Portuguese. She contributes to campus conversations on medical humanities and transatlantic early modern studies.

Research Expertise and Interest

early modern Spain, colonial Latin America, plague literature, medical humanities, book history