Lisa Surwillo
· Associate Professor of Iberian and Latin American Cultures, Faculty Director of Introductory Seminars (VPUE), W. Warren Shelden University Fellow in Undergraduate EducationStanford University · Slavic Languages and Literatures
Active 2002–2026
About
Lisa Surwillo is an Associate Professor of Iberian and Latin American Cultures at Stanford University and serves as the Faculty Director of Introductory Seminars (VPUE). She holds a Ph.D. in Romance Languages and Literatures from the University of California at Berkeley and a B.A. in Spanish and History from the University of Wisconsin, Madison. Her teaching focuses on Iberian literature, particularly from the nineteenth century, and her research addresses questions of property, empire, race, and personhood as they are manifested through literary works, especially dramatic literature dealing with colonial slavery, abolition, and Spanish citizenship. Surwillo is the author of 'Monsters by Trade,' a study of slave traders in Spanish literature and their role in the development of modern Spain, and 'The Stages of Property,' an analysis of the development of copyright and authorship in nineteenth-century Spain and its impact on theater. She is currently completing two books: one on freedom petitions by enslaved Afro-Cuban women during the 1870s, and a co-authored study with Martín Rodrigo of a major Cuban financier and Catalan real estate magnate. She is affiliated with the Stanford Center for Law and History, the Center for Latin American Studies, and the Center for Comparative Studies of Race and Ethnicity.
Research topics
- History
- Sociology
- Ancient history
- Archaeology
- Psychology
- Engineering
- Literature
- Art
- Geography
- Telecommunications
- Genealogy
Selected publications
Gender & History · 2026-05-04
articleOpen access1st authorCorrespondingABSTRACT An analysis of the dual biographies, economic and domestic, of Manuela Xiqués, an enslaver from nineteenth‐century Cuba and Spain, deepens our understanding of the role of European and Creole women in the nineteenth‐century Atlantic. This essay foregrounds the role of literature, namely family biography, as a locus of the processes of rewriting the nature of colonialism and of refashioning the Cuban origins of a prominent Catalan family. The private, domestic biography becomes a principal technology for rhetorically domesticating the American story of trafficking and enslavement for its Spanish readers.
Petitioning from the Body: Cuba and Spain in 1873
2023-12-12
book-chapterOpen access1st authorCorrespondingBerghahn Books · 2022-09-20
book-chapter1st authorCorrespondingUnlocking the Historical Truth of Abolitionist Literature:
Berghahn Books · 2021-06-11
book-chapter1st authorCorrespondingThe Yucatan Channel and the limits of “Spain” in the mid-nineteenth century
Routledge eBooks · 2020
1st authorCorresponding- Geography
- Archaeology
- History
This chapter discusses the diplomatic engagement with the terms of Spanish sovereignty, neo-imperial fantasies, and maritime claims in the Western Caribbean during the mid-nineteenth century. These years witnessed the seizure, trafficking, and exploitation of Maya from the Yucatan Peninsula to Cuba and Spanish attempts to counter British Atlantic hegemony. Through an analysis of a range of texts, including government documents, maps, and the personal account of the Spanish dramatist José Zorrilla, this chapter argues that the meaning of the terms “Spain” and “the Atlantic” were not only debated in Iberia but also negotiated through discussions of the forced migrations and labor of Maya trafficked across the Yucatan Channel.
§3. Baroja’s Atlantic, Beyond Slavery
Stanford University Press eBooks · 2020-09-09
book-chapter1st authorCorrespondingStanford University Press eBooks · 2020
1st authorCorresponding- History
- Ancient history
§5. Family Ties and Narrative Confessions in Catalonia
Stanford University Press eBooks · 2020
1st authorCorresponding- Sociology
- Psychology
- Genealogy
Liverpool University Press eBooks · 2019-11-19
book-chapter1st authorCorrespondingEva Canel and the Gender of Hispanism
SUNY Press eBooks · 2019-09-24 · 1 citations
book-chapter1st authorCorresponding
Frequent coauthors
- 1 shared
Jenny S. Martinez
Princeton University
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