Simone Pinet

Simone Pinet studies medieval and early modern Spanish literatures and cultures, from the thirteenth through the sixteenth centuries, especially in relation to spatiality, economics, poetics, translation, and most recently, sound, with an eye --especially in her teaching-- to the long-term connections between the medieval and the modern, both in contemporary Spain and Latin America. She received her PhD from Harvard University and her BA from the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, and came to Columbia from Cornell University, where she was a professor of Spanish and a faculty member of Medieval Studies and Religious Studies after teaching at Yale University. Related areas of interest include visual studies, cartography, political economy, and sound studies. Her book, Archipelagoes: Insularity and Fiction from Romance to the Novel (University of Minnesota Press, 2011) examines literature and cartography in Spain in the transition from the medieval to the early modern through the figure of the island, with a complementary focus on the isolario –a cartographic genre—and the first book of chivalry, Amadís de Gaula, which became a best-seller in early modern Europe with numerous printings, translations, sequels, and imitations. A second book, The Task of the Cleric (University of Toronto Press, 2016), takes the thirteenth-century Libro de Alexandre, the first learned work in what we now call Spanish, as a focal point for the discussion of cartography, translation, and political economy in relation to different popular medieval tropes and rhetorical strategies across different archives and texts. She is currently at work on two book projects, a first on soundscapes of medieval Iberia (Voice to Noise: Literary Soundscapes of Medieval Iberia), and a second on economic metaphors and rhetorical strategies traced through canonical works of the Iberian Peninsula from the thirteenth through the fifteenth centuries (Economies of Medieval Iberian Fiction).

Prof. Pinet has been a fellow of the Society of the Humanities at Cornell University (2008-2009), and a John S. Guggenheim Foundation Fellow (2010-2011). Her preliminary research for the project on sound received funding from a New Frontiers Grant in 2021-22.

Selected publications:

Books

The Task of the Cleric: Cartography, Translation, and Economics in Thirteenth-Century Iberia (University of Toronto Press, 2016)

Archipelagoes: Insularity and Fiction in Medieval and Early Modern Spain (University of Minnesota Press, 2011).

Editions

co-editor with Andrew Hicks and Erik Born, Soundbites: Approaches to Medieval and Early Modern Sound and Literature, diacritics (forthcoming 2027)

editor, forum on Teaching the Female in Medieval and Early Modern Iberia, La corónica, coord. vol. 51.1 (2024).

Chapters

“Entretenimiento: tiempo y peligro del libro de caballerías,” in Difusión del libro de caballerías, Jordi Sánchez Martí and Rocío Sumillera, eds., Madrid: Consejo Superior de investigaciones Científicas, forthcoming 2026

“Amadís de Gaula,” in Tamesis Companion to the Hispanic Romances of Chivalry, Axayácatl Campos García Rojas and Daniel Gutiérrez Trápaga, eds., London: Támesis, forthcoming 2026

“Soundscapes of the Self (Salamanca, 1554),” in Soundscapes of the Early Modern Iberian Empires, Víctor Sierra Matute, ed. (Routledge Critical Junctures in Global Early Modernities). New York, NY: Routledge, 2024. 225-237.

“Clerical soundscapes,” in The Routledge Hispanic Studies Companion to Medieval Iberia: Unity and Diversity, Michael Gerli and Ryan Giles, eds., New York, NY: Routledge, 2021. 475-490.

“For love of money: rhetorical economics in the Libro de buen amor,” in A New Companion to the Libro de buen amor, ed. Ryan Giles and José Manuel Hidalgo, Leiden: Brill, 2021. 121-137.

“Soberanía y deuda: Notas sobre poder y economía entre el Perceval y el Zifar,” in El rey Arturo y sus libros: 500 años, Aurelio González, Karla Xiomara Luna Mariscal, y Axayácatl Campos García Rojas, eds., México: El Colegio de México: 2019, 319-332.

“Diagrammatic Thought in Medieval Literature,” in Literature and Cartography: Theories, Histories, Genres, ed. by Anders Engberg-Pedersen, Cambridge: MIT Press, 2017. 173-197.

Articles

“Deictic Listening,” Soundbites, special issue of diacritics, Erik Born, Andrew Hicks, and Simone Pinet, eds.

“Silence, Breath, Sigh: Emotional Preambles of Voice,” e-humanista, special issue on Emotions: Pleasure and Pain in Medieval and Early Modern Iberia, Núria Silleras-Fernández, ed., (2026) online (Monographic issue II).

“Berceo and the Sound Garden: Aurality in the Milagros de Nuestra Señora,” Hispanic Review 93.2 (2025): 265-286.

“Debt and the Miracle: On the Economics of Grace and Conversion in Berceo’s Milagros de Nuestra Señora,” invited article to special issue of Revista Canadiense de Estudios Hispánicos, Economy and Literature in Spain and Beyond: From the Middle Ages to the Present, Raúl Alvarez Moreno and Elizabeth Lagresa-González, eds. 48.1 (2023): 29-48.

“Archipiélagos caballerescos,” invited submission for special issue of Insula, Luis Sánchez Laílla y José Enrique Laplana eds. “Insulas extrañas y famosas del siglo de oro,” 901-902 (2022): 2-5.

“Rumor and noise: notes for a political soundscape in mester de clerecía,” Journal of Medieval Iberian Studies (online May 10 2016, print 2017)