Marta Albalá Pelegrín

2026-2027

François Chevalier

California State Polytechnic University, Pomona

Theater of Conquest: Performing Iberian Expansion in Rome (1450-1530)

Marta Albalá Pelegrín is a Professor of Early Modern Iberian Studies in the Department of English & Modern Languages at Cal Poly Pomona. Her interdisciplinary research examines the cultural and political history of the Early Modern Iberian Worlds, focusing on performance, diplomacy, sovereignty, and the circulation of people, ideas, and material culture across the Mediterranean, the Atlantic, and the Hispanic Pacific.

She is currently completing a book entitled Theater of Conquest: Performing Iberian Expansion in Rome (1450–1530), and co-editing two volumes Ambivalent Harmonies: Representing Peace in Time of Conflict in the Early Modern Iberian Worlds and Mobilities in the Western Mediterranean (12th-21st centuries). Her peer-reviewed articles explore the intersections of law, performance, diplomacy, and empire, with forthcoming work on Medici patronage and Iberian theater in Rome. Marta Albalá Pelegrín has received major external awards, fellowships and grants, including a Berenson Fellowship at Villa I Tatti, the Paul Oskar Kristeller Fellowship from the Renaissance Society of America, and other grants and fellowships by the Folger Shakespeare Library, the Newberry Library, the Herzog August Library, the American Philosophical Society, the NEH and the Fulbright. 

She holds several leadership roles, including Discipline Representative for Hispanic Literature for the Renaissance Society of America (2026–28), elected member of the Board of Directors of the Spain–North Africa Project (SNAP) (2020–2026), and member of the scientific and advisory committees of journals and book series in Italy, Spain, and France. She is also a founding member and Programming Lead for Cal Poly Pomona's Environmental Humanities Initiative.

Active in the public humanities, she is a member of Diversifying the Classics and leads Radio Comedia, an open-access podcast that produces audio adaptations of Spanish classical theater, along with pedagogical materials and interviews with scholars and theater practitioners. She received a Hispanex Program grant from the Spanish Ministry of Culture for a musical adaptation of Calderón de la Barca's Amar después de la muerte, which premiered in 2026. She has also contributed to more than ten collaborative translations of early modern plays.

She has co-organized three international conferences on three continents and has been invited to speak at numerous institutions, including Columbia University, Princeton University, UCLA, and the Deutsches Historisches Institut in Rome.

Theater of Conquest examines how performances orchestrated by Iberian and Italian diplomats in early modern Rome, a supranational center of power, shaped legislation and imperial discourses. It argues that theatrical representations of conquest participated directly in the diplomatic and juridical processes that legitimized Iberian claims to evangelize and dispossess non-Christian peoples. Drawing on theatrical pieces, correspondence, diaries, papal bulls, and cartographical materials such as portolan maps, the book shows how Iberian reports of conquests in Africa and Asia, publicized as victories for “Christendom,” were transformed into spectacles that circulated through Rome’s streets, Cardinals’ palaces, and the papal curia. These performances normalized the display of conquest, mobilized audiences toward imperial projects, and legitimized expansionism as a sacred and collective enterprise, revealing performance as a vital instrument in the making of early modern global powers.

Ambivalent Harmonies: Representing Peace in Time of Conflict in the Early Modern Iberian Worlds. Co-edited with Maria Vittoria Spissu. (Forthcoming).

Mobilities in the Western Mediterranean (12th-21st centuries). Co-edited with Andrew Devereux & Mayte Green Mercado (Forthcoming)

“Performing Expansion into Western Africa: Medici Patronage and Iberian Theater in Rome.” In The Medici and the Perception of Sub-Saharan Africa, edited by Alessio Assonitis and Kate Lowe, The Medici Archive Project Series, Harvey Miller Publishers, Brepols, (Forthcoming). 

The Lieutenant Nun. Annotated Translation of the Play, Historical Accounts and Documents about Catalina/Antonio de Erauso. Co-authored with Edward Test. (Routledge: London, 2025)

“On Floods and Earthquakes: Iberian Political and Religious Readings of Natural Disasters (1530-1531).” Humanities, Special issue on Curiosity and Modernity in Early Modern Spain, edited by Marina Brownlee, 14.9, 176 (2025), 1-15.

Crossroads in Early Modern Italy: Encounters between Foreign Travelers and Local Inhabitants. Co-edited with S. Toffolo. A special issue of the Annali dell’Istituto storico italo germanico in Trento, 49.1 (2023)