Leisa Kauffmann

Leisa Kauffmann

Research interest(s)/area of expertise

•  Colonial Latin America 

Research

• Fernando de Alva Ixtlilxochitl
• Nahua – Spanish cultural encounter in New Spain
• Women and Gender in Colonial Latin America

Education

• M.A., University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 1997
• Ph.D., University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 2004

Awards and grants

• Humanities Center Resident Scholar. 2011-2012
• University Research Grant. Wayne State University. Summer 2010

Selected publications

Books

• The Legacy of Rulership in Fernando de Alva Ixtlilxochitl's Historia de la nación chichimeca. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 2019

Articles

• "'El corregidor' at the crossroads: Desire, Law and Coloniality in Martel's Zama. CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture. Forthcoming
• (With Pablo García Loaeza). “Las transformaciones de Nezahuacóyotl en la obra de Fernando de Alva Ixtlilxóchitl: dos perspectivas.” Estudios de Cultura Náhuatl 53 (2017): 175-203
• “Alva Ixtlilxochitl’s Colonial Mexican Trickster Tale: Nezahualcoyotl and Tezcatlipoca in the Historia de la nación chichimeca. Colonial Latin American Review. 23.1 (2014): 70-83
• “[A]nother set of teeth”: Nahua Myth and the Authorizing of Writing in Borderlands/La Frontera." MELUS: The Society for the Study of Multi-Ethnic Literature of the United States. 38.2 (2013): 57-70
• “A Theatre of Terror: Staging the Encounter in Sahagún’s 1585 Revision of Book XII of the Historia general de las cosas de la Nueva España.” Journal of the Midwest Modern Language Association 44.2 (2011): 43-59
• “Figures of Time and Tribute: The Trace of the Colonial Subaltern in Fernando de Alva Ixtlilxochitl's Historia de la nación chichimeca.” The Global South 4.1 (2010): 31–47
• "The Indian Church and the Age of the Spirit: Joachimist Millennialism and Fray Toribio de Motolinía's Historia de los indios de la Nueva España." A Contracorriente 7.2 (2010): 199–136. ncsu.edu/acontracorriente/winter_10

Chapter in edited anthology

• “The Re-invented Man-god of Colonial Texcoco: Alva Ixtlilxochitl’s Nezahualcoyotl.” In Texcoco: Pre-Hispanic and Colonial Perspectives. Jongsoo Lee and Galen Brokaw, eds. U of Colorado P, 2014: 243-259

Courses taught by Leisa Kauffmann

Winter Term 2025 (current)

• SPA2025 - Cultural Connections, Grammar and Composition I
• SPA4630 - Introduction to Colonial Latin American Literature

Fall Term 2024

• SPA3300 - Introduction to Cultural and Literary Analysis
• SPA8610 - Seminar in Spanish American Narrative

Winter Term 2024

• SPA3300 - Introduction to Cultural and Literary Analysis
• SPA6690 - Genres and Topics in Spanish American Literature

Fall Term 2023

• SPA3300 - Introduction to Cultural and Literary Analysis
• SPA5560 - Spanish American Cultures and their Traditions

Winter Term 2023

• SPA4630 - Introduction to Colonial Latin American Literature
• SPA5100 - Advanced Composition