Carolyn A Nadeau

Dr. Nadeau is the Byron S. Tucci Professor of Spanish at Illinois Wesleyan University where she teaches medieval and early modern Spanish literature and culture classes as well as the pre-professional courses, "Business Spanish in its Cultural Context", "Spanish for Social Justice" and "Medical Spanish and Cultural Competency for Health Care."

Her research focuses on food representation in sixteenth-century and seventeenth-century Spanish literature. Her monograph, Food Matters. Alonso Quijano’s Diet and the Discourse of Food in Early Modern Spain, contextualizes the shifts in Spain’s gastronomic history at many levels of society and in the process explores the evolving social and cultural identity of early modern Spain. She is also the editor and translation of the 1611 cookbook Arte de cocina, pastelería, vizcocheria y conservería by Francisco Martínez Montiño which includes over 500 recipes he prepared in the royal kitchens in Madrid. In fact, she posts many of her recreations on Instagram and you can follow her at carolynnadeau | Arte de cocina. 

She has published dozens of articles in leading journals including Bulletin of Hispanic Studies, Revista canadiense de estudios hispánicos, La Perinola, and Bulletin of the Cervantes Society of America and has volume chapters published in Canada, England, Spain and Serbia. Her first book, Women of the Prologue: Imitation, Myth, and Magic in Don Quixote I, explores the significance of the women of the prologue in Don Quijote I and Cervantes's impact on the pressing question of literary continuation and cultural authority in Golden Age Spain. She has also published a critical edition of Quevedo's El buscón and has written on mythological female figures in the comedia, and the role of the wife and mother in sixteenth-century advice manuals, and the treatment of medical advise in both women’s domestic manuals and men’s academic treatises. 

Her current projects include a study on urban spaces in Cervantes' fiction and another that explores how early modern Spanish artists incoorporated New World food stuffs into their works and, in turn, influenced how those food items transformed Spanish cuisine.