E. Michael Gerli

E. Michael Gerli is an American Hispanist and cultural historian, known for his work on medieval and early modern Iberian literature and intellectual history, particularly on La Celestina and the works of Miguel de Cervantes.

He is Commonwealth Professor of Spanish emeritus at the University of Virginia and his research and work focuses on Medieval Hispanic philology and literature. His scholarship included sixteen authored or edited books and 200 articles and essays on Romance philology, intellectual history, and literary criticism.

He is the recipient of Modern Language Association’s Katherine Singer Kovács Prize.

Biography Gerli earned his Ph.D. in Hispanic Languages and Literatures from the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) in 1972.

Gerli has held teaching positions at Georgetown University, where he served as Chair of the Department of Spanish and Portuguese from 1982 to 1989 and 1997 to 2000 and was Andrew W. Mellon Distinguished Professor.

In 2000, he joined the University of Virginia, where he was appointed Commonwealth Professor of Spanish and Medieval Studies. He has also served as a Visiting Professor at universities such as Johns Hopkins University, Duke University, the University of Pennsylvania, Emory University, Stanford University, and the Universidad Pontificia del Perú.

Gerli has served on the editorial boards of numerous scholarly journals, including La Corónica, Hispanic Review, Anuario de Estudios Cervantinos, Journal of Hispanic Philology, Medievalia, and Convivencia. He was elected to the Modern Language Association’s Delegate Assembly and served twice as chair of the MLA Division of Medieval Hispanic Languages and Literatures.

As of 2025, Gerli teaches courses in Iberian and Latin American Cultures as a visiting professor at Stanford.

Research and scholarly works Gerli's scholarship explores the interplay between literature, language, and cultural identity in the Iberian Peninsula from the Middle Ages through the Renaissance. His research is particularly concerned with questions of authorship, literary authority, and the historical conditions of textual production and reception.

He is the general editor of Medieval Iberia: An Encyclopedia (Routledge, 2003), a comprehensive reference work that was selected as a Choice Outstanding Academic Book. Among his most influential monographs is Celestina and the Ends of Desire (University of Toronto Press, 2011), which received the Modern Language Association’s Katherine Singer Kovács Prize for an outstanding book in Latin American and Spanish literatures and cultures.

His earlier work, Refiguring Authority: Reading, Writing, and Rewriting in Cervantes (1995), was awarded “Outstanding Academic Book” by the American Association of College and University Libraries, and is a widely cited study in Cervantine scholarship. the development of Romance philology, and the emergence of print culture in early modern Spain.

Selected publications

Books

Journal articles

Book chapters