Contributors and Team

Szilvia Szmuk-Tanenbaum, creator and director of Comedias Sueltas USA earned a PhD in Spanish literature at the Graduate Center, City University of New York but in fact had a career as a Special Collections librarian most of her life.  Her interests are bibliophilic and her publications have to do mostly with descriptive bibliographies of Spanish Golden Age plays.  The difficulties of finding comedias sueltas as a corpus, in US academic and research libraries have propelled her to create this website.  She is an active member of the Grolier Club and a member of the Association Internationale de Bibliophilie.

Don Cruickshank was born in Fettercairn, Kincardineshire, in 1942, and brought up in Aberdeen, where he went to university and studied Spanish under Terence May and Peter Dunn. From Aberdeen he moved to Cambridge (Emmanuel College) to do a PhD on Calderón, under the supervision of Edward Wilson. In 1968 he was elected to a research fellowship in Emmanuel, remaining there until he was appointed to a lectureship at University College Dublin, where in due course he became a senior lecturer and an associate professor and, eventually, Professor of Spanish. He retired in 2007. His publications include a facsimile collection of early Calderón editions (1973, with J. E. Varey, 19 vols), a study of the classical Spanish plays collected by the diarist Samuel Pepys (Samuel Pepys’s Spanish Plays, 1980, with E. M. Wilson) a biography of Calderón (Don Pedro Calderón, 2009), as well as numerous articles on classical Spanish plays, the book trade and typography in Spain. He is a member of the Grupo de Investigación Calderón de la Barca, based in the University of Santiago de Compostela, and a Member of the Royal Irish Academy.

Pilar Egoscozábal Carrasco es licenciada en Filología Hispánica por la Universidad Complutense de Madrid y Diplomada en Estudios Avanzados por la misma Universidad. Miembro del Cuerpo Facultativo de Archiveros, Bibliotecarios y Arqueólogos, ha trabajado en la Biblioteca Nacional de España entre 2001 y 2019, donde ha desempeñado los cargos de Jefa de Sección del Siglo de Oro y Jefa de Servicio de Reserva Impresa. Actualmente es la directora de la Biblioteca de la Real Academia Española.

C. George Peale received his PhD in Spanish from the University of California, Irvine. His B.A. is from the University of Southern California, where he studied Spanish and Music Composition and Theory, and he holds an M.A. in Spanish literature from the University of Iowa and an M.S. in Educational Leadership and Administration from Pepperdine University. He is Professor Emeritus at California State University, Fullerton, where he taught from 1989 until 2012. He now resides in Valladolid, Spain. Peale is the author of numerous books and articles on topics covering the Spanish Renaissance and Baroque, including 50 critical and annotated editions of works by Luis Vélez de Guevara (and many more in preparation), editions of the humanist Fernán Pérez de Oliva, of Gaspar Aguilar, and articles on the Golden Age novel, theater and poetry. He is currently working on a materialist history of court theater during the reign of Felipe IV, a project deriving from his archival research in the archives at Simancas and at the Royal Palace in Madrid. He is a corresponding member of the Royal Academy of Córdoba and of the American Academy of the Spanish Language, an affiliate of the Spanish Royal Academy. He is also an Honorary Fellow of the Hispanic Society of America.

Alejandra Ulla Lorenzo obtained her PhD in Spanish Literature in April 2011 at the University of Santiago de Compostela. From 2011 to 2014, she carried out research as part of the Iberian Book Project, funded by the Andrew Mellon Foundation and directed by Dr. Alexander Wilkinson of the University College Dublin, where she works as a Postdoctoral Research Fellow, Level 2. Her current research interests include Golden Age Spanish theater and the Spanish book trade. She has recently published an edition of Calderón’s play El mayor encanto, amor (Madrid: Iberoamericana / Frankfurt: Vervuert, 2013), and she is co-editor, with Alexander Wilkinson, of Iberian Books, Libros Ibéricos: Books Published on the Iberian Peninsula or in the New World between 1601 and 1650 (Leiden: Brill, 2015), 2 vols.

Michael Agnew received his PhD from the Department of Romance Languages at the University of Pennsylvania. He is currently completing his Master of Library Science at Long Island University’s Palmer School, with a concentration in rare books and special collections, and a joint MA in Art History from the Institute of Fine Arts at New York University. Michael Agnew was a member of the team through December, 2019.

Ronna Feit received her PhD from the University of Virginia, where she completed a dissertation on Lope de Vega’s Viuda, casada y doncella under the direction of Donald McGrady. She received a Master of Library Science from Long Island University’s Palmer School where she specialized in Rare Books and Special Collections.

Bill Keogan, a member of the faculty of St. John’s University Library in New York, holds masters degrees in history and library science. He has contributed material to reference works, written articles for journals, and penned numerous book reviews. Bill has also served on the boards of regional library, archives and history organizations. Bill Keogan was a member of the team through October, 2020.

Javier Milligan earned a Master of Library Science degree and a Graduate Certificate in Archives and the Preservation of Cultural Materials from Queens College, City University of New York. With years of experience as a librarian and consultant, he is currently Head of Modern Library at The Hispanic Society Museum and Library in New York City. He has been involved in this project since 2016 focused on the cataloguing of the collection at his institution.

Matthew J. Murphy is the Library Services Manager for Cataloging & Database Maintenance at the Milwaukee Public Library. He holds a Master of Library and Information Science from Long Island University’s Palmer School of Library and Information Science, where he also received a Certificate in Archives and Records Management. He also holds a Certificate from Rare Book School with a Concentration in Collections Cataloging and Description. Prior to his position at the Milwaukee Public Library, he was the Rare Book Cataloger at the New York Public Library’s Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, and the Head of Cataloging and Metadata at the New-York Historical Society.

Alexa R. Porrata is the Records Coordinator for Conservation at The Philadelphia Museum of Art. She holds a Master of Library and Information Science from the University of Puerto Rico, Rio Piedras, where she also received a Bachelor of Arts in Art History. Her previous experiences include an internship at The Thomas J. Watson Library of The Metropolitan Museum of Art and Archive Assistant roles at Museo de Arte Contemporáneo de Puerto Rico and Museo de Historia, Antropología y Arte de la Universidad de Puerto Rico.

Diana Vázquez earned a Master of Library Science degree at the Pratt Institute in New York. Her experience as a registrar intern at the Hudson River Museum, specifically cataloguing their children’s book collection, inspired her interest in book history, rare books, and special collections. She also received a Bachelor of Arts in Art History from the State University of Albany and has completed an intensive course in Paper as Bibliographical Evidence at Rare Book School in Charlottesville, Virginia.

Mackenzie (Mack) Zalin is Librarian for Modern Languages and Literature & Comparative Thought and Literature at Johns Hopkins University. He holds a PhD in Classical Studies from Duke University and a Master of Science in Library Science from the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill. Prior to beginning work at Hopkins in 2020, Mack was Associate in Research at Duke (where he ran the classical studies library and contributed to L’Année philologique) and Head Librarian of the Ullman Classics Library at UNC. Mack has been affiliated with the Comedias Sueltas survey project since 2017 and has worked with collections at HSA, Duke, and UNC.