{"title":"Charting New Waters: Teaching Ephemeral Spanish Drama","authors":"Mackenzie S. Zalin,Paul Michael Johnson","doi":"10.1353/boc.2026.a1000633","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/boc.2026.a1000633","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract: This article chronicles our collaborative experience designing and teaching “Ephemeral Spanish Drama,” a fourth-year undergraduate course taught in Spanish at Johns Hopkins University (JHU) in 2025. The class, unprecedented in its focus on comedias sueltas , proved compelling, even for enrolled students who were overwhelmingly pursuing STEM majors (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics). While identifying areas for refinement in the future, we attribute the course’s appeal to key pedagogical features we describe, including the use of complementary primary sources from JHU’s Special Collections Library, evaluation based on creative capstone projects, and hands-on classroom activities using the library’s substantial collection of eighteenth- and nineteenth-century sueltas . More fundamentally, we suggest that the genre itself is inherently well suited to the twenty-first-century classroom. The dearth of published scholarship on sueltas , when coupled with a flipped-classroom approach, enhanced student learning outcomes by encouraging speculative inquiry and mitigating reliance on online resources and artificial intelligence. Theatrical ephemera—accessible worldwide through open access digital archives—thus demonstrate the distinctive power of hands-on, materially grounded learning in the humanities classroom.","PeriodicalId":42292,"journal":{"name":"BULLETIN OF THE COMEDIANTES","volume":"17 1","pages":"101-116"},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2026-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"148934119","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"艺术学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"La traición en la amistad. Editada por Julián Olivares, biografía de Alberto Rodríguez de Ramos. by María de Zayas, and: La traición en la amistad. Editada por Enrique García Santo-Tomás by María de Zayas (review)","authors":"Felipe Valencia","doi":"10.1353/boc.2026.a1000632","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/boc.2026.a1000632","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":42292,"journal":{"name":"BULLETIN OF THE COMEDIANTES","volume":"20 1","pages":"173-176"},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2026-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"148934043","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"艺术学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Soundscapes of the Early Modern Hispanophone and Lusophone Worlds ed. by Víctor Sierra Matute (review)","authors":"Henrry A. Ibáñez Mogrovejo","doi":"10.1353/boc.2026.a1000629","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/boc.2026.a1000629","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":42292,"journal":{"name":"BULLETIN OF THE COMEDIANTES","volume":"9 1","pages":"161-166"},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2026-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"148934125","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"艺术学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"The Age of Subtlety: Nature and Rhetorical Conceits in Early Modern Europe by Javier Patiño Loira (review)","authors":"Chenyun Li","doi":"10.1353/boc.2026.a1000628","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/boc.2026.a1000628","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":42292,"journal":{"name":"BULLETIN OF THE COMEDIANTES","volume":"79 1","pages":"157-160"},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2026-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"148934120","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"艺术学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Treasures from the Hispanic Society of America by Mitchell A. Codding and John O’Neill (review)","authors":"Neil Safier","doi":"10.1353/boc.2026.a1000626","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/boc.2026.a1000626","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":42292,"journal":{"name":"BULLETIN OF THE COMEDIANTES","volume":"11 1","pages":"149-151"},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2026-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"148934121","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"艺术学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"El Cid Campeador on the Eighteenth-Century Stage: Amazons, Divas and Italian Opera","authors":"Alexander J. McNair","doi":"10.1353/boc.2026.a1000620","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/boc.2026.a1000620","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract: The most popular version of El Cid on the Spanish stage in the eighteenth century was not by Lope, Tirso, or Guillén de Castro, but by Antonio Enríquez Gómez (1600–63), a playwright of converso origin pursued by the Inquisition. Performed thirty times in Madrid between 1725 and 1735, and regularly for decades thereafter, his comedia, El Cid Campeador , had been staged only occasionally in the decades after its likely composition (ca. 1660). This study argues that the play’s sudden rise to canonical status a generation later depended on a specific theatrical ecosystem: a vogue for Amazon warriors on the Madrid stage, a renewed appetite for Italian opera stimulated by King Philip V and his queen consort, Isabel de Farnesio, as well as the talents of a new generation of leading female actors for whom the role of the Muslim warrior princess Altisidora became a coveted star vehicle. Drawing on theatrical repertories, performance records, archival sources, and biographical data from online databases, the study reconstructs the theatrical and material conditions that transformed a sporadically performed baroque comedia into an enduring fixture of the Madrid repertory.","PeriodicalId":42292,"journal":{"name":"BULLETIN OF THE COMEDIANTES","volume":"59 1","pages":"13-34"},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2026-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"148934122","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"艺术学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Black Voices in Early Modern Spanish Literature, 1500–1750 by Diana Berruezo-Sánchez (review)","authors":"Leah Middlebrook","doi":"10.1353/boc.2026.a1000625","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/boc.2026.a1000625","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":42292,"journal":{"name":"BULLETIN OF THE COMEDIANTES","volume":"44 1","pages":"145-147"},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2026-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"148934044","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"艺术学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Las tres edades del mundo by Luis Vélez de Guevara (review)","authors":"A. Robert Lauer","doi":"10.1353/boc.2026.a1000630","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/boc.2026.a1000630","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":42292,"journal":{"name":"BULLETIN OF THE COMEDIANTES","volume":"27 1","pages":"167-168"},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2026-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"148934124","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"艺术学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Lo fugitivo permanece by Francisco de Quevedo (review)","authors":"Ignacio García Aguilar","doi":"10.1353/boc.2026.a1000631","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/boc.2026.a1000631","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":42292,"journal":{"name":"BULLETIN OF THE COMEDIANTES","volume":"20 1","pages":"169-171"},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2026-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"148934041","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"艺术学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Playing Christ: The Mystical Body in Lope de Vega’s Lo fingido verdadero","authors":"Christopher J. Rziha","doi":"10.1353/boc.2026.a1000621","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/boc.2026.a1000621","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract: This article analyzes a previously unidentified theme in Lope de Vega’s Lo fingido verdadero that unifies the drama’s seemingly disparate subplots, characters, and settings: the notion of a Mystical Body. Drawing on Christianity’s understanding of the relationship between Christ and his church as one of a head to its body, this study will demonstrate that the three main elements of the doctrine of the Mystical Body—Eucharistic incorporation, liturgical action in persona Christi , and the union of divinity and humanity—are paralleled by the three elements traditionally recognized as fundamental aspects of Lo fingido verdadero : the Eucharist, theatrum mundi/metateatralidad, and burlas/veras . In highlighting these parallels, this essay initiates a conversation on how the theologians, playwrights, and audiences of baroque Spain utilized concepts such as the Mystical Body to express their understanding of the relationship between the sacred and the profane, the liturgical and the theatrical.","PeriodicalId":42292,"journal":{"name":"BULLETIN OF THE COMEDIANTES","volume":"27 1","pages":"37-64"},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2026-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"148934042","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"艺术学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}