Ralph Robert Bauer

Ralph Bauer has been with the University of Maryland since 1998. He specializes in the literatures and cultures of the early Americas, comparative literature, critical science studies, as well as hemispheric American and early modern Atlantic studies.

His most recent monograph, The Alchemy of Conquest: science, religion, and the secrets of the New World (University of Virginia Press, 2019) was awarded the Modern Language Association's 2020 Aldo and Jeanne Scaglione Prize for Comparative Literary Studies. His other publications include The Cultural Geography of Colonial American Literatures (Cambridge UP, 2003 and 2008); An Inca Account of the Conquest of Peru: by Titu Cusi Yupanqui (U of Coloardo P, 2005); Locations of Culture: Identity, Home, Theory (Michigan SUP, 1998); (with Jose Antonio Mazzotti) Creole Subjects in the Colonial Americas: empires, texts, identities (UNCP, 2009); (with Kimberly Coles, Carla Peterson, and Zita Nunes), The Cultural Politics of Blood, 1500-1900 (Palgrave/Macmillan, 2015); (with Marcy Norton) Entangled Trajectories: integrating Native and Early Modern European studies. A special issue of Colonial Latin American Review v. 26 (2017); and (with Jaime Marroquin Arredondo) Translating Nature: transcultural histories of early modern science (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2019). He is also the founding and continuing general editor of the Early Americas Digital Archive; and he has published ca. ninety articles, review essays, and book reviews in collections and journals such as Early American Literature, Colonial Latin American Review, American Literary History, American Literature, Revista Iberoamericana, Dieciocho: the Hispanic Enlightenment, The Americas, and Comparative Literature. He has served as associate dean for academic affairs in the College of Arts and Humanities at the University of Maryland (2017-23) and as president of the Society of Early Americanists (2021-23).