Victoria A. Burrus

Associate Professor of Spanish

Victoria Burrus has spent her entire professional career at Vanderbilt. For many years she was the Director of Undergraduate Studies of the Department of Spanish and Portuguese, advising all Spanish majors and minors, for which she was recognized with the Ernest A. Jones Faculty Advisor Award in 2000. She was Vice-Chair for eight years and served two years as Acting Chair and one semester as Interim Chair of the department.She has been the year-long Resident Director of the Vanderbilt in Spain program in Madrid six times. She was a member of the Curriculum Reform Work Group, which produced the current core curriculum program (AXLE) for the College of Arts and Science. She has chaired the Phi Beta Kappa Membership Committee several times and regularly serves as a faculty marshal at Commencement.

Professor Burrus’s training in Hispanic philology and lexicography gained at the Seminary of Medieval Hispanic Studies at the University of Wisconsin-Madison has led her to work on the edition of fifteenth-century texts which can enlighten aspects of both canonical and non-canonical works of that period.  She is particularly interested in using this background to re-examine the notion of courtly love in late medieval works and the interplay between it and the concepts of nobility and honor, which were in a state a flux at this crucial time in history as Spain moved into the early modern period. She has published an edition and study of a fifteenth-century Spanish translation of Aesop’s and other fables (Ysopete Ystoriado) and an edition of the Cancionero de Baena (on CD-ROM), as well as articles on fifteenth-century cancionero poetry, the Poema de Mio Cid, La Celestina, medieval translation, and the transcription and edition of medieval texts. She is currently working on an edition and study of Diego de Valera’s Espejo de verdadera nobleza.