Erik Ekman

I am currently Professor of Spanish and Head of the Department of Languages and Literatures at Oklahoma State University where I have been a member of the faculty since 2009 and department head since 2020. I am proud to lead the Department of Languages and Literatures, home to ten language programs: American Sign Language, French, German, and Spanish, Latin, Greek, Russian, Chinese, Japanese, and, most recently, Korean. I believe our work is essential because we offer our students the only opportunity to experience cultural difference in the classroom.

I have taught a full range of classes in Spanish from beginning language to fourth-year seminars are OSU. I have offered seminars on the courtly love tradition in Iberia, and on the texts about the history and legend of the 11th century Castilian knight, Rodrigo Díaz de Vivar, el Cid, as well as the history of the Spanish Language.

I research the romance literature of medieval Iberia from the 13th to 15th century, especially the way the past and its texts are reread and reconfigured to suit contemporary political and cultural needs. I have a translation of Fernando del Pulgar's El Libro de los claros varones de Castilla (The Book of Illustrious Men of Castile) recently published. I am also completing a monograph on the use and interpretation of classical and biblical texts to create a vernacular Christian identity in Castile after the Christian conquest of Muslim southern Iberia in the mid-thirteenth century. I am working on other projects related to geography in Medieval Iberia.

Research Interests:

Historiography, prose narrative, the classical tradition, oral traditions, Alfonso X, the General estoria, the LIbro de buen amor, humanism, geography