Laura R. Bass, associate professor of Hispanic Studies at Brown University, received her Ph.D. from Princeton University and taught in the Department of Spanish and Portuguese at Tulane University for 12 years. Professor Bass’s research crosses the disciplinary borders of literature and culture, as well as art history and history, focusing on the cultural production of early modern Spain and the broader Hispanic world. Her book, The Drama of the Portrait: Theater and Visual Culture in Early Modern Spain (2008), won the 2010 Eleanor Tufts Award from the American Society for Hispanic Art Historical Studies.