Betsy Lewis (elewis)

Academic Degrees

Elizabeth Franklin Lewis, Professor of Spanish, received a Ph.D. (1993) and M.A. (1989) in Spanish literature from the University of Virginia, after earning a B.A. (1987) in Spanish from Auburn University. She researches women writers and gender issues in 18th- and 19th-century Spain.

Among her recent publications are two books, Eve’s Enlightenment: Women’s Experience in Spain and Spanish America, 1726-1839(LSU Press, 2009), and Women Writers of the Spanish Enlightenment: The Pursuit of Happiness (Ashgate, 2004), and two articles, “Actos de caridad: Women’s Charitable Work in Eighteenth-Century Spain” (2008) and “The Sensibility of Motherhood: Josefa Amar y Borbón’s Discurso sobre la educación fisica y moral de las mujeres (1790)” (2002). Dr. Lewis was awarded a 2011-2012 Mary Washington Faculty Development Grant for the project “Women and Charity in Spain, 1786-1939,” a digital humanities project that she is completing with a team of undergraduate research students.

She is a member of the Modern Language Association of America, the American Society of Eighteenth-Century Studies, the Ibero American Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies and the Sociedad Español de Estudios del Dieciocho.