Harrison Meadows

Harrison Meadows is an Assistant Professor in the Department of World Languages and Cultures. His research focuses on Renaissance and Baroque Spain, with an emphasis on theater and the history of spectacle. At a time when theater emerged as an immensely popular form of entertainment, he examines dramatic production, performance history, and theatergoing to shed light on the ideological underpinnings of the culture in which those practices were embedded and took shape. His work also situates Spain in the context of empire, and seeks to provide insights into Spain’s unique position as both participant and outlier in global developments that shaped the modern world (chiefly, colonial expansion and the rise of capitalism, nationalism, rationalism, and empirical scientific inquiry). Current research interests concentrate on representations of wildness, natural landscapes, and gardens in early modern theatrical production and paratheatrical performance practices (court pageantry, processional cultures, etc.).

Dr. Meadows teaches a range of courses in the Hispanic Studies curriculum at both the undergraduate and graduate levels. His objectives in designing undergraduate courses focus on equipping students to think critically, recognize the complexity of the world they coinhabit, analyze presuppositions, and be able to articulate their ideas in a range of realistic contexts. In language courses, students are challenged to go beyond thinking about language acquisition as a neutral process or merely a skillset one acquires, to consider language as a set of deeply embedded cultural practices developed over dynamic and conflicted histories, and moreover, to reflect on their own positionality as language learners in a complex global society. He also teaches literature, theater, and culture courses within his disciplinary focus on the Spanish-speaking world during the 16th and 17th centuries. Current and future course offerings feature the novel Don Quijote (taught in Spanish and in translation) as a literary work for everyone, as relevant and socially incisive today as it was when it was published at the beginning of the 17th century. 

Since 2021, Dr. Meadows has served as the Humanities Caucus Chair on the UTK Faculty Senate. Currently, he is also the Director of Graduate Studies for the Department of World Languages and Cultures. 

Publications

Email: hmeadow1@utk.edu

Education

Ph.D., University of Colorado Boulder