SMLC’s new Hispanic Studies lecturer Dr Maya Feile Tomes was awarded the José María Arguedas Prize for article of the year at the LASA (Latin American Studies Association) 2025 Annual Conference in San Francisco in May. The Premio José María Arguedas al mejor artículo del año, awarded by LASA’s Peru Section, recognises the most significant item within any area of Peruvian studies published over the preceding twelve months and is the first time in recent years that it has been awarded to such a literary piece. Maya’s article considers the controversial case of ‘Clarinda’, who is widely believed to be one of the earliest female writers from colonial-era Latin America and is credited with authoring the renowned Discurso en loor de la poesía [‘Disquisition in praise of poetry’] of 1608. Against this received opinion, Maya argues that ‘Clarinda’ is a literary fiction and that ‘she’ is to be understood as part of an elaborate textual game developed by (male) author Diego Mexía in the mode of Ovid’s Heroides – the ancient poetic work in which the Roman poet invents and ventriloquises a series of letter-writing ladies. If this is so, it would have far-reaching consequences for conceptions of Latin American women’s writing and canon formation. Read more about the case here.

In its report, the award committee noted that:

‘El artículo de Feile Tomes está excelentemente posicionada para comentar sobre su contribución a los estudios literarios y a perspectivas sobre el género y la poesía durante la época colonial. De manera general, destacamos la rigurosidad metodológica de la investigación, el carácter ambicioso e innovador del argumento y la probabilidad de que el artículo estimule nuevos debates fructíferos acerca de la identidad de “Clarinda” y de la relación entre el género y la autoría en términos más amplios.’

Feile Tomes’s article makes an excellent case for its contribution to literary studies and to understandings of gender and poetry in the colonial context. Overall, we would highlight the methodological rigour of its research, the ambitious and innovative nature of its argument and the likelihood that the article will generate fruitful new debates regarding the identity of “Clarinda” and the relationship between gender and authorship more broadly.

Pictured above with an original C17th copy of the work held in Edinburgh at the National Library of Scotland, Maya is already at work on a second study of ‘Clarinda’ and the dynamics of the Discurso. She has also recently completed a co-authored study (forthcoming later this year) of a related example of the same phenomenon: the no less curious case of ‘Amarilis’, fellow C17th Peruvian ‘poetess’. These form the foundations for a larger project, currently in development, to produce a new literary history of the is-she-isn’t-she figure in works from Greco-Roman antiquity onwards. Bringing together scholars from a variety of fields united by a common scepticism, this initiative – provisionally entitled ‘The Suspicious Ladies Project’ – will centre feminist re-readings of the canon and interrogate the enigmatic origins of these figures and the scholarly haze that surrounds them. Maya is slated to host a scoping workshop for this at LASA 2026, which will be held next May in Paris.

Maya’s prize-winning article on ‘Clarinda’ was published in Colonial Latin American Review.

First published: 5 August 2025

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Dr Maya Feile Tomes smiles and holds out an original C17th copy of

Dr. Maya Feile Tomes pictured above with an original C17th copy of "Clarinda"