Christina Lee

Christina H. Lee is Associate Professor and Director of Graduate Studies in the Department of Spanish and Portuguese.

Christina Lee was born in South Korea and raised in Argentina. She graduated from UC Berkeley with a concentration in Latin American literature and earned a PhD in Romance Languages and Literatures at Princeton. She returned to Princeton in 2007 after teaching at Connecticut College, San Jose State University, UC Berkeley, and Harvard University. She teaches a range of undergraduate and graduate courses in her department and, occasionally, for the Council of the Humanities and the Freshman Seminar Program.

Her publications include: Saints of Resistance: Devotions in the Philippines of Early Spanish Rule (Oxford University Press, 2021), The Anxiety of Sameness in Early Modern Spain (Manchester University Press, 2015), The Spanish Pacific, 1521-1815: A Reader of Primary Sources (with Ricardo Padrón, Amsterdam University Press, 2020) , the collection of essays Western Visions of Far East in a Transpacific Age (Routledge [Ashgate], 2012), Reading and Writing Subjects in Medieval and Golden Age Spain: Essays in Honor of Ronald E. Surtz (with José Luis Gastañaga, Juan de la Cuesta, 2016), and the Spanish edition of Lope de Vega’s Los mártires de Japón (Juan de la Cuesta, 2006). She is also the co-editor of the global history book series Connected Histories in Early Modern Europe (with Julia Schleck), at Amsterdam University Press. 

Christina Lee and Cristina Martinez-Juan (SOAS University of London) received an NEH/AHRC grant in 2022 to carry out the project “A Digital Repatriation of a Lost archive of the Spanish Pacific: The Library of The Convent of San Pablo (Manila, 1762).” This project will repatriate more than 1,500 books and manuscripts seized from the archives of the Convent of San Pablo (now the Church of San Agustin) during the British occupation of Manila, 1762 to 1764. Using the original index of the archives, and subsequent records related to the sale and dispersal of its contents, the project will provide a virtual reconstruction of the library’s materials, ca. 1762. Beyond the digital reconstitution of the archival corpus, the “return” of the library to its original site, the project reconceptualizes the library’s original systems of knowledge production, modes of access, and use. The project serves as an entry point to the study of Spanish colonialism in the Pacific and the experience of affected communities, especially in the Philippines. Using digital technologies, the regenerated library will include spaces for transcribing, translating and annotating materials. This project envisions creative spaces that produce a more broadly based and participatory scholarly product.