She received her BA from the University of Veracruz, Mexico, and her PhD at Vanderbilt U. She studies transatlantic Spanish literature from the Middle Ages to the Enlightenment in Spain and New Spain. Her research focuses on literature deemed obscene by the Spanish Inquisition in Spain and the Americas, and more broadly in obscenity, censorship, and freedom of speech. She has published essays and articles on Cervantes, Lope de Vega, and Teresa de Cartagena, among others. She is currently writing a book entitled Pornopoetics: The Poetics of Pornography in Eighteenth Century Europe.