2026 Distinguished Alumni Lecture
February 5 @ 4:00 pm
Note: This event is RSVP only
Please join us in honoring the 2026 UCLA Spanish & Portuguese Distinguished Alumni Lecture Award recipient Dr. Claudia Mesa Higuera, Professor of Spanish at Moravian University.
The 2026 Distinguished Alumni Lecture topic is “Castillo Solórzano, Rubens, and a Theater on Brushstrokes.” Soon after the famous battle of Nördlingen (1634), the Spanish novelist Alonso de Castillo Solórzano published a panegyric play to commemorate the triumph of the imperial army led by the Cardinal-Infante Ferdinand of Spain and the King of Hungary over the Swedish and German armies commanded respectively by Gustav Horn and the duke of Saxe-Weimar. Around the same time, the Flemish artist Peter Paul Rubens completed a series of paintings and engravings on the topic of love and war that allows a comparison of the two artists. This lecture examines the characterization of historical and fictional characters involved in this decisive battle of the Thirty Years’ War to suggest that such characterization is informed by a figurative tradition that reveals a shared ethos between the Spanish playwright and the Flemish painter at a time in which artistic expression seeks to extol state ideology while simultaneously subverting it.
The UCLA Spanish & Portuguese Department will host the Distinguished Alumni lecture on Thursday, February 5, 2026 at 4:00 PM at the UCLA University Club. The lecture will be held in the Hacienda Room. RSVP Only.