Writing

in progress

Convivial Ecologies of Medieval Iberia monograph in progresS

A study of how landscape and soundscape shaped the making of social difference in medieval Iberia and the ways poetry written in Hebrew, Arabic, and Ibero-Romance registers premodern environmental life. It returns to Américo Castro’s contentious convivencia and asks what the term looks like read ecologically. Four chapters move through four Iberian ecosystems—forests, meseta, rivers, and seas—in a sustained conversation between ecocriticism and premodern critical race studies. 

selected writings

“Cognitive Economy and Vernacular Labor in Shem Tov ben Yitzhaq Ardutiel’s Los proverbios morales,” Hispanic Review (expected Autumn 2026)
“Sailing the Franco-Portuguese Seas in Colonial Macau: A Blue Poetics of Citation in Camilo Pessanha’s Clepsydra,” PMLA 141, no. 1, January 2026, 53–70
“‘Em este som de negrada’: Sounds of Blackness in the Medieval Iberian Lyric,” La corónica: A Journal of Medieval Hispanic Languages, Literatures, and Cultures, 52, no. 1, June 2025, 139–177
“‘Ai flores, ai flores do verde pino’: The Ecopoetics of the Galician-Portuguese Pine Forest,” Speculum: A Journal of Medieval Studies 99, no. 3 (2024), 826–57
“Camilo Pessanha’s Missing City: Race, Poetry, and Urban Writing in Portuguese Macau,” Portuguese Studies 39, no. 1 (2023), 32–49
“Descriptive Poetics and the Arte de trovar in the Cancioneiro da Biblioteca Nacional,” Journal of Medieval Iberian Studies 15, no. 1 (2023), 82–105

translations

Shem Tov Ardutiel’s Moral Proverbs and Other Old Spanish Poems Written by Jews, under contract with the Dumbarton Oaks Medieval Library at Harvard University Press.
Featured on the Paraphrasis podcast
Clepsydra and Other Poems by Camilo Pessanha, with a preface by K. David Jackson (Tagus Press at the University of Massachusetts–Dartmouth), 2022.
Reviewed in Colóquio/Letras

Writing

Biography

Adam Mahler completed a Ph.D. in Romance Languages and Literatures at Harvard University in 2026 and joined Cornell University as a Klarman Postdoctoral Fellow in Romance Studies. Mahler studies how sound and poetic form register ecological change and the emergence of social categories across Old Spanish, Galician-Portuguese, Hebrew, and Judeo-Spanish, with significant overtures to Arabic literary culture. Mahler’s work situates literary form within the material conditions of premodern community life and asks how attending to such socially precipitated forms can hone our faculties of noticing in the present. Mahler is currently at work on their first monograph, Convivial Ecologies of Medieval Iberia, a study of the soundscapes of ecological and social change in the Ibero-Romance and Hispano-Semitic literary traditions. The book investigates how poetic form illuminates premodern ecological life and social hierarchies of race, gender, and religion—all categories long intertwined with ideas of the natural.
Carrapateira Seascape
Panorama of Gerês Mountainside
Bay of Vigo

CV

Education

2026 Ph.D., Romance Languages and Literatures, Harvard University
2017 B.A., English and Portuguese Literatures, Yale College

Appointments

2026– Klarman Fellow in Romance Studies, Cornell University

Booklength Translations

2027 Shem Tov Ardutiel’s Moral Proverbs and Other Old Spanish Poems Written by Jews. Dumbarton Oaks Medieval Library, Harvard University Press.
2022 Clepsydra and Other Poems, by Camilo Pessanha. Tagus Press.

Selected Publications

2026 “Cognitive Economy and Vernacular Labor in Shem Tov ibn Yitzhaq Ardutiel’s Los proverbios morales.” Hispanic Review.
2026 “Sailing the Franco-Portuguese Seas in Colonial Macau: A Blue Poetics of Citation in Camilo Pessanha’s Clepsydra.” PMLA.
2025 “‘Em este som de negrada’: Sounds of Blackness in the Medieval Iberian Lyric.” La corónica: A Journal of Medieval Hispanic Languages, Literatures, and Cultures.
2024 “‘Ai flores, ai flores do verde pino’: The Ecopoetics of the Galician-Portuguese Pine Forest.” Speculum: A Journal of Medieval Studies.
2023 “Camilo Pessanha’s Missing City: Race, Poetry, and Urban Writing in Portuguese Macau.” Portuguese Studies.
2023 “Descriptive poetics and the Arte de trovar in the Cancioneiro da Biblioteca Nacional.” Journal of Medieval Iberian Studies.

Selected Honors and Awards

2026– Klarman Postdoctoral Fellowship, Cornell University
2025 Corresponding Member, Instituto de Estudos Medievais, Universidade Nova
de Lisboa (by election)
2025 Mass Cultural Council Grant for Creative Individuals
2023 Combined Jewish Philanthropies Arts and Culture Community Impact Grant
2023 Spanish Ministry of Sport and Culture's HISPANEX Grant
2022 PEN America PEN/Heim Translation Grant
2021 La corónica/Nancy F. Marino Prize
2017–18 Fulbright Portugal/Instituto Camões Research Grant
Carrapateira Seascape
Panorama of Gerês Mountainside
Bay of Vigo