Virtuous Labor, Courtly Laborer: Canonization and a Literary Career in Lope de Vega's Isidro
In the course of one of early modern Europe's longest and most prolific literary careers, Lope de Vega (1562-1635) wrote numerous hagiographies, typically upon commission from a city council, an aristocrat, or a court official. Yet his saints' lives have received far less critical attention than his cloak-and-dagger comedias or his love lyrics.' Scholars, in general, have emphasized questions about how creative authorial energies shaped or altered literary forms that enjoy high prestige in our own time. Lope's arte nuevo that transformed the comedia de capa y espada fits this preference, while his numerous hagiographies represent a now marginal literary form. Moreover, the devotional works written on commission highlight Lope as a writer whose pen bolstered or depended upon political and religious
Fictions of Abundance in Early Modern Madrid: Hospitality, Consumption, and Artistic Identity in the Work of Juan van der Hamen y León
Abstract This article examines how still-life painting contributed to the creation of a distinct urban aristocratic culture in seventeenth-century Madrid. Focusing on a group of paintings by Juan van der Hamen, the article situates these images within the context of the picture gallery and the practice of aristocratic hospitality. By giving visual form to this new urban mode of magnificence, Van der Hamen’s still lifes created a fiction of abundance that glossed over Madrid’s economic realities. At the same time, Van der Hamen concealed signs of manual craftsmanship and commercial interest in order to advance and ennoble his own artistic identity.
Investigating the Optical properties of cd1-xznxs thin films deposited by the Dip Technique
A Thesis submitted to the Department of Physics, Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology, in partial fulfillment of the requirement for the degree of 
Master of Science (Solid State Physics)