In this interview, Elizabeth Spragins (Stanford PhD ’17, now Associate Professor
of Spanish, Medieval and Renaissance Studies at College of the Holy Cross) dis-
cusses her recently published book A Grammar of the Corpse: Necroepistemology
in the Early Modern Mediterranean (Fordham University Press, 2023) with Thiago
Nunes Santana (PhD candidate in comparative literature, Stanford University). The
book, which was awarded the 2021 Helen Tartar First Book Subvention and 2024
Roland H. Bainton Literature Prize, examines how the presence and representa-
tion of the dead—especially in contexts of war, defeat, and imperial expansion—
shaped modes of knowledge and narrative strategies across the Mediterranean world
and beyond. The interview touches upon key concepts of Spragins’ work, such as
“necroepistemology” and considers how corpses, in their ambiguity between sub-
ject and object, functioned as indices of truth, instruments of authority, and polit-
ical devices. It highlights the intellectual trajectory that led to the book while also
pointing to its broader implications for how we think about agency, temporality, and
narrative within Mediterranean and colonial studies.