David R. George Jr.

Senior Lecturer in Hispanic Studies

Associations

Hispanic Studies

European Studies

Asian Studies

View office locations in Directory

207-786-8347 dgeorge@bates.edu

About

David R. George, Jr. received his Ph.D. from the University of Minnesota in 2003 and has been Lecturer in Spanish at Bates College since 2000. He teaches courses on Spanish literature and film, Iberian integration in Europe, and Hispano-Asian connections, in addition to all levels of Spanish language.

David has published more than 30 articles and book chapters on a variety of aspects of nineteenth and twentieth-century Spanish literature, film, and television, including issues of cultural exchange and travel between Spain and Asia. He is co-author of the volumes Historias de la pequeña pantalla. Representaciones históricas en la televisión de la España democrática (Iberoamericana 2009), Televising Restoration Spain: History and Fiction in Twenty-First Century Costume Dramas (Palgrave-Macmillan 2018), and Approaches to Teaching the Works of Benito Pérez Galdós (Modern Language Association, forthcoming). He is also the author of annotated editions of Leopoldo Ala’s Doña Berta (LinguaText 2008) and Benito Pérez Galdós’s Tormento (LinguaText 2012). His current research deals with the influence of Japanese culture in Spain from the nineteenth to the twenty-first century.

David serves on the executive board of the Asociación Internacional de Galdosistas as the Editor of Anales Galdosianos, an international peer-reviewed academic journal dedicated to the study of the literature of nineteenth-century Spanish realist Benito Pérez Galdós and his contemporaries.

Expertise

19th and 20th century Iberian literatures and cultures, Asian studies, European studies, film and TV literary adaptations, Global Hispanophone Studies, Hispano-Asian studies, Iberian studies, Japanese studies, media studies, nineteenth-century studies, realist novel, travel narrative, travel writing

Current Courses

Winter Semester 2026

Drama and Performance in the Spanish-speaking World

HISP 223

This course studies twentieth- and twenty-first-century works by playwrights and performers from the Spanish-speaking world and the contexts in which they are written, produced, and staged. From avant-garde drama to political action, queer performance, live art, dance, cultural tourism, and the spec…

Senior Thesis

HISP 458

A continuation of HISP 457. Majors writing an honors thesis register for both HISP 457 and 458.

Short Term 2026

Japanomania: Europe’s Cultural Obsession with Japan, from Marco Polo to Wim Wenders

ASIAS 14 / EUSS 14

This short term course traces Europeans’ fascination with Japan from the 13th century to the present, examining how Japan has been perceived and appropriated within European culture. Students explore travel accounts, art, literature, fashion, film, and media to understand the evolution of European…

Fall Semester 2026

Realismo

HISP 368

This course studies the emergence and evolution of the Realist novel in late-nineteenth-century Spain as an aesthetic response to the vast social, political and cultural changes wrought by the uneven processes of modernity. Special attention is given to how Spanish writers debated, embraced, and rej…