Carlos Vega
Professor of Spanish
Carlos Alberto Vega is a Chicano-born artist and educator whose work and academic life intersect art, culture, and literary scholarship.
The artist Carlos Vega (born in 1953 in McKinney, Texas) is a visual artist working in painting and mixed media, known for his layered, symbolic works that incorporate history, myth, religion, and cultural memory. His art often uses collage elements such as historical images, iconography, gold leaf, paint, and ink. His layered materials engage with both historical and contemporary themes.
Academic and Teaching Profile
Together with his artistic practice, Carlos Vega is a professor of Medieval Literature at Wellesley College in Massachusetts. That role reflects a scholarly focus on literature and culture, particularly medieval European texts and motifs, including hagiography (the study of saints’ lives). These two facets, artist and academic, reflect a hybrid professional identity: a life in the arts and a parallel life in higher education research and pedagogy.
Academic and Artistic Themes and Practice
• Vega’s work questions how historical memory and personal identity intersect through symbolic materials and motifs.
• In his mirror-based work, he explores how reflection and memory intertwine, proposing that mirrors hold and still reflect not just images but layered narratives.
• His artistic heritage draws on European Baroque traditions, Latin American cultural hybridity, and historical iconography.
• The bulk of his academic research and publishing focuses on medieval Spanish apocryphal holy figures (e.g., Alejo and Amaro) as well as mixed-mixed gender imagery in hagiography (transvestite saints, bearded holy women, et al.) and the latter´s relationship to sexual anxieties.
Education and Service
Vega studied in Phoenix, Arizona and Paris, France before completing his B.A in History from Columbia University. He holds an M.A. in Spanish from the University of Virginia, and a Ph.D. in Romance Languages and Literatures from Harvard. He has taught at Wellesley College for 39 years and has served as chair of several departments and programs, including the Department of Spanish and Portuguese, the Program in Medieval and Renaissance Studies, the Pforzheimer Learning and Teaching Center, the First-Year Cluster Program, and the Summer Enrichment Program for at-risk entering students. Much of his College service has focused on diversity initiatives, the first-year college experience, and international study. Before arriving at Wellesley he held teaching positions at Brandeis, Princeton and Tufts.
Education
- B.A., Columbia University in the City of New York
- M.A., University of Virginia-Main Campus
- Ph.D., Harvard University