Associate Professor Pablo Maurette earns Huntington Fellowship

By Alejandro Caballe

Florida State University English Associate Professor Pablo Maurette has traveled across the world while conducting research; in addition to the work he does in Tallahassee, he has been to Chicago and Italy, among other places. In the spring of 2024, Maurette is going to California.

Maurette recently earned the Huntington Fellowship for residency at The Huntington Library, a prestigious humanities honor granted only to a select few from a large and competitive pool of candidates.

Maurette’s extensive traveling has already prepared him for the time he will spend away from FSU’s campus. He has been to Los Angeles, describing the area as, “many cities combined into one, with its own peculiar history,” and he looks forward to the months he will spend there.

Originally from Argentina, Maurette earned his Bachelor of Arts from the University of Buenos Aires. He later earned his Master of Arts at the University of London, before coming to the U.S. for his doctoral studies in Comparative Literature from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

Now a faculty member in the English-Literature, Media, and Culture Program since the fall of 2019, Maurette centers his research on a vast array of topics, studying trans-atlantic relations in the early modern period and the history of science and anatomy. He has also published several books in both English and Spanish, saying that he does, “most of his creative writing in Spanish, and his academic writing in English.”

Writing and preparing a Huntington Fellowship application, Maurette stresses the importance of having ambition and faith in the ideas and research that you present.

“You need to know the Huntington’s collection well,” he says. “You have to put together a project, and you don’t know where it’ll lead you, but you have to show ideas and hints as to where it will go.”

As Maurette points out, applicants must be knowledgeable about Huntington’s collection of historical artifacts. He specifies that he will be doing most of his research with maps and early printed books from the Americas.

While research is often a solitary affair, he adds, the presence of like-minded scholars at the Huntington can propel a person’s work forward.

“We can organize meetings and exchange ideas and talk,” he says. “In that respect, there’s a communal aspect, or a team aspect to research.”

Maurette describes the Huntington Fellowship as, “one of the big fellowships in my field, and to be selected is a big milestone.”

“I’ve applied for the Huntington Fellowship before, and I didn’t get it, so I was very happy to get it this time around,” he continues. “I’ve also recently gotten tenure at FSU, so the fellowship comes at a time when I’m switching from assistant professor to associate professor. It will be a great opportunity to start working on something new.”

Alejandro Caballe is double majoring in English-Editing, Writing, and Media and international affairs.

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