Ph.D. University of Notre Dame, 2015
Iberian Atlantic; Colonial Latin America; Colombia; Early Modern Spain; Race; Identity; Religion; Law; Indigenous Ethnohistory
I am a historian of the early modern Iberian world. I teach classes on the social and cultural history of colonial Latin America, the history of Spain, the history of race in the Hispanic world, the history of law, indigenous ethnohistory, and the history of piracy. I also host a website called Iberia Plus Ultra, which serves as a warehouse for dozens of online historical archives, digital history projects, and legal historical research tools.
In my first book, A Tale of Two Granadas: Custom, Community, and Citizenship in the Spanish Empire, 1568-1668 (Cambridge University Press, 2023), I conducted a comparative study focusing on new imperial subjects seeking enfranchisement in frontier towns and cities of two provinces of the far-flung Spanish monarchy: Granada in Spain’s formerly Islamic south and New Granada, a northern Andean colony in the mountains of modern-day Colombia that was home to the Muisca people. My study of indigenous legal activism in the face of the expansion of the Christian monarchy revealed dynamic frontier politics of both conflict and accommodation. The book’s focus on the contested integration between natives and settlers also provided an opportunity to examine the relationship between emergent early modern categories of race–expressed through the notion of “blood purity” (limpieza de sangre)—and conceptions of “citizenship” in the sixteenth and seventeenth century Spanish Empire.
A Tale of Two Granadas has been awarded both the Bandelier/Lavrin Book Prize in Colonial Latin American History from the Rocky Mountain Conference in Latin American Studies and the Alfred B. Thomas Book Award from the Southeastern Council on Latin American Studies. Articles based on this project have appeared in a variety of venues, including Ethnohistory, the Journal of Family History, and Rechtsgeschichte-Legal History. The article “The Ties that Bind” received the triennial prize for “best early career article” in any period of Iberian history from the Association for Spanish & Portuguese Historical Studies (ASPHS).
My subsequent book project focuses on the history of the convicts and slaves impressed into service in the navies of the Spanish Empire and stationed in colonial cities in the Caribbean and Pacific to fight off pirates and contraband traders. A cultural history, the book details the life of unfree oarsmen both onboard the king’s galleys and ashore in New World port cities.
I am a former fellow at the Max Planck Institute for European Legal History in Frankfurt, Germany, a Fulbright Scholar, and a University Term Professor. My research has received funding from the Mellon Foundation, the Nanovic Institute, and the Kellogg Institute. I have lectured widely on my research in Colombia, Brazil, Peru, France, Germany, the Netherlands, and across the US.
I welcome applications from prospective Ph.D. candidates broadly interested in any field or topic of colonial Latin America, early modern Spain, or the Iberian Atlantic world. I especially encourage to apply those who intend to work on Colombian ethnohistory, the history of religious and ethnic minorities, transnational and comparative studies, and the legal and normative frameworks of the early modern world.
Selected publications:
A Tale of Two Granadas: Custom, Community, and Citizenship in the Spanish Empire, 1568-1668 (Cambridge University Press, 2023)
“¿Quién es morisco? Desde cristiano nuevo a cristiano viejo de moros: Categorías de diferenciación en el Reino de Granada (siglo XVI),” in Forum Historiae Iuris (https://doi.org/10.26032/fhi-2018-004)
“Republics, their Customs, and the Law of the King: Convivencia and Self-Determination in the Crown of Castile and its American territories, 1400-1700,” Rechtsgeschichte—Legal History 26 (September 2018): 162-199. (http://rg.rg.mpg.de/en/article_id/1177)
“The Politics of Devotion: Indigenous Spirituality and the Virgin of Chiquinquirá in the New Kingdom of Granada,” Ethnohistory 65:3 (July 2018): 465-488.
“The Ties that Bind: Intermarriage between Moriscos and Old Christians in Early Modern Spain, 1526-1614” in Journal of Family History 42:3 (July 2017): 250-270.