calendar

  1. Week 1: Introduction
  2. Week 2: Establishment and Procedure
  3. Week 3: The “Judiazing Heresy”
  4. Week 4: The Reformation and the Counter-Reformation
  5. Week 5: Sex and Gender
  6. Week 6: Spanish Witchcraft
  7. Week 7: Midterm Exam
  8. Week 8: SPRING BREAK
  9. Week 9: Coming to America
  10. Week 10: Blasphemies
  11. Week 11: Sorcery, Witchcraft, and Magic
  12. Week 12: Limpieza, Identity, Race
  13. Week 13: Sex and Inquisition in the Indies
  14. Week 14: The Censors
  15. Week 15: Goya’s Ghost
  16. Week 16 – The Death and Afterlife of the Inquisition

Week 1: Introduction

Welcome to the Inquisition. We begin this week thinking about origins, precedents, and the world of the 1470s.

January 25 (Tuesday) Introducing the Course.

READ:

January 27 (Thursday) History of the History of the Inquisition.

READ:

  • Helen Rawlings, The Spanish Inquisition, pp. 1-20.

DUE:

Define historiography and explain why it is important to practicing historians. What do you think drives changing approaches to historical problems over time?

Week 2: Establishment and Procedure

The Inquisition was bound by an extensive set of rules and procedures that were related to other forms of legal action and jurisdiction in the Spanish tradition. This week, we look at founding documents and procedures.

February 1 (Tuesday) Establishment.

READ:

  • Rawlings, pp. 21-46.

February 3 (Thursday) Procedure.

READ:

  • Homza, pp. 1-12.
  • Chuchiak, pp. 59-81.

DUE:

What are the implications of Inquisitorial procedures for establishing and finding “truth”?

Week 3: The “Judiazing Heresy”

February 8 (Tuesday) The Converso.

READ:

  • Rawlings, pp. 47-71.

February 10 (Thursday)

READ:

  • Homza, pp. 27-49; 238-248.

DUE:

  • Write a research précis on Rawlings. Write summary findings of the cases from Homza.

Week 4: The Reformation and the Counter-Reformation

February 15 (Tuesday) Protestants and Alumbradas

READ:

  • Rawlings, 90-113.

February 17 (Thursday) Evolving Mission

READ:

  • Homza, pp. 80-92, 176-194.

DUE: Précis on Rawlings OR comparison of alumbradismo and luteranismo

Week 5: Sex and Gender

February 22 (Tuesday) When Sex is Blasphemous

READ:

  • Rawlings, pp 114-134.
  • Allyson Poska, “When Bigamy is the Charge: Gallegan Women and the Holy Office,” pp. 189-208 in Giles (1999).

February 24 (Thursday) Sex and Jurisdiction

READ:

  • Homza 103-108.

DUE: Reaction paper to Poska.

Week 6: Spanish Witchcraft

March 1 (Tuesday) When Witches Were Real

READ:

  • Monter, Frontiers of Heresy, Chapter 12.

March 3 (Thursday) Why Was Spain Different?

READ:

  • Silvia Federici, Calaban and the Witch, “The Great Witch-Hunt in Europe.”
  • Homza, 153-164.

DUE:

  • Research memo on Monter.

Week 7: Midterm Exam

March 8 (Tuesday) No class

March 10 (Thursday) No class

DUE:

MIDTERM EXAM ESSAY DUE.

Week 8: SPRING BREAK

March 15 (Tuesday) Relaxation.

March 17 (Thursday) Enjoyment.

Week 9: Coming to America

March 22 (Tuesday) The Inquisition in the Indies

READ:

  • Chuchiak, 107-185.

March 24 (Thursday)

READ:

  • Chuchiak, 107-185.

DUE:

  • How was the Inquisition different in New Spain than in Old Spain?

Week 10: Blasphemies

March 29 (Tuesday)

READ: Cryptojews and others in the New World

  • Miriam Bodian, Dying in the Law of Moses, Chapter 5.
  • Kathryn Joy McKnight, “Blasphemy as Resistance: An African Slave Woman before the Mexican Inquisition,” pp. 229-254 in Giles (1999).

March 31 (Thursday) Trials

READ:

  • Chuchiak, pp. 205-217, 235-291.

DUE:

  • Research memos on Bodian and McKnight.

Week 11: Sorcery, Witchcraft, and Magic

April 5 (Tuesday)

READ:

  • Behar, Ruth. “Sexual Witchcraft, Colonialism, and Women’s Powers: Views from the Mexican Inquisition.” In Sexuality and Marriage in Colonial Latin America, ed. Asunción Lavrin. Lincoln: Univ. of Nebraska Press, 1992 (178-206).

April 7 (Thursday)

READ:

  • Chuchiak, 292-307. Section III – the two sets on the trials and cases on superstition, witchcraft, peyote, plants, etc.

DUE:

Week 12: Limpieza, Identity, Race

April 12 (Tuesday) Castas and Identity in the Americas

READ: Genealogical Fictions.

April 14 (Thursday) No Class

READ:

DUE:

  • Book review of Genealogical Fictions.

Week 13: Sex and Inquisition in the Indies

April 19 (Tuesday) Clerics and Desire

READ:

  • Nicole von Germeten, “Archival Narratives of Clerical Sodomy and Suicide from Eighteenth-Century Cartagena,” pp. 23-34 in Tortorici, ed., Sexuality and the Unnatural in Colonial Latin America (Berkeley: UC Press, 2016).

  • Zeb Tortorici, “Archives of Negligence,” pp. 161-196 in Sin Against Nature (Durham: Duke University Press, 2018).

April 21 (Thursday)

READ:

  • Holler, Jacqueline. “The Spiritual and Physical Ecstasies of a Sixteenth-Century Beata: Marina de San Miguel Confesses Before the Mexican Inquisition.” In Colonial Lives, Documents on Latin American History, 1550-1850, ed. Richard Boyer and Geoffrey Spurling. New York: Oxford Univ. Press, 2000 (77-100).

DUE:

  • Reaction paper comparing the arguments in Tortorici and von Germeten.

Week 14: The Censors

April 26 (Tuesday)

READ:

  • Martin Nesvig, “The Index of Prohibited Books in Sixteenth Century Mexico: Theological Conservatism and Adaptive Responses to Censorship,” Journal of Religious and Theological Information 10:3-4 (2011): pp. 103-124.

  • Richard Greenleaf, “The Mexican Inquisition and the Enlightenment, 1763-1805,” New Mexico Historical Review 41.3 (1966): 181-

April 28 (Thursday)

READ:

  • Chichiak, pp. 318-342.

DUE:

  • Nothing!

Week 15: Goya’s Ghost

May 3 (Tuesday) No class.

May 5 (Thursday) No class.

READ:

  • Rawlings, 135-156.

DUE:

Response paper to the film.

Week 16 – The Death and Afterlife of the Inquisition

May 10 (Tuesday) Wrap it up.

DUE: Self-Evaluation.