Tikal, Guatemala

I am an Associate Professor of Latin American history at the University of Arizona. My research focuses on colonial Guatemala and Mexico, Mesoamerican ethnohistory, the history of medicine and healing, religion, and gender studies.


I am the author of Women Who Live Evil Lives: Gender, Religion and the Politics of Power in Colonial Guatemala, (University of Texas Press, 2002). This work will be published in Spanish translation as Mujeres de mal vivir: Género, religión, y las políticas de poder en la Guatemala colonial. Plumsock Mesoamerican Studies, in cooperation with the Maya Educational Foundation and CIRMA (Guatemala City, Guatemala: Editorial Universitaria de San Carlos), forthcoming.


Some recent journal articles and book chapters that I have published include "'That Monster of Nature': Gender, Sexuality, and the Medicalization of a 'Hermaphrodite' in Late Colonial Guatemala," special issue "Sexual Encounters/Sexual Collisions: Alternative Sexualities in Colonial Mesoamerica," Ethnohistory 54:1 (Winter 2007), pp. 159-176; "'Our Lord Entered His Body': Miraculous Healing and Children's Bodies in Colonial New Spain," in Susan Schroeder and Stafford Poole, eds. Religion in New Spain (University of New Mexico Press, 2007), pp. 114-124; "'El daño que hace el bien común': Casta revendedoras y los conflictos generados por la venta de carne en Guatemala colonial, 1650-1720," Mesoamérica 49 (2007), pp. 1-24, and "Chocolate, Sex, and Disorderly Women in Late-Seventeenth and Early-Eighteenth-Century Guatemala," Ethnohistory 52:4 (fall 2005), pp. 673-687.


My current research will result in a new book, Colonial Medicine and Atlantic World Healing Cultures in Guatemala, 1680-1830 (working title). I am also working on an edited volume with Zeb Totorici (UCLA), Centering Animals: Writing Animals into Latin American History.


My main teaching areas are colonial and modern Latin America, Central America, Mexico, gender studies, ethnohistory, medicine and healing, comparative colonialism, and historiography. In the fall of 2007, I teach TRAD 101, an undergraduate introductory course on colonial Latin America, and HIST 696N, a graduate research seminar on colonial Latin America. In the spring of 2008, I teach HIST 301, a methodology class for history majors, and HIST 695, a graduate colloquium on Medicine and Healing in Latin America.


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