 |
|
Martin NesvigPh.D., Yale University (2004); e-mail: mnesvig@miami.edu |
 |
 |
|
Martin Nesvig is a native of San Diego, California and received a Ph.D. in Latin American history from Yale University. During his graduate studies Professor Nesvig lived in Mexico City for three years and has continued to live there part-time ever since. Professor Nesvig’s first monograph, Ideology and Inquisition: The World of the Censors in Early Mexico with Yale University Press appears in September 2009. The study examines formal legal and informal cultural practices of book censorship and thought control as undertaken by the Inquisition. Rather than present an image of monochromatic thought the Inquisition in Mexico revealed deep divisions and debates about humanism, the translation of Scripture, Erasmus, sexual norms, witchcraft and blasphemy. This is the first book-length study in English which analyzes the censors and jurists of the Spanish and Mexican Inquisitions in terms of their understanding and ideology in promoting censorship. Currently, he has two main research projects. The first is a history of frontier religion and society in colonial western Mexico, tentatively titled “Frontier Religion in Colonial Michoacán.” The study examines the dramatic failures of Spanish missionaries to turn Indians and Spaniards into good, pious Catholics in this frontier region, resulting, rather, in a somewhat debauched rejection of formal Catholic piety. He was an NEH fellow at the John Carter Brown in the Spring 2008 semester conducting research on the project. The second project is a translation of works by largely ignored Franciscans: Alfonso de Castro, a theologian and theorist of Inquisition of Salamanca, Alonso Cabello, a Spanish-born Mexican twice convicted of Erasmian heresy, and Inquisitional deputy and missionary, the criollo Diego Muñoz. The volume, Forgotten Franciscans, will be published by Pennsylvania State University Press as part of the Latin American Originals series of documents in translation overseen by Matthew Restall. More broadly Professor Nesvig studies the social history of religion. He is editor of two volumes on the subject: Local Religion in Colonial Mexico (University of New Mexico Press, 2006) and Religious Culture in Modern Mexico (Rowman and Littlefield, 2007). He has published articles on culture and society in Mexico in both English and Spanish in a wide range of professional journals: Colonial Latin American Review, Hispanic American Historical Review, Mexican Studies/Estudios Mexicanos, Church History, Journal of Social History, Tzintzun, and Boletín del Archivo General de la Nación (Mexico). Professor Nesvig has received grants and fellowships from various organizations and thanks the Mellon Foundation, the Fulbright Commission, and the National Endowment for the Humanities for their support. Professor Nesvig offers courses on colonial Latin America; gender and sexuality in Latin America; the Inquisition; the Mexican Revolution; contact and conquest in early Latin America; and the history of the book in the Spanish Atlantic world.
|
|
