If you are interested in the histories of Spain, Portugal, and the wider Iberian world, check out what’s happening in Iberian History at Oxford. You can find information about our group and many events on our website, iberianhistory.web.ox.ac.uk

I am fortunate to co-convene the Iberian History Seminar with my friends and colleagues Giuseppe Marcocci, Glyn Redworth, and Cecilia Tarruell. A wonderful community of scholars and students — both local and visiting — meet regularly at our seminar, as well as in a lively reading group, palaeography group, and for other special events.

Keep an eye on our website for forthcoming videos of recent seminar talks. Make sure to follow us on Twitter @IberiaHistoryOx !

One month ago I began my post as Sir John Elliott Junior Research Fellow in Spanish History (1400-1900) at Exeter College, University of Oxford. The big move from Montréal went well and I’m finding Oxford to be a beautiful place. I’m delighted to be working with so many friendly and generous people here at Exeter College.

Some things to look forward to this term:

On November 9, I’ll be presenting “Race, Religion, and the Moriscos in Sixteenth-Century Spain” at Race in the Iberian World, 1400-1700, a workshop held at Exeter College organized by Antonio Feros (University of Pennsylvania) and Giuseppe Marcocci (Exeter College, Oxford). In addition to the organizers and myself, the other speakers are Carmen Fracchia (Birkbeck, University of London) and Chloe Ireton (University College London).

On 13 November, I’ll be giving a talk titled “Moriscos, Conversion, and Negotiating Identities in Early Modern Spain,” at the meeting of Oxford’s Early Modern World Seminar, a series organized by Giora Sternberg (Hertford College, Oxford) and Giuseppe Marcocci (Exeter College, Oxford).

On 6-7 December, I’ll be presenting my paper “‘What reason is there to conserve the seed of such fierce and cruel enemies?’: Reading race and genealogy in debates over the expulsion of the Moriscos,” at Purity of Blood: The Iberian World in Comparative Perspective, a symposium at King’s College London organized by Francisco Bethencourt (King’s College London).

I am also a co-convener of the Iberian History Seminar and the Iberian History Reading Group, and I’ll write in more detail about our upcoming events soon!

I recently presented my paper “Genealogical Inheritance and the Question of Morisco Children” at the Early Modern Conversions conference (22-25 August 2018; McGill University, Montréal). I’ve been intrigued by the reappearing themes of family and children in my research over the past two years as postdoctoral fellow with the EMC team. This small, interdisciplinary conference (the final “team meeting” of our five-year project!) provided a friendly place to reflect upon these connections.

I began my paper with a brief discussion of the complex relationship between belief and practice in the sixteenth-century Spanish kingdoms with particular reference to the Moriscos. Moriscos were Iberian Muslims forcibly converted to Catholicism beginning in 1502, along with their descendants, who were expelled from the Spanish Kingdoms in the early seventeenth century.

My paper illustrated how matters of family remained centrally important in understanding how conversion could work or be undermined. Ties of kinship and marriage between Moriscos and segregated residential areas were perceived as impediments to their social assimilation and religious conversion as Catholics. Morisca mothers were suspected of teaching their children Islamic customs and beliefs within the home and Morisco parents were accused of never taking their children to church or marrying them to Old Christians. Morisco lineage was decisive, too, as descendants of Muslims were perceived as having impure genealogy (measured by their blood purity, or limpieza de sangre). And throughout this era, there were ongoing debates over the Moriscos’ genealogical inheritance and the question of what to do with Morisco children.

My research considers these issues by asking:

• how religious and government leaders attempted to enforce Morisco religious conversion and social conformity by controlling Morisco children and separating Morisco families.
• about the clash between the endurance of hope in next generation of converts and the ultimate rejection of Moriscos from Spanish Catholic society.
• and about the language used in a wide range of sources to describe ancestry, lineage, inheritance, and early concepts of race. (The next phase of my research will build on my current work by considering how identifying and categorizing Morisco lineage and status related to the wider construction of racialized categories of difference in the early Spanish empire. I’ll undertake this work as Junior Research Fellow in Spanish History at Exeter College, Oxford University, beginning September 2019.)

In this paper, I presented two sets of examples from my recent research for thinking about conversion and family. The first was the liberation of enslaved Morisco children. Many Granadan Moriscos were enslaved during the Second War of the Alpujarras (1568-70). King Philip II declared the captivity of Morisco minors to be illegal and ordered manumitted Morisco youth be placed as servants in the homes of Old Christian families and ecclesiastics. This law was intended as a mechanism for conversion by bringing liberated Morisco children into Catholic society, keeping them separated from their families while they were educated and assimilated. This is the topic of my article “Litigating for Liberty: Enslaved Morisco Children in Sixteenth-Century Valladolid” (available in RQ 70,4), which I also discuss in a recent podcast.

The second example I presented was how debates over families and children were central to the expulsion of the Moriscos in the early seventeenth century; I wrote article (currently under peer review) on the topic of Morisco non-conformism that considers this issue. Belief in the potential of the conversion of Morisco children endured during the expulsion, and I find evidence of this in opinions submitted by and to the Council of State. This hope was usually contingent on separating Morisco children from their families and communities. As in the case of Granadan minors liberated from captivity, the retention of Morisco children in the custody of Old Christians at the time of the expulsion aimed at their assimilation and conversion.

Presenters were invited to submit posters for a group exhibit. You can find the full conference program and poster collection on the EMC website. Here’s mine:

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The past two years as Early Modern Conversions postdoc have gone by very quickly! Getting to do this job has been a real gift to my work. I extend sincere thanks to team leader Paul Yachnin, my postdoc supervisor José Jouve-Martin, Marie-Claude Felton and Stephen Wittek, and to all of my colleagues in this project for supporting and enriching my scholarship.

Kingdom, Empire and Plus Ultra: conversations on the history of Portugal and Spain, 1415-1898 is a podcast hosted by Dr. Edward Collins, a historian of early modern Portugal and Spain at University College Dublin.

I’m interviewed by Dr. Collins in Episode 16: “Moriscos, Enslaved Children, and Litigating for Liberty in sixteenth-century Spain.”  We discuss a range of topics related to the history of Muslim-Christian relations in early modern Spain, focusing on the research I conducted for my article “Litigating for Liberty: Enslaved Morisco Children in Sixteenth-Century Valladolid,” recently published in Renaissance Quarterly 70, 4 (Winter 2017).

Our interview concludes with a conversation about engaging emotionally & politically with early modern history, reflecting on parallels with modern and ongoing policies of family separation and internment.

If you’re interested in podcasts about Morisco history, check out Dr. Liz Covart’s interview with Dr. Karoline Cook in Episode 178 of Ben Franklin’s World: “Muslims and Moriscos in Colonial Spanish America.”

Enjoy, and thanks for listening!