Participant Info

First Name
Caroline
Last Name
Dodds Pennock
Country
United Kingdom
State
Affiliation
University of Sheffield
Website URL
https://www.sheffield.ac.uk/history/staff/caroline-dodds-pennock
Keywords
Aztecs, Mesoamerica, Indigenous American history, Native American history, Atlantic history, human sacrifice, violence, gender, Spanish America, exploration, discovery, encounter, migration, slavery
Availability
Media Contact
Additional Contact Information
PhD
PhD

Personal Info

Photo
About Me

I am a historian specialising in Indigenous American, especially Aztec, history and the early modern Atlantic world, with a particular interest in issues of gender, human sacrifice, migration and cultural exchange.

My book, On Savage Shores: How Indigenous Americans Discovered Europe, was published by Weidenfeld & Nicholson (UK) and Knopf (USA) and was Radio 4 Book of the Week in January 2023. It is currently being translated into Spanish, French and Korean and will come out in paperback in 2024.

As a passionate advocate of public history, I enjoy working with publishers, media, schools, and anyone else who will have me, to give people more interesting and accurate view of the past.

Recent Publications

POPULAR:

On Savage Shores: How Indigenous Americans Discovered Europe (2023).

Leila Blackbird and Caroline Dodds Pennock, ‘How Making Space for Indigenous Peoples Changes History’, in Helen Carr and Suzannah Lipscomb (eds), What is History, Now? (London, 2021), pp. 247-62.

‘Did the Incas and Aztecs know about each other?’, BBC History Magazine (December 2021).

‘Head to Head: Are Empires Always Bad? The Aztec Empire’, History Today, 69.7 (July 2019).

‘In Search of the Real Aztecs’, BBC World Histories, 7 (November 2017), pp. 40-7 [and online]

‘The 25 global history books you must read’, BBC World Histories, 10 (June/July 2018), pp. 71-8.

‘On The Spot: Caroline Dodds Pennock’, History Today (July 2017), p.112.

SCHOLARLY:
Bonds of Blood: Gender, Lifecycle and Sacrifice in Aztec Culture (Basingstoke, 2008; paperback 2011).

Robert Anthony, Stuart Carroll and Caroline Dodds Pennock (eds), The Cambridge World History of Violence, Volume III, AD 1500 – AD 1800 (Cambridge, 2020).

Caroline Dodds Pennock and Amanda Power, ‘Globalising Cosmologies’, Past & Present, vol. 238 Annual Supplement 13: The Global Middle Ages, ed. Catherine Holmes and Naomi Standen (2018), pp. 88-115.

‘Women of Discord: Female Power in Aztec Thought’, The Historical Journal, 61.2 (2018), pp. 275-99.

‘“A Remarkably Patterned Life”: Domestic and Public in the Aztec Household City’, Gender & History, 23.3 (November 2011), pp. 528-46.

‘Mass Murder or Religious Homicide? Rethinking Human Sacrifice and Interpersonal Violence in Aztec Culture’, HSR: Historische Sozialforschung/Historical Social Research 37.3 (2012), pp. 276-302.

Media Coverage
I have media experience as a writer, consultant and talking head for TV, radio, website, publishers and popular magazines. You can find more information, as well as clips, on my website.
Country Focus
Mexico, Atlantic world
Expertise by Geography
Atlantic, Caribbean, Central America, Latin America, Spain
Expertise by Chronology
Medieval, Pre-17th century, Early Modern
Expertise by Topic
Colonialism, Family, Gender, Migration & Immigration, Public History, Sexuality, Slavery, Women