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About Me

I hold a PhD in English (UNC, 2012), completed a postdoc in history (OIEAHC/W&M, 2012-2014) and now teach in a Spanish department (UVA, 2014-present). I use methods and theoretical frameworks from each of these fields to study vernacular sciences in the colonial Americas, especially mining and agriculture. My first book, Mining Language: Racial Thinking, Indigenous Knowledge, and Colonial Metallurgy in the Early Modern Iberian World (OIEAHC/UNC Press, 2020), shows how scholarly approaches that combine linguistic, literary, and material cultural methods allow us to document Indigenous knowledge production in ways that colonial archives have not typically permitted. My next project will analyze Pre-Columbian technologies of maize cultivation in Mesoamerica and the Chesapeake, one region where men grew crops and one region where women took charge of farming. I am interested to see how colonial writers understood and misunderstood the Indigenous technologies, gendered systems, and cosmologies that influenced maize cultivation.

Recent Publications

Mining Language: Racial Thinking, Indigenous Knowledge, and Colonial Metallurgy in the Early Modern Iberian World (Omohundro Institute of Early American History and Culture for the University of North Carolina Press, Spring 2020). Available from UNC and Amazon.

With Rafael C. Alvarado, “Digital Resources: Multepal, Mesoamerican Studies, and the Popol Wuj.” Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Latin American History (New York: Oxford University Press, forthcoming Oct-Dec 2019). doi: 10.1093/acrefore/9780199366439.013.799.

“Transatlantic Quechuañol: Reading Race Through Colonial Translations.” PMLA 134.2 (2019): 242-259. https://www.mlajournals.org/doi/abs/10.1632/pmla.2019.134.2.242

“Imperial Projecting in Virginia and Venezuela: Copper, Colonialism, and the Printing of Possibility.” Early American Studies 16.1, Forum: The Global Turn and Early American Studies, ed. Mary Eyring, Chris Hodson, and Matthew Mason (2018): 91-123. doi:10.1353/eam.2018.0004

“Traduttore, traditore o traduttore, soccorritore: La traducción y la recuperación del saber andino en la época colonial.” ISTOR: Revista de historia internacional, Special Issue: “El estudio de la minería latinoamericana: Escalas de abordaje, diversas fuentes y reflexiones teórico-metodológicas,” ed. David Navarette G. and Lorena B. Rodríguez 19.73 (2018): 41-56.

“Imperial Translations: New World Missionary Linguistics, Indigenous Interpreters, and Universal Languages in the Early Modern Era.” American Literature and the New Puritan Studies, ed. Bryce Traister (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2017), 93-110.

“Colonial Industry and the Gendered Language of Empire: Silkworks in the Virginia Colony, 1607-1655.” European Empires in the American South, ed. Joseph P. Ward; aft. Kathleen DuVal (Oxford, M.S.: University of Mississippi Press, 2017), 8-36.

“‘Baço’, ‘Brown’, e ‘un milieu’: a tradução das cores e as categorias das castas das metais,” As minas e o cotidiano do mineral: experiências humanas colonais, ed. Alexandre Belmonte and Christine Hunefeldt (Rio de Janeiro: Estudos Americanos, 2018), 123-138. Translated by Alexandre Belmonte and Leonardo P.B. da Costa. (Translation of “‘Baço’, ‘Brown’ y ‘un milieu’: La traducción de los colores y las categorías de las castas de metales,” forthcoming in De quelle couleur est le sang? Sémantiques et représentations sociales de la race: Une perspective globale du Moyen Âge tardif au XXIe siècle, ed. António de Almeida Mendes and Alejandro E. Gómez. Madrid: Casa de Velázquez.)

“La dote natural: género y el lenguaje de la vida cotidiana en la minería andina.” Anuario de estudios bolivianos 22, vol. II (2016): 145-168.

“Women, Men, and the Legal Languages of Mining in the Colonial Andes.” Ethnohistory 63.2 (2016): 351-380. doi 10.1215/00141801-3455347.

“Incorporating Indigenous Knowledge into Extractive Economies: The Science of Colonial Silver.” Journal of Extractive Industries and Society 3.1 (2016): 117-123. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.exis.2015.11.001.

“Conchos, colores y castas de metales: El lenguaje de la ciencia colonial en la región andina.” Umbrales (Universidad Mayor de San Andrés, La Paz, Bolivia) 29 (2016): 15-47.

“Gendered Language and the Science of Colonial Silk.” Early American Literature 49.2 (2014): 271-325. doi: 10.1353/eal.2014.0024.

Media Coverage

Social Media

Country Focus

Expertise by Geography

Latin America, North America

Expertise by Chronology

Pre-17th century, 17th century, 18th century

Expertise by Topic

Colonialism, Gender, Indigenous Peoples, Literary History, Race, Science