The goal of this conference is to bring together scholars working on issues of religion in both North and South America in the early modern period. We hope to examine the specificities of the southern Iberian-Catholic paradigm and the northern Anglo-Protestant paradigm, whilst at the same time plotting the similarities in terms of American transcultural formations. Our aim is to foster a dialogue across the traditional disciplinary, geographical, cultural and linguistic divides in order to reach a deeper and more comprehensive understanding of religious issues in both areas. A comparative perspective will elucidate a dynamic model of religion in transit as its symbolic institutions adapt practices to local contexts.
There has been much recent critical focus on trans-Atlantic and hemispheric perspectives among early modernists and scholars of the Americas, yet a thorough examination of religious practices remains largely absent from these discussions. We contend that religion offers a key rubric of comparative analysis and provides a common basis of discussion across boundaries of discipline, field, language, and nation. A comparativist, hemispheric focus on early modern religion would expose new points of contact and cultural exchange in the Americas, displaying European and New World encounters as more fluid and dynamic than previously imagined.
How did European religious categories and ideologies break down in the New World context? What are the points of intersection between doctrine and practice? In what way did indigenous American religious practices subvert the hegemonic imposition of Christianity? To what end do empire-building and religion reciprocally influence one another? How did European models of race and gender transform themselves in the colonial context? How did the evangelical instinct at the heart of Christianity shape the colonial encounter? How did the trans-Atlantic movement of religion transform the structure of European thought? And what transhistorical perspectives can early modern religiosity bring to bear on contemporary issues?
This conference will have broad appeal to scholars working on religious topics as well as early modernists and Americanists. We feel that this is a critical historical moment in which to expose students to the questions and debates within religious studies. Religion has undergone a recent resurgence of cross-disciplinary interest for obvious political and cultural reasons. The early modern period offers an important perspective on these conversations; within it we plot the origins and trajectories of empire and religion while also learning from key historical distinctions.
