Women, Religion, and the Atlantic World (1600–1800)

—a conference organized by Daniella Kostroun, Stonehill College and Lisa Vollendorf, Wayne State University/University of California, Santa Barbara

The colloquium aims to encourage interdisciplinary study of women’s spiritual history in the Atlantic world by bringing together scholars of the Americas, the Caribbean, the African diaspora, and Europe for a “transatlantic” discussion. In addition to exploring gender and religion through such experiences as slavery, migration, convent life, religious conflict, and conversion, the colloquium seeks to raise provocative questions about interdisciplinary methods and about future research in Atlantic World studies.

Program

Session 1
Chair: Heidi Tinsman, University of California, Irvine

Phyllis Mack, Rutgers University
“Learning to Love: Writing and Emotion in Methodist Discourse”

Stacey Schlau, West Chester University
“María de Zárate and the Mexican Inquisition: Peculiarities, Posturings, and Problems”

Sylvia R. Frey, Tulane University
“Messengers of the Word: Women and the Spiritual Revolution in the Eighteenth-Century Atlantic World”

Session 2
Chair: Theresa Smith, UCLA Center for 17th- & 18th-Century Studies

Jon Sensbach, University of Florida
“Priestly Women: Creating a Black Pietist Atlantic”

Ulrike Strasser, University of California, Irvine
“The Global Currency of Female Sanctity: German Jesuits and Indigenous Holy Women”

Martha Few, University of Arizona
“Atlantic World Monsters and Cultural Conceptions of Deformity in Monstrous Birth Accounts in Early Colonial Guatemala”

Session 3
Chair: Pamela Smith, Pomona College

Amy M. Froide, University of Maryland, Baltimore County
“The Religious Lives of Singlewomen in the Anglo-Atlantic World”

Barbara B. Diefendorf, Boston University
“Rethinking the Catholic Reformation: The Role of Women”

Lisa Vollendorf, Wayne State University and the University of California, Santa Barbara
“Christian, Muslim, Jew: Women and Identity in Early Modern Spain”