About

“I alone am given understanding of things, and I must create for myself the words to explain what I understand.”

– Sor María de Jesús de Ágreda, 17th c.

I am a historian of the early modern Spanish world, encompassing the Iberian peninsula and colonial Spanish holdings in the Americas from 1400-1800. I focus on women’s spiritual experiences, writings, and authority during the seventeenth century, particularly during the reign of Philip IV (1621-1665).

I am interested in material culture, from needlework and embroidery to architectural expression, and in how these traces enrich our understanding of religious visions experienced and described from marginalized perspectives. In my courses, I seek to view the past from these perspectives, utilizing primary sources from women, diverse socioeconomic classes, and people of African, indigenous, and mixed-race descent.

I am a first-generation college student and Midwesterner raised on a farm in rural Indiana. I completed my B.A. and M.A. at Purdue University and my Ph.D. at the University of Michigan in 2022.

In addition to my scholarly interests, I am invested in public engagement, digital humanities, and narrative storytelling. For examples of how I connect my work with public audiences through storytelling, listen to my podcast episode about women’s visions of Purgatory. In July 2021, also wrote a column series for the American Historical Association about storytelling in research and the classroom.

Education

Ph.D. History, University of Michigan – Ann Arbor (2022)
– Dissertation: “Ineffable Knowing: Sor María de Jesús de Ágreda in the Early Modern Spanish World,” 2022 Arthur Fondiler Prize Runner-Up

M.A. History, University of Michigan – Ann Arbor (2017)

M.A. History, Purdue University (2015)
– Thesis: “A Church Divided: The Dominicans, Franciscans, and Jesuits and the Immaculate Conception Controversy in Seventeenth-Century Spain,” winner of the College of Liberal Arts Distinguished Thesis Award, 2016

B.A. History & Sociology, Purdue University (2013)
– summa cum laude
– Minors: Anthropology & Political Science