Books by Nancy E. van Deusen

This groundbreaking work argues that the seminal concept of recogimiento functioned as a metaphor for the colonial relationship between Spain and Lima.

Nancy van Deusen examines over one hundred lawsuits that indio slaves brought to the Spanish court in the mid-sixteenth century to gain their freedom. The category indio was largely constructed during these lawsuits, and van Deusen emphasizes the need to situate colonial indigenous subjects and slavery in a global context.

Through the lives of religious women in colonial Lima, a new understanding of the ways in which pious Catholic women engaged with material and immaterial notions of the sacred or were themselves objectified as conduits of the divine in spiritual narratives.