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HCAR Works-in-Progress Seminar: Dr. Amanda Summers
November 8, 2:30 pm-4:00 pm
Amanda Summers, Ph.D., Duane H. King Postdoctoral Fellow, Helmerich Center for American Research
Paper Title: “Death, Mysticism, and Mass Incarceration: Mexico’s Gran Comlicidad, 1642-1649”
Amanda Summers will be circulating and presenting an excerpt from the sixth and final chapter of her dissertation. The larger project deals with sex, violence, race, diaspora, and community in the Inquisition prisons in seventeenth-century Latin America, Caribbean, and broader Iberian Atlantic world. This chapter, focusing on a massive decades-long trial against Portuguese merchants suspected of secret Jewish practice, served to tie the larger arguments of the dissertation together by showing the end result of mass incarceration in the early modern era. As the Spanish created a prison environment so overcrowded that control and care of the prisoner population was no longer possible, at the same time they used this event to control the broader population of the empire who witnessed the events through specific displays of power. A solitary confinement cell now held upwards of ten men and women together- breaking several laws on gender and penitentiary functions. As a result, familial and community bonds were tested and depression, self-harm, and violence were rampant, as evidenced through the spread of illnesses and injuries, threats, self-harm, and premature deaths. However, the constrained environment and stress of the situation led to forms of communal resistance over time. Information was shared between prison cells and even the outside world, people talked about the support they received from cell mates and neighboring cells, and children were conceived. All of these events were experienced communally.
When: Friday, November 8, 2024, 2:30 to 4:00 p.m.
Where: Jackson Seminar Room at Helmerich Center for American Research at Gilcrease Museum.
Access an electronic copy of the paper here: Paper will be available by Friday, November 1.
About Works-In-Progress Seminars
These seminars nurture a community of local and regional scholars by providing opportunities to share creative activity in an academically constructive environment. Each seminar will focus on pre-circulated drafts followed by a roundtable conversation among participants.