Acts of Conversion

FAIN: FA-52728-06

Santa Arias
Florida State University (Tallahassee, FL 32306-0001)

Acts of Conversion is a proposed study of the complex relationship between the catholic clergy and the Amerindian populations in Mesoamerica. It offers a close reading of texts in their proper context of tridentine and colonial politics. Central to my argument are the debates on the nature of the Amerindian initiated during the sixteenth century that influenced the representation and interpretation of the European experience in the New World. From an interdisciplinary perspective, I examine the interaction between religious culture and transatlantic politics and how those “stocks of knowledge” on the Amerindian subjects were produced in histories, accounts and letters.