Contact | Deutsch | Español

Personal details
Courses Taught
Selected Publications
Awards
Academic Services

Cultures in Dialogue in Peru (16th to 19th centuries)

 

My research explores transcultural processes between Europe and the wider Atlantic world. I am in particular interested in how people from the Andes, Afro-Americans and Europeans entered a dialogue in the Andes during colonial and modern times. So far, I have explored two distinct areas of scholarship: the history of astrology in early modern Germany and the history of the encounter between Jesuits and Andean religious specialists in colonial Peru. Due to my two footings—Latin American history as well as early modern European history—my Latin American research projects try to gain a nuanced, fine-grained understanding of cross-cultural interactions in the realm of Peru’s intellectual past.

My current research project explores the dialogue between various cultures in late eighteenth and early nineteenth century Peru. I investigate Peru’s Creole scholars with regard to their interaction with indigenous and Afro-American people. The question arises: How did indigenous people and Afro-Americans influence scientific concepts and theories? Moreover, I am interested in the relationship between “religion” and “science” in Latin-America and in the transfer of knowledge between the Americas.

 

 

 

Address

University of Illinois
Department of History

309 Gregory Hall
810 S. Wright Street
Urbana, IL 61801

Telefon: 217-333-1155

Email: cbrossed@illinois.edu

 

 

Courses Taught

• History of Science in the Transatlantic World. (University of Heidelberg)
• Forging Identities in Latin American History. (University of Heidelberg).
• History of Modern Latin America (19th and 20th century) (Stetson University, Fl.) 
• Modern World Civilizations (15th-20th century) (Stetson University, Fl.) 
• History of the Colonial Andes (Stetson University, Fl.). 
• Witchcraft, Magic and the Occult in Early Modern Europe and the Americas (Stanford University) 
• The European Expansion. (University of Munich). 
• The New in the Old World (15th–18th Centuries). (University of Munich).
• Late Humanism. Erudition in Crisis? (University of Munich).
• “Magic” and Related Erudite Interests in the Renaissance (1450-1600s). (University of Munich). 
• Colonial Latin America (University of Munich)
• The Incas and their Histories (University of Heidelberg)
• Transcultural workshops: methods in the humanities (University of Heidelberg)

 

Selected Publications:

Books

The Power of Huacas: Change and Resistance in the Andean World of Colonial Peru. Austin: University of Texas Press (in press, spring 2014). http://utpress.utexas.edu/index.php/books/bropow

Im Bann der Sterne: Caspar Peucer, Philipp Melanchthon und andere Wittenberger Astrologen. Berlin: Akademie-Verlag, 2004.
 

Articles in Academic Journals and Books

“Early Enlightenment in Colonial Peru: Bernabé Cobo’s Re-creation of an Authentic America” In God and the Enlightenment, ed. by William Bulman and Robert Ingram. Oxford: Oxford University Press (forthcoming 2014).

“El papel de la biblia en la evangelización de los pobladores andinos (siglos XVI y XVII).” In La Biblia en la literatura hispanoamericana, ed. Geneviève Fabry and Daniel Attala. Madrid: Editorial Trotta (forthcoming 2014).

„Eine ambivalente Beziehung: Jesuiten und Indigene im Peru der Kolonialzeit.“ In Die Musik und Theaterpraxis der Jesuiten im kolonialen Amerika. Ed. Christian Storch. Sinzig: Studiopunkt Verlag, (forthcoming 2014).

“‘Secularizing the Andes: The Effects of Catholic Disputes about Indigenous Rituals and of Transcultural Processes in the Colonial Andean World.” In The Rites Controversy in the Early Modern World, ed. Pierre Antoine Fabre and Ines G. Županov. Leiden: Brill (forthcoming 2014).

 “El alcance de los poderes de ‘guacas’ y de ‘camascas’ en los Andes. Una interpretación etnohistórica y arqueológica.” In Nuevo Mundo. Mundos Nuevos (Objetos de los Andes en transformación, ed. Ingrid Kummels and Karoline Noack). (in press).

“Reading the Peruvian Skies.” In Astrology in Global Perspective, ed. Brendan Dooley, 399-427. Leiden: Brill, 2014.

“Cultural Dialogue and Its Premises in Colonial Peru: The Case of Worshipping Sacred Objects.” Journal of the Economic and Social History of the Orient (ed. Corinne Lefèvre and Ines G. Županov) 55 (2012): 169–200.

“Astrology in Seventeenth-Century Peru.” Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological & Biomedical Science 41 (2010): 146–57.

“Die Entzauberung der Dämonen im Peru des 18. Jahrhunderts vor dem Hintergrund des ‘Dialogs’ zwischen andinen religiösen Spezialisten und Jesuiten im 17. Jahrhundert.” Das achtzehnte Jahrhundert: Zeitschrift der Deutschen Gesellschaft für die Erforschung des achtzehnten Jahrhunderts 34, No. 3 (2010): 194–201.

“La ciencia entre la herejía y la adaptación: Astrología natural y talismánica en el Perú colonial, siglos XVI–XVII”. In Catequesis y derecho en la América colonial: Fronteras borrosas, ed. Roland Schmidt-Riese, 19–41. Madrid: Vervuert-Editorial Iberoamericana, 2010.

“The Writing in the Wittenberg Sky: Astrology in 16th-Century Germany.” Journal of the History of Ideas 66 (2005): 557–76.

 

Awards

2007-08
Kalkhof Rose-scholarship, Akademie der Wissenschaften und der Literatur, Mainz

2006-2007
Postdoctoral Feodor-Lynen Fellowship, Alexander von Humboldt-Foundation (Stanford University).

2002-2005
Bayerischer Habilitationsförderpreis (which allowed research trips to Peru, Bolivia, Ecuador, Mexico, Argentina, Chile, the US, Spain and Italy).

2002
Scholarship by the Max-Planck-Institute for the History of Science in Berlin under Lorraine Daston (due to the Bayerische Habilitationsförderpreis I was unable to pursue the scholarship).

2001
Study Grant, Herzog August Library, Wolfenbüttel.

2000
Scholarship at the Warburg-Institute, London (I was unable to pursue the scholarship).

1998
Summer Institute, Herzog August Library, Wolfenbüttel.

1997-1998
Ambassadorial Scholarship, Rotary Club so as to study at Princeton University

1997
Scholarship for Oxford University (due to my scholarship for Princeton I was unable to pursue this scholarship).

1992-1998
German National Scholarship-Foundation, Studienstiftung des Deutschen Volkes.

1992
German Catholic Scholarship-Foundation, Cusanuswerk. .

 

Academic Services:

• Member of the University Council of the University of Heidelberg (Universitätsrat) (http://www.uni-heidelberg.de/universitaetsrat/cv_brosseder.html), 2009- 
• Member of the supervisory board’s committee on teaching, Heidelberg University 2009- 
• Research-Group Leader, Transcultural Studies, Heidelberg University, 2008- 
• Member of the Latin American Studies Centre, Stetson University, DeLand, Fl. 2007-2008.
• Member of the Interdisciplinary Studies Institute “SFB 573: Pluralisierung und Autorität in der Frühen Neuzeit” (Diversifications and Authority in the Early Modern Period), University of Munich, 2000-2002.