Research Seminar: In the Library or the Street?: Comparing Jesuit Language Learning Methodologies in Spain and Peru (Indigenous History, 16th and 17th Centuries)

This presentation takes up debates about the learning of different languages (Spanish, Valencian, Arabic, Quechua, Aymara) for religious instruction in Spain and Peru in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Dr. Feild-Marchello will analyze the language learning methods advanced by the Jesuit, Ignacio de las Casas, with regard to Arabic in comparison with the approach supported by his confrere, José de Acosta, with regard to Indigenous American languages (lenguas americanas). Her work explores how their approaches to language learning corresponded to their own wider visions of religious and political expansion.

Dr Erica Feild-Marchello is the Sir John Elliott Fellow of Early Modern Spanish Studies (University of Oxford). Her research addresses questions regarding inclusion and exclusion, race-making, conversion, and linguistic knowledge across the Spanish empire, especially Spain and the wider Mediterranean, Peru, and the Philippines. She is developing her first monograph, Divine Word: Language, Religion and Race in the Spanish Empire. She is also PI of the collaborative project, “Arabic in Spanish: Speaking, Knowing, and Belonging at the Edges of Europe”, focused on creating teaching materials and public events centering the historical and present-day use of Arabic in Spain.