Marcella Hayes

Biography

I am a historian of Latin America and early modern Iberia, with an emphasis on the Andes. I study how black people shaped early modern Iberian political life, using their ideas of community and methods of self-governance to rethink early modern concepts of belonging. In my research and teaching, I focus on inclusion and exclusion, political claims-making, and the development of categories of identity.

My current book manuscript is tentatively titled The Black Spaniards: The Color of Political Authority in Seventeenth-Century Lima. Black people were the majority of Lima’s population throughout the period, and they created officially recognized corporate bodies such as confraternities, militias, and guilds that included both free and enslaved people. I show that these women and men defined and defended their community by pursuing legal complaints, participating in civil defense, petitioning the king, voting for leaders, and organizing festivals. In these interactions with colonial authority, they created a definition of Spanishness that was inclusive of (and in many ways defined by) their blackness. I argue that they carved out space in which enslaved people could have not only legal, but also a degree of civic personhood.

I am developing a second project on the black town criers and heralds of cities across the early modern Iberian empire. Criers were central to early modern society, providing a mostly illiterate population with access to news. In many cities, many (if not most) criers had some degree of African ancestry. I will show how the role of the crier opened a space for black participation in the shaping and spread of important information.

My teaching fields include colonial Latin American history; modern Latin American history; early modern European history; histories of political mobilization; histories of race and gender.

Education

Ph.D., Harvard University
B.A., Cornell University

Selected Publications

• “The New Trojans: Black Settlers of the Andean Coast,” in Knowing an Empire: Imperial Science in Early Modern Chinese and Spanish Empires, Mackenzie Cooley and Wu Huiyi, eds. (forthcoming)
• “We Have Not Been Tributaries: Lima’s Black Community, Historical Memory, and the Power of Invention,” in Dissent and Disobedience From Within: Meanings and Practices of Resistance in the Iberian Worlds, 15th-19th Centuries, Pablo Sánchez León and Benita Herreros Cleret de Langavant, eds. (forthcoming)
• They Have Been United as Sisters: Women Leaders of Black Lay Confraternities in Seventeenth-Century Lima,” The Americas: A Quarterly Review of Latin American History 79:4 (October 2022): 559-586

Invited Talks & Research Presentations

• “’He Is a Slave and Cannot Be Oppressed by Anything’: Slavery, Legal Personality, and Confraternities in the Ecclesiastical Courts of Seventeenth-Century Lima,” Southern Historical Association Annual Meeting, Baltimore, Maryland, November 2022
• Panelist, Roundtable on “Perspectives on and Challenges of Teaching the Afro-Latinx Experience in Latin America,” Southern Historical Association Annual Meeting, Baltimore, Maryland, November 2022
• “The Mulata Queens of Troy and Amazon: Women’s Leadership in Black Communities of Seventeenth-Century Lima,” Sixteenth Century Society Conference, Minneapolis, Minnesota, October 2022
• “We Have Not Been Tributaries: Lima’s Black Community, Historical Memory and the Power of Invention,” Mamolen Dissertation Workshop, Afro-Latin American Research Institute, Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts, May 2022
• “They Have Been United as Sisters: Women Leaders of Black Lay Confraternities in Seventeenth-Century Lima,” Graduate Early Modern Student Society Annual Faculty Lecture, University of Wisconsin-Madison, Madison, Wisconsin, April 2022
• “The New Trojans: Black Settlers of the Andean Coast,” Annual Meeting of the Renaissance Society of America, Dublin, Ireland, March 2022 (panel co-organizer, with Mackenzie Cooley)
• “Limitless Reason: Martín de Porres and Healing Humans and Animals,” with Mackenzie Cooley, Meeting of the American Society for Ethnohistory (originally Durham, North Carolina, moved to virtual), November 2021
• “Sharing the Weight of Enslavement: Slavery and Civic Personhood in Colonial Lima,” Mamolen Dissertation Workshop, Afro-Latin American Research Institute at Harvard University, January 2021
• “The Classical Roots of Black Corporate Life in Seventeenth-Century Lima,” Harvard-Princeton Early Modern History Graduate Student Conference, Cambridge, Massachusetts, February 2020
• “Building Troy in Their Own Image: The Black and Mulato Guilds of Seventeenth-Century Lima,” The ALARI First Continental Conference on Afro-Latin American Studies, Cambridge, Massachusetts, December 2019 (panel organizer)
• “First Encounters in the New World and the Invention of International Law,” The History of Law in Europe Seminar, Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts, October 2019
• “On the Basis of Virtue and Merit? : Black Militia Petitions in Colonial Peru,” Rethinking the Practice of Petitioning in the Habsburg and Colonial World, Cambridge, Massachusetts, May 2019
• “‘The Brothers Don’t Work’: Black Women Leaders of Lay Confraternities in Seventeenth-Century Lima,” Harvard-Princeton Early Modern History Graduate Student Conference, Princeton, New Jersey, February 2019
• “From Vassalage to Citizenship: Loyalty and Community in the Black Militias of Colonial Lima,” AHA Presidential Panel “Loyalty, Rights, Slavery, and Power in Europe’s New World Empires, 16th-18th Centuries,” American Historical Society Annual Meeting, Chicago, Illinois, January 2019
• “Santa Elena Moves House: Black Confraternities, Self-Governance, and Ecclesiastical Law in Colonial Lima,” Modern Languages Association Annual Meeting, Chicago, Illinois, January 2019
• “Los españoles negros: milicias y tributo en Lima, siglo XVII,” Ciclo de Conferencias en Historia Moderna, Universidad Pablo Olavide, Seville, Spain, October 2018
• “El gremio de mulatos de Lima y su autogobernanza, siglo XVII,” II Encuentro de Investigadores de la Cultura Afroperuana, Ministerio de Cultura, Lima, Peru, June 2018
• “Métodos del archivo,” Pontificia Universidad Católica del Perú, Lima, Peru, May 2018
• “The Black Spaniards: Logics of Inclusion in Colonial Lima,” Association for the Study of the Worldwide African Diaspora 9th Biennial Conference, Seville, Spain, November 2017 (panel co-organizer, with Brandi Waters)
• “The Color of Political Authority in 17th Century Lima,” Fifth Summer Academy in Atlantic History, Seville, Spain, September 2017
• “Toward a Black Republic: The Color of Political Authority in 17th Century Lima,” Max Planck Summer Academy for Legal History, Frankfurt, Germany, August 2017
• “The Mulato Militia in 17th Century Lima,” Latin American Studies Association Annual Meeting, Lima, Peru, April 2017
• “The Color of Political Authority in 17th Century Lima,” Harvard-Princeton Early Modern History Graduate Student Conference, Princeton University, February 2017
• “Conscripting the Silversmith: Negotiating Rights, Status, and Mulato Roots in 17th Century Lima,” Colors of Blood, Semantics of Race Workshop, Casa de Velázquez, Madrid, Spain, December 2016
• “Loving Father, Filthy Paternalism: Fatherhood of Slave Children in 19th Century Cuba,” STARACO Summer University, Université de Nantes, France, June 2015

Selected Awards

• Charles H. Watts Memorial Fellowship, John Carter Brown Library, 2019
• Fulbright-Hays Doctoral Dissertation Research Award, 2018
• Frederick Sheldon Traveling Fellowship, Harvard University Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, 2017
• John H. Coatsworth Latin American History Fellowship, David Rockefeller Center for Latin American Studies at Harvard University, 2017

History Courses

• History 200 – Colonial Latin America: Invasion to Independence – Syllabus 2021 (pdf)
• History 201  – The Historian’s Craft: Nation Breakers, Nation Makers: Revolution, Rebellion, and Reform in Latin America (Fall 2021, Spring 2022) – Syllabus 2022 (pdf)
• History/LACIS 243 – Colonial Latin America (Fall 2021, Fall 2022)
• History 260 – Latin America: An Introduction – Syllabus 2022 (pdf)
• History 300 – History at Work (Fall 2022)