Reading Sources for Colonial Spanish American History: A Guide, ed. J Cobo Betancourt, S Muñoz Arbeláez and Natalie Cobo

Paperwork was the central technology of the Spanish empire, making possible the administration of vast territories and diverse peoples, and the work of historians. These sources, the circumstances and processes of their production, and the granular histories of their preservation and interpretation are also at the centre of a new turn in scholarship across the field of colonial Latin American studies. As recent scholarship has called for a greater attention to the shape of the archive, and drawn attention to new ways of reading old materials to reveal new voices and perspectives, an up to date guide to the different genres and typologies of sources, the ways in which they have been interpreted, and new approaches to their study is more needed than ever before. We propose to gather a diverse group of scholars, bringing together established historians and new voices, across the Anglophone world and Latin America, to produce a guide to reading sources for colonial Spanish America.

Our proposal for this volume is under review with Routledge.