Jonathan B. Bird,

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none, currently abroad in Spain.

Education:

MA	Duke University	2007
BA	Washington University in St. Louis	2003

Specialties:

Medieval and Early Modern History

Research Interests: Colonial Latin America, Family History, Legal History, Catholic Church

Current projects: Dissertation:, The Defense of Marriage: Divorce, Marital Reform and Ecclesiastical Justice in New Spain (1544-1700)

My research explores how ecclesiastical judges and other religious authorities attempted an ambitious reform project aimed at regulating the marital and family lives of the inhabitants of New Spain (colonial Mexico). In the wake of the Council of Trent and the Mexican Provincial Councils, ecclesiastical judges and church leaders sought to bring colonial Mexicans into conformity with clarified and rearticulated standards of marital life. My dissertation uses divorce and annulment lawsuits from the Archdiocese of Mexico during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries to explore how these new Tridentine standards affected the regulation of marriage and the administration of ecclesiastical justice by church authorities.

Areas of Interest:

Colonial Mexico, marriage and divorce, gender conflict

Keywords:

Colonial Latin America, Church, Gender, Legal History

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