Ana María Díaz Burgos

  • Eric and Jane Nord Associate Professor of Hispanic Studies
  • Chair of Hispanic Studies

Areas of Study

Education

  • BA, Universidad de Los Andes, 2004
  • MA, Emory University, 2009
  • PhD, Emory University, 2011

Biography

Ana María Díaz Burgos specializes in early-modern literary and cultural studies from a transatlantic perspective, with an emphasis on gender and social history. Her research focuses on the intersections of legal systems, institutional practices, and female subjectivities in Hispanic territories.

Her book Tráfico de saberes: Agencia femenina, hechicería e inquisición en Cartagena de Indias 1610-1614 (Iberoamericana-Vervuert 2020) examines urban space, social networks, and female agency in the inquisitorial trials for sorcery recorded in Cartagena de India’s first auto de fe (1614). Drawing on Inquisition and conventual documents, Tráfico de saberes offers a portrait of women’s lives at the time the Holy Office was adjusting to the Caribbean. Tráfico de saberes received an honorable mention from the Latin American Studies Association-Colombia Section’s Monserrat Ordóñez Award (2020-2023).

Her work has appeared in edited volumes and academic journals such as Edad de oro, Dieciocho, the Colonial Latin American Historical Review, and Revista de Estudios de Género y Sexualidades. She has served on the boards of Asociación de Estudios de Género y Sexualidades (AEGS) and Grupo de Estudios sobre la Mujer en España y Las Américas (pre-1800) (GEMELA).

She teaches courses on early-modern literature and culture, transatlantic women’s literary and cultural history, Inquisition, and Spanish language and culture. She received the Oberlin Excellence Award 2023. She co-curated with Hannah Kinney and 33 students the exhibition What's in a Spell? Love Magic, Healing and Punishment in the Early Modern Hispanic World, which was exhibited in the Ripin Gallery at the Allen Memorial Art Museum in Fall 2023.

  • "Transatlantic Sorcery and Witchcraft" Routledge Resources Online – The Renaissance World (Forthcoming 2025).
  • “Inquisitorial Mission or Colonial Protocol: Re-thinking the Spanish Black Legend in the Long Eighteenth Century Cartagena de Indias.” The Black Legend of Spain and its Empire in the Eighteenth Century: Constructing National Identities, edited by Jaffe, Catherine M., and Karen Stolley. Oxford University Studies in the Enlightenment. (Liverpool University Press, 2024) pp. 103-126.
  • “Transgresión y envejecimiento: El caso de Doña María Ortiz Nieto (1683-1702)” Edad de Oro. Num. 42 ( 2023) pp. 217-235.
  • Coeditor with Dr. Yamile Silva, Thematic dossier “Yo llana estoy’: jerarquías, transgresiones y despliegues de género en América hispana colonial (1492-1898),” Revista de Estudios de Género y Sexualidades 48.1 (June 2022). This dossier received the GEMELA Collaborative Project Award 2024.
  • “Marital Pains, Heterodox Cures: Alternative Economies of Sorcery and Witchcraft in the Inquisition of Cartagena de Indias.” Women Facing the Inquisition (New Hispanisms: Cultural and Literary Studies), edited by María Jesús Zamora Calvo. Louisiana State University Press (2021) pp. 183-201.
  • “Juana María Alvárez, Eighteenth Century New Granada.” As If She Were Free: A Collective Biography of Women and Emancipation in the Americas, edited by Erica Ball, Tatiana Seijas and Terri Snyder. Cambridge University Press. (2020) pp. 218–235. 
  • Tráfico de saberes: agencia femenina, hechicería e Inquisición en Cartagena de Indias (1614–1610). Iberoamericana-Vervuert (2020).
    • Tráfico de saberes received an honorable mention from the Latin American Studies Association-Colombia Section’s Monserrat Ordóñez Award (2020-2023).
  • “Tras la conjuración de brujería en Cartagena de Indias (1634–1636): Retractaciones, espacios carcelarios y tortura.” Special Issue Mujer e inquisición en las letras áureas. Edad de oro. Num. 38 (2019) pp. 315–327.
  • “‘Hacerse digno de buena muerte’: Devoción y arrepentimiento femeninos en la Historia de la Villa Imperial de Potosí 1700-1720.” Dieciocho 39.1 (Spring 2016) pp. 63–80. 
  • “A Cartography of Sorcery: Mapping the First Auto de Fe in Cartagena de Indias, 1614,” Colonial Latin American Historical Review 1:3 (Summer 2013) pp. 243–272.

  • Ofensiva a los oídos piadosos. Obscenidad y censura en la poesía española y novohispana del siglo XVIII, by Elena Deanda Camacho. Mexican Studies/Estudios Mexicanos. Mexican Studies/Estudios Mexicanos. 39.3. (2023) pp. 480-483.
  • The Routledge Companion to the Hispanic Enlightenment, edited by Elizabeth Franklin Lewis, Mónica Bolufer Peruga, and Catherine M. Jaffe.  Hispanic American Historical Review vol. 101, no. 4 (November 2021) pp. 721-723.
  • Baptism through Incision. The postmortem Cesarean Operation in the Spanish Empire, by Martha Few, Zeb Tortorici, and Adam Warren. Colonial Latin American Review, 30:1 (2020) pp. 176–177.
  • “No se hace pueblo sin ellas” Mujeres españolas en el virreinato del Perú: Emigración y movilidad social (siglos XVI-XVII), by Amelia Almorza Hidalgo. Early Modern Women 14.2 (Spring 2020) pp. 172–174.
  • The Routledge Research Companion to Early Modern Spanish Women Writers, edited by Baranda Leturio and Anne Cruz. Revista de Estudios de Género y Sexualidades 44.1 (Summer 2018) pp. 145–147.
  • Violent Delights, Violent Ends: Sex, Race and Honor in Colonial Cartagena de Indias, by Nicole von Germeten. Colonial Latin American Historical Review 2:3 (Summer 2014) pp. 435–437.
  • The Wrath of God: Lope de Aguirre, Revolutionary of the Americas, by Evan L. Balkan. Studies in Latin American Popular Culture. Volume 32:1 (May 2014) pp. 168–170.

 

Fall 2024

Advanced Conversation and Communication in Spanish — HISP 313

Bad Education: Female Instruction in Ibero-America — GSFS 408

Bad Education: Female Instruction in Ibero-America — HISP 408

Capstone — HISP 501

Spring 2025

Beyond a World of Wonders: Questioning Narratives of the Conquest — HISP 317

Latin American Feminisms: Debates, Dialogues, and Communal Experiences — HISP 360

Capstone — HISP 501

Notes

Ana María Díaz Burgos Receives Honorable Mention for Monograph

April 17, 2024

Eric and Jane Nord Associate Professor of Hispanic Studies Ana María Díaz Burgos received an Honorable Mention from the Latin American Studies Association-Colombia Section's Monserrat Ordóñez Award for Best Book for her monograph, Tráfico de saberes: agencia femenina, hechicería e Inquisición en Cartagena de Indias (1610-1614). The award had been paused in the pandemic, and resumed this year, honoring books published between 2020 and 2023.

Ana María Díaz Burgos Gives Talk and Reviews Publication

July 29, 2020

Ana María Díaz Burgos, assistant professor of Hispanic Studies, gave a virtual public talk on the Inquisition in Cartagena de Indias as part of the Clases Abiertas Series (translated to "Open Classes") at the Universidad de los Andes, located in Colombia. She also reviewed the publication “No se hace pueblo sin ellas:” Mujeres españolas en el virreinato del Perú: Emigración y movilidad social (siglos XVI–XVII) by Amelia Almorza Hidalgo for Early Modern Women: An Interdisciplinary Journal.

Ana María Díaz Burgos Publishes Scholarly Monograph

July 1, 2020

Assistant Professor of Hispanic Studies Ana María Díaz Burgos published the scholarly monograph Tráfico de saberes: Agencia femenina, hechicería e Inquisición en Cartagena de Indias (1610-1614) (translated to: Trafficking Knowledges: Female Agency, Sorcery and Inquisition in Cartagena de Indias (1610-1614)). Through a deep engagement with archival materials, the book reconstructs and studies the life of doña Lorenzana de Acereto, a woman from Cartagena's creole elite who was persecuted for sorcery in the Inquisition's first "auto de fe" in the 17th century Caribbean.

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