Luis Corteguera
- Professor
- Early Modern Europe; Spain.
Contact Info
Mon. & Wed. | 2:00 PM - 3:00 PM (Online)
Biography —
Luis Corteguera was born and grew up in Puerto Rico, and has studied and worked in Massachusetts, New Jersey, Maine, Ohio, North Carolina, California, and since 1994, Kansas. He earned his PhD from Princeton University in early modern European history, the area in which he has published four books and more than 50 articles and reviews. In addition to winning a Fulbright to Spain, he has received research awards from the National Endowment for the Humanities, the American Council on Learned Societies, the National Humanities Center (North Carolina), and the Huntington Library (California), among other university, national, and international awards. He has also served as chair of the Department of History and president of the Association for Spanish and Portuguese Historical Studies, the main organization of professional Iberian historians in the US. In 2017, he received the Byron A. Alexander College of Liberal Arts and Sciences Graduate Mentor Award. Since 2019, he has been Ahmanson-Murphy Professor of Medieval and Renaissance History.
Research —
Research Profile:
Corteguera’s research has centered on early modern Spain. His first book, For the Common Good: Popular Politics in Barcelona, 1580–1640, examines how popular politics shaped the relations between Madrid and Barcelona in the decades leading to one of the greatest crises in Spanish history, the Catalan Revolt of 1640. He has also edited, with Marta Vicente, Women, Texts and Authority in the Early Modern Spanish World. His book Death by Effigy: A Case from the Mexican Inquisition, recounts a tale of dishonor and revenge that reveals how ordinary men and women appropriated religious symbols for their own purposes, and the terrible consequences of getting caught by the Inquisition. More recently, he has been working on a book project The Science of Myth and the Imaginary Foundations of Power, an interdisciplinary history of ideas that addresses the role of myth and imagination in the politics of sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Europe.
Teaching —
Teaching Profile:
Corteguera teaches undergraduate and graduate courses in early modern history, focusing primarily on Europe from the Renaissance through the eighteenth century and the Spanish Empire. He has served as Senior Honors Coordinator and Director of Graduate Studies. He has chaired or co-chaired more than dozen doctoral and MA committees in History. His doctoral students have focused on a wide range on topics on early modern history dealing with gender, politics, religion, urban, and visual culture in the Spanish Empire from the sixteenth through the eighteenth centuries. If you are considering graduate studies under his direction, Corteguera strongly urges you to contact him before you apply at lcortegu@ku.edu.
Recent Courses:
- From Renaissance to Revolution: Europe, 1500-1789
- The Spanish Inquisition
- Atlantic Empires
- Professional Skills in the Humanities
Selected Publications —
Recent Publications:
- (with Irene Olivares) “The King as Mother: Gendered Metaphors of Power in Early Modern Europe,” Journal of Women’s History, 37, no. 2 (Summer 2025), 12–30.
- “Rethinking Sacred Monarchy from the Spanish Perspective,” special issue on “The Spanish Empire: New Trends,” Mediterranean Studies 32, no. 1 (2024): 80–95.
- “Past, Present, and Future of Catalan History in North America,” Catalan Review 37 (2023), 115–22.
- “The Segadors of La Renaixença: Literature Shaping History,” Catalan Review 36 (2022): 23–43.
- “Pan y Política en la Barcelona de los Siglos XVI y XVII,” in Mercè Renom, ed., Abastecer Barcelona: el municipio y la alimentación de la ciudad, 1329–1930 (Barcelona, 2019):
- “Teresa of Avila, Courtier,” Miríada Hispánica, 16 (2018): 135–45.
- “La política popular de Felipe IV” in José Martínez Millán and Manuel Rodríguez Rivero, eds., La corte de Felipe IV (1621-1665): Reconfiguración de la Monarquía Católica, Tome 3, Vol. 1: Educación del rey y organización política (Madrid: Polifemo, 2017), 360–79.
- “Sacrilege, Profanation, and the Appropriation of Sacred Power in New Spain,” Oxford Research Encyclopedia in Latin American and Caribbean History, April 2016 doi: 0.1093/acrefore/9780199366439.013.237.
- “The Peasant Who Went to Hell: Dreams and Visions in Early Modern Spain,” in Anne Plane and Leslie Tuttle, eds., Dreams, Dreamers and Visions in the Early Modern Atlantic World (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2013).
- “Artisans and the New Science of Politics in Early Modern Europe,” Journal of Medieval and Early Modern Studies, special issue dedicated to “Medieval and Early Modern Artisan Culture,” ed. Margaret A. Pappano and Nicole R. Rice, 43, no. 3 (Fall 2013).
- Death by Effigy: A Case from the Mexican Inquisition (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2012).