Format: This lecture is presented in hybrid format: in-person in 1014 Tisch Hall and virtual via Zoom webinar (register: https://myumi.ch/bRb7x).

Description: Lima, Peru, 1605. What matters when the coincidence of an apocalyptic sermon by a famous holy man and a visiting orchestrator of devotion turns out to have been largely invented to serve the needs of the latter and the readers for whom he dreamed? Perched between the prospects of recovery and oblivion, a public mindset emerges that illuminates the early modern Spanish world and speaks to our times.

Biography: Kenneth Mills (D.Phil Oxon, 1992), J. Frederick Hoffman Professor of History, investigates the histories of the early modern Iberian world and of colonial Latin America. His emphases fall on religious and cultural transformations, and on the interpretation of people's thinking and interactions within idiosyncratically and fragmentarily reported episodes. Professor Mills's scholarship is notable for its trans-oceanic vision and its cross-disciplinary curiosity. His recent published works include the multi-author and multi-discipline Lexikon of the Hispanic Baroque: Transatlantic Exchange and Transformation, coordinated and edited with Evonne Levy (University of Texas Press, 2013).

This event presented by the Eisenberg Institute for Historical Studies. It is made possible in part by a generous contribution from Kenneth and Frances Aftel Eisenberg.