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A National
Endowment for the Directed by Vincent Carey, Ralph Bauer, and Adele Seeff The institute looks beyond the fragmentation that has long served as a trademark of the scholarship of the early modern period to see what emerges from comparative study of representations of inquisitions and persecutions between 1530 and 1700 in Spain, New Spain, England, and New England. Since these national boundaries are anachronistic and an imposition of the modern nationalist order, we will use "inquisitions" and "persecutions" as a means to examine early modern primary texts from a pre-national point of view. What cultural work do representations of inquisitions and persecutions perform in England as the English work to form a cohesive nation and national church, in Spain as part of the counter reformation, and in New Spain and New England as European nations effect the transformation of territories to colonies? In the course of this comparative exploration of early modern cultures, we will juxtapose various manifestations of reform and counter-reform in England and Spain and in their respective colonies in an effort to understand the complex relationship between religious dissent, religious reform, and prevailing political discourses.
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