Catalina Andrango-Walker

Professor Andrango-Walker's reserach seeks to recover the history and material culture of the colonial period in the Andean region by studying non-canonical texts by men and women who were agents of change in their societies. Her first book, El Símbolo católico indiano (1598) de Jerónimo de Oré: saberes coloniales y los problemas de la evangelización en la región andina (Vervuert/Iberoamericana 2018), show how Oré challenged imperial ideology regarding the construction of the Andean people, ideology that was based on contemporary Western theories that associated latitude and the natural environment with human nature and intellect. Her second book, La construcción de la santidad en la región andina. La vida de la beata Juana de Jesús (1662-1703) (Brill, 2022), expands on the study of criollo identity and also incorporates the question of gender in the periphery of the Spanish Empire. 

Currently she is preparing a scholarly edition and English translation of Miguel Cabello Balboa's True Description of the Esmeraldas Province (1583) and co-editing Babel: Multilingual Poetry in Colonial Latin America. In her latest book project, tentatively titled South Meets North America: Viceregal Contacts in the Hispanic World, Andrango-Walker analyzes the connections between the Viceroyalty of Peru and La Florida, which during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries was part of the Viceroyalty of New Spain and included much of what is today the southeastern part of the United States.

Her research has been funded by a number of fellowships and institutions, including DRCLAS at Harvard University, NEH Summer Institute at the Newberry Library, The Mendel Fellowship at the Lilly Library, Dumbarton Oaks Research Library and Collection, and the John Carter Brown Library. She has published many articles and book chapters on religious women, the complicity between race, religion, and colonialism, the representation of Andean female historical figures in contemporary literature and culture, and Quechua poetry, among other topics.