Luis Corteguera

Office: 3630 Wescoe Hall
Phone: 785-864-9469
Email: lcortegu@ku.edu

Associate Professor (Ph.D. Princeton).
Fields of Interest: Early Modern Europe

My research has centered on early modern Spain. My 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.

Other topics I have examined include: “The Painter Who Lost His Hat: Artisans and Justice in Early Modern Barcelona,” Sixteenth Century Journal (1998), 1021–40; “The Making of A Visionary Woman: The Life of Beatriz Ana Ruiz, 1666–1735,” in Women, Texts and Authority in the Early Modern Spanish World, ed. M. Vicente and L. Corteguera (2004); and (with Sherry Velasco) “Authority in the Margins: Reexamining the Autograph Letters between Sor María de Agreda and Philip IV of Spain,” in J. L. Eich, J. L. Gillespie, and L. Harrington, eds., From the Convent Cell to the Imperial Court: Women’s Voices and the Politics of Spanish Empire (2008), 223–48.

More recently, my forthcoming book Seeing the Invisible King: Myth and Monarchy in Early Modern Spain examines real and fictional face-to-face meetings between ordinary people and their monarchs. These dramatic tales of royal encounters were not products of royal propaganda. They drew on powerful myths that governments sought to co-opt for their own interests, but which also inspired men and women to defy their rulers. Royal encounters with ordinary people also inspired some of the most famous works of early modern Spanish literature, such as Lope’s Fuenteovejuna or Calderón de la Barca’s El Alcalde de Zalamea. Coming before the ruler stood as an ideal of good government that shaped how men and women imagined the bond between fathers and children, the soul’s desire for God, even the wisdom hidden under the garb of folly.

Current projects examine the intersection between politics, religion, and visual culture. I am completing Death by Effigy: The Power of Images and the Mexican Inquisition in the Sixteenth Century. It 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.

I am also working on another book project, Talking Images in the Spanish Empire, about the ways in which men and women interacted with God and the king through sacred and royal images.

If you are considering graduate studies under my direction, I strongly urge you to contact me before you apply.