Forging “Pure” Religion: Baroque and Enlightenment Catholicism in the 18th Century

The Center's funds enabled me to present a conference paper based on my developing dissertation. My project examines the encounters between Enlightenment and Baroque devotional imaginaries in the Spanish eighteenth-century, paying close attention to the impact of the Spanish empire's racial, geographic, and cultural diversity. I was invited to present as part of an interdisciplinary panel exploring more historically sensitive "postsecular" treatments of eighteenth-century studies. My paper illustrated how Enlightenment values and assumptions have crept into Western historiography and obscured the unique religious and cultural trajectory of Latin culture and its challenge to Western narratives of secularism and modernity.