DEPARTMENT OF HISTORY

Interests

Geographic Field(s):  Latin American and Caribbean History; Global History

Thematic Field(s):  Religious History; History of Science, Technology, and Medicine

Principal Research Interest(s):  Mexico; History of Medicine; History of Religion

Biography

Paul Ramírez (Ph.D., University of California, Berkeley, 2010) is a specialist in the history of Mexico. He has published articles and book chapters on the coordination of response to disease epidemics, the cultural and religious aspects of medical technology, and the politics of reform in Bourbon Mexico. His book monograph, titled Enlightened Immunity: Mexico's Experiments with Disease Prevention in the Age of Reason (Stanford University Press, 2018), examines the rituals, genres, and upheavals in medicine and politics that accompanied efforts to adopt preventive methods in rural Mexico. His second book project, tentatively titled Salt of the Santos: A History of Devoted Work, explores the neglected religious associations involved in the harvest and consumption of salt in Mexico. His research has been supported by the Newberry Library, the Huntington Library, the University of California’s Institute for Mexico and the U.S. (UC MEXUS), Harvard’s David Rockefeller Center for Latin American Studies, and the Notre Dame Institute for Advanced Study. 

Affiliated Programs

Latin American and Caribbean Studies Program 

Science in Human Culture Program

Publications

Books

• Enlightened Immunity: Mexico's Experiments with Disease Prevention in the Age of Reason (Stanford University Press, 2018)

Articles and Book Chapters

• “‘Like Herod’s Massacre:’ Quarantines, Bourbon Reform, and Popular Protest in Oaxaca’s Smallpox Epidemic, 1796-97.” The Americas 69:2 (October 2012): 203-235. Winner of the 2013 Latin American Studies Association (LASA) Tibesar Prize. 
• “Enlightened Publics for Public Health: Assessing Disease in Colonial Mexico,” Endeavour 37:1 (March 2013): 3-12 [Special issue: “Continuity and Change in the History of Mexican Public Health”].
• “Out of Tlatelolco’s Ruins: Patronage, Devotion, and Natural Disaster at the Shrine of Our Lady of the Angels, 1745-1781,” Hispanic American Historical Review 93:1 (February 2013): 33-65. (with William B. Taylor).
• “Double Vision: Dichotomies in the Study of Latin America,” in Imagining Histories of Colonial Latin America: Synoptic Methods and Practices, eds. Karen Melvin and Sylvia Sellers-García (Albuquerque: The University of New Mexico Press, 2017), 29-45. Winner of the 2018 D. Scott Palmer Best Edited Volume Prize, New England Council of Latin American Studies.

Teaching Interests

Professor Ramírez teaches lecture courses on the broader history of Latin America, including courses on disease and healing and on the status of native Americans within nation states, as well as seminars on European conquest, Catholic practice, and the records of the Inquisition.

• History 103: Conquest in Latin America
• History 260-1: Colonial Latin America
• History 300: Sickness and Health in Latin America
• History 366: Liberalism and the Indian Problem
• History 393: Catholicisms in the Americas (Approaches to History)
• History 395: Society and Inquisition (Research Seminar)

Recent Awards and Honors

• Distinguished Fellow, Notre Dame Institute for Advanced Study, 2016-2017
• Consortium for American Indian Studies Faculty Fellow, Newberry Library, 2016-2017