Among the most distinctive features of early modern social exclusion were Iberian concepts of “purity of blood.” In our conference, we explore distinct concepts of “purity” in the early modern Iberian world, their origins, modes of representation and implementation, their travels to and translations into colonial settings, as well as their enactments and entanglements with notions of skin color, “raza,” “casta,” “calidad,” and others.

Even though studies of “purity of blood” have been augmented during the last decades, disciplinary gaps between Jewish Studies, Islamic Studies, Latin American and Early Modern History have often limited our understanding of entanglements and translations between theories and practices in different Iberian settings and contexts. Our conference aims at bringing traditional divides between colonial and postcolonial studies, the local and the global, theory and praxis. We will discuss normative sources and case studies to explore institutional and individual practices in particular settings and contexts; we will ask for continuities and ruptures in “doing purity” across different times and spaces; and we will address questions of self-fashioning, intersectionality, and modes of resistance.

Bildunterschrift: Luis de Mena, Virgin of Guadalupe and castas, 1750 (Muso de America, Madrid).