Netherlands Institute for Advanced Study in the Humanities and Social Sciences
Netherlands
fellow
Kenneth Reynold Mills
2023-2024
Home institution
University of Michigan
Country of origin (home institution)
United States
Discipline(s)
Colonial and postcolonial history
Modern history
Religious sciences
Theme(s)
Post-colonialism
Religion
Fellowship dates
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Biography
Kenneth Mills (born c. 1964) is a Canadian-born historian of the early modern Spanish world. He serves as the J. Frederick Hoffman Professor of History at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, Michigan.
His research focuses on the religious and cultural transformations in the trans-oceanic Iberian world, particularly the development and adaptation of Catholic Christianities in sixteenth and seventeenth-century Spanish America.
Research Project
The Journey of Diego de Ocaña
A friar dispatched by his Hieronymite monastery at the sanctuary of Our Lady of Guadalupe in Extremadura, Spain, in 1599, Diego de Ocaña travelled to Peru on a journey of alms collection, sacred foundation, and correction. He kept revising an account of his seven-year journey up to his death in 1608. Ocaña’s untitled recollections are those of a reader with a keen ear for local talk, and his work is driven by a desire for an adventurous, more satisfying reality.
Kenneth Mills aims to humanise a history often lost beneath abstract notions of “spiritual conquest,” “mission,” and “conversion.” Through the example of Diego de Ocaña, he explores how Catholic Christianity spread and pluralised in the early modern Spanish world and what this might reveal about the inner workings of an aspirant global empire.
Research Interests:
Early modern Catholic missions; colonial Peru; religious conversion narratives; Spanish empire