What inspired you to pursue a career in history, and how did you develop your specific research interests?

When I started college, I was looking for a career that felt meaningful, where I could make a positive difference in the world. At first, I thought I would do that through an Environmental Science major. I’m not sure what I was thinking, as I’m terrible at science. So, I switched to a Political Science major. I enjoyed those classes, but I kept gravitating to History classes, especially Latin American History classes. Those were the classes that challenged me to think in totally new ways that changed how I saw the world, myself, and my place in the world. After graduation, I worked in Mexico for a year with an educational program for young Indigenous women and then spent another year working with Colombian and Salvadoran immigrant youth in Boston. My academic and work experiences led me to pursue a Ph.D. in History with an emphasis on women and religion in Latin American History.

How do your courses contribute to students’ understanding of the relationship between law, history, and society?

Many of my classes offer a kind of people’s history of colonial Latin America. In History 1020 (Latin American History), History 3009 (Women, Sex, and Conquest in Latin America), History 3191 (Afro-Latin America), and History 3192 (Aztec, Inka, Maya), we explore the stories of people who built and sustained their societies but typically lacked wealth and power – Indigenous peoples, enslaved Africans and their descendants, women, and the working-classes. Colonial Latin America was a very legalistic society in which civil and Catholic courts played an active role in everyday life. To understand people’s lives and Latin American history more broadly, we must understand how individuals and communities actively utilized Spanish, Portuguese, and Catholic laws and legal systems to protect themselves and their families and to pursue freedom and social mobility. These legal battles shaped not just individual destinies but also the formation of Latin American societies more generally.

Can you share a specific example from your research or teaching illustrating how legal institutions, laws, or norms have shaped cultural or social change in a particular historical context?

There are multiple examples. One would be the way Spanish law treated Indigenous peoples as vassals of the crown, entitled to rights, protection, and access to the court system. Indigenous communities actively seized on those rights and used the legal system to protect their autonomy and communal properties through the colonial period. Spanish and Portuguese law also ensured the rights of enslaved Africans and Afro-Latin Americans to make contracts, own property, purchase their freedom, and marry the person of their choosing (including free people and people of different racial backgrounds). Afro-Latin Americans utilized these legal rights to pursue freedom from slavery and social mobility. As a result (at least in part), by the late eighteenth century, there were twice as many free Black individuals as there were slaves in Spanish America (by contrast, only 5% of the African American population in the United States was free at that time). These legal systems had wider ripple effects for Latin American societies. At least two of Mexico’s founding fathers, one of whom became president in the 1820s, were Black men and many Latin American countries established themselves as multi-racial democracies when they gained their Independence.

How do you incorporate interdisciplinary approaches, such as political, economic, or cultural perspectives, into your research and teaching, especially in relation to legal systems, norms, and procedures?

In my teaching and research, I’m interested in questions about women and gender, Indigenous and Afro-Latin American communities, and religious practices and institutions in colonial Latin America. Exploring these histories requires an understanding of laws and legal systems, as well as economics, politics, and cultural and religious ideals and norms regarding gender, race, and spiritual practices. For example, most colonial cities in Spanish America had female majorities, sometimes sizable majorities, and numerous female-headed households. This reflected economic realities, namely the demands for female labor in cities and male labor in the countryside. But it was also made possible by Spanish laws, which allowed women extensive economic rights, including buying, selling, and renting properties, running businesses, appearing in court, and entering contracts. Alongside these economic and legal realities were Catholic ideals and Spanish cultural norms, which allowed space and tolerance for single women.

What challenges do historians face when studying the impact of legal systems on different societies, and how do you address these challenges in your work?

In my field, court cases provide a way to access the thoughts, perspectives, and experiences of people who would otherwise be absent from the archive – the poor and working classes, women, Indigenous, enslaved Afro-Latin Americans. Inquisition trials, for example, offer rich and detailed testimonies, not just from the accused but from numerous witnesses as well. But we must read these sources carefully and critically, knowing that people came to the courts with all kinds of interests and under all kinds of pressures. To understand how laws and individual court cases add up to broader impacts on society, we must also look to other kinds of evidence that can show wider trends.

What do you find most rewarding about teaching and mentoring students in your courses?

Seeing students get excited and curious about Latin American history and history in general is by far the most rewarding thing about teaching. It makes my day every time a student says they searched out more information about something we discussed in class out of curiosity or shares how they told their family about a great book we’re reading.

In what ways do you see your course preparing students for careers or further study in fields related to law, history, or public policy?

In my classes, we spend a lot of time practicing key skills required in these fields — the ability to carefully read and analyze complex texts, examine historical patterns and trends, assess the strengths and weaknesses of arguments and evidence, and formulate evidence-based arguments. We also work on research skills in the upper-level courses, including how to find not just any sources but the best sources and then how to work with those sources to understand competing interpretations of a particular historical problem or issue.

What are your favorite undergraduate courses to teach, and why are they your favorites?

It’s hard to pick a favorite! But, in terms of Law, History, and Society, one of my favorites is The Inquisition in Spain and the New World (I’ll be moving this from a 4000-level to a 3000-level to make it more accessible and more frequently offered). Many of the issues we discuss in that class are incredibly timely such as conspiracy theories, antisemitism, racial profiling, and sexism. Students really enjoy the rich primary sources that give us a direct sense of individual lives and experiences, including those of people on the margins of society. I also love teaching History 3009 (Women, Sex, and Conquest in Latin America). Students are very interested and curious because it’s often the first time they have ever studied women’s history in any real depth. Students also find it fascinating how women’s experiences in Latin America were so different from the U.S., due to very different legal systems and cultural norms.

Courses taught that fulfill requirements in the Law, History, and Society Major Concentration:

Find more about Dr. Brianna Leavitt-Alcántara