Joan C. Bristol received her PhD in history at the University of Pennsylvania. She is the author of Christians, Blasphemers, and Witches: Afro-Mexican Ritual Practice in the Seventeenth Century (University of New Mexico Press, Diálogos series, 2007). Her articles appear in the Boletín del Archivo General de la Nación (Mexico), the Journal of Colonialism and Colonial History, and several edited volumes. Her current research interests include the intersection of gender and racial ideologies in colonial Spanish America and the history of pulque and mezcal in Mexico. Professor Bristol has served as secretary and chair of the Colonial Studies Committee of the Conference on Latin American History. Professor Bristol is affiliated with the Center for Global Studies and the Latin American Studies, Honors, and New Century College programs at George Mason.
Current Research
Distilling Identities: From Pulque to Tequila in Mexico, 1428-Present
Selected Publications
“Finding Saints in an Alley: Afro-Mexicans in Early Eighteenth-Century Mexico City,” in Expanding the Diaspora: Africans to Colonial Latin America, eds. Sherwin Bryant, Rachel O’Toole, and Ben Vinson III, University of Illinois Press, 2012
“You are What You Drink? Tequila, Maguey, and Mexican Identity,” in Global Studies Review, GMU Center for Global Studies, vol. 7, no. 1, Spring 2011.
“Potions and Perils: Love-Magic in Seventeenth-Century Afro-Mexico and Afro-Yucatan,” with Matthew Restall, in Black Mexico, eds. Ben Vinson III and Matthew Restall, University of New Mexico Press, 2009.
“Patriarchs, Petitions, and Prayers: Intersections of Gender and Calidad in Colonial Mexico,” in Gender and Religion in the Atlantic World, eds. Lisa Vollendorf and Daniella Kostroun, University of Toronto Press, 2009.
Christians, Blasphemers, and Witches: Afro-Mexican Ritual Practice in the Seventeenth Century,University of New Mexico Press, 2007.
“From Curing to Witchcraft: Afro-Mexicans and the Mediation of Authority,” in Journal of Colonialism and Colonial History, volume 7, no. 1, Spring 2006.
Courses Taught
History 125: Global History
History 271: Survey of Colonial Latin America
History 365: Conquest and Colonization in Latin America
History 510: Approaches to Modern World History
History 525: The Atlantic World
History 610: Study and Writing of History
Recent Presentations
Latin American Studies Association, May 2012, “Bar Fights: Drinking, Disorder, and Ethnic Profiling in Colonial Oaxaca”
American Society for Ethnohistory, October 2011, “Drinking Coyotes: Racializing Pulque in Eighteenth-Century Mexico”
Society of Early Americanists, March 2011, “Creole Pride in the City: Phillis Wheatley’s Boston and Juana Esperanza de San Alberto’s Puebla,” with Tamara Harvey
Mary Washington University, October 2010, invited talk in Women’s and Gender Studies program, “Gender Qualities and Calidad in New Spain”
VI Coloquio Africanías (México, D.F.), September 2010, Roundtable participant, Africanos y afrodescendientes en la história de México: nuevos temas, enfoques y perspectivas