James Wadsworth
Associate Professor of History
B.A., Idaho State University
M.A., University of Arizona
Ph.D., University of Arizona
E-mail: jwadsworth@stonehill.edu
Phone: (508) 565-1281
Office: Duffy, 277
Prof. Wadsworth seeks new and innovative ways to examine and understand the social and institutional history of the Portuguese Inquisition and the role the Inquisition has played in shaping the modern world. He is also interested in the broad historical patterns that have shaped and continue to shape our world. His first book entitled Agents of Orthodoxy: Honor, Status and the Inquisition in Colonial Pernambuco Brazil is a collective biography of the men who ran the Inquisition between 1613 and 1821 in the Captaincy General of Pernambuco. His second book, a sequel to Agents of Orthodoxy, shrinks the historical scale by engaging in an experiential microhistory of the career of one formidable comissário who worked between 1770 and 1820. It seeks to understand how one man experienced the Inquisition and how he responded to the challenges and transformations that swept colonial Brazil during the twilight of empire.
Future research projects return to the macro scale examining pre-contact trading systems of the western hemisphere, a global history of blood sacrifice and a history of the world from the perspective of apocalyptic millenarian movements.
Prof. Wadsworth has held several prestigious fellowships including a Fulbright Fellowship to Portugal and regularly presents papers at international conferences.
Courses Taught:
- A World at War
- Colonial Latin America
- Comparative Empires: Spain and Portugal
- Critical Encounters: History (Case Studies in Historical Memory and Controversy)
- Historical Methods and Materials
- History of Brazil
- Inquisition: Myth and History
- Modern Latin America
- Native American History
- World History I and II
- World History Seminar