Faculty and Staff
R. Jovita Baber
Assistant Professor of History
Interested in imperial legal and political systems, and the quotidian experience of native peoples in colonial contexts, R. Jovita Baber specializes in the legal and social history of Colonial Latin America and the early modern Iberian world. Her research focuses on the development of the social, political and legal apparatus governing the Iberian world, and the unique contributions of native people (Native Americans, Africans and Asians) as they acted in and on the developing imperial system. Challenging the notion that empire was imposed on native people, she shows how native people acted-albeit as unequal partners-and contributed to the construction of the empire. She is currently revising a book manuscript, entitled The Construction of Empire: Politics, Law and Community in Tlaxcala, New Spain (1521-1640), which examines the legal and political activities of a native community, Tlaxcala, in New Spain (now, Mexico). She concurrently is editing an anthology entitled Everyday Negotiations: the Making of the Colonial World." She has also published on the teaching and history of sexuality and gender. Her research has been supported by the National Science Foundation, Fulbright-Hays, Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, American Philosophical Society and, most recently, John Carter Brown Library.
Professor Baber received her Ph.D. in history from the University of Chicago in 2005. She teaches undergraduate and graduate courses on colonial Latin American ethnohistory; Latin American legal, social and cultural history; modern Mexico; law, governance and society in early modern Iberian world; and Spain.