Keynote

Sons, parents, and God: a struggle of wills in colonial Lima, Peru

            In seventeenth-century Lima, teenagers were expected to obey their parents and revere God.  Yet some rebelled against their fathers, mothers, and even the powerful Catholic Church to make their own choices.  Legal cases from 1680-1720 show that the cost could be high: abuse, exile, and even kidnapping.  These examples of tense conflict help us understand the private lives of young men as they navigated the demands of parental expectations and religious vocation. 

After completing his Ph.D. at the University of Texas, Austin in 2008, Dr. Cory Conover joined Augustana University to teach Latin American history.  His academic studies (such as Pious imperialism published with University of New Mexico Press in 2019) delve into the innerworkings of the Catholic Church to uncover the religious beliefs and practices of the Spanish Empire.  Dr. Conover’s latest project examines how clerics bent the institutions of the Catholic Church to favor family members and maintain bonds to parents, siblings, and children.  This research has taken him to archives in Mexico, Colombia, Bolivia, Peru, Spain, and Rome.