Martin Nesvig is a Mexicanist and Hispanist of the early modern world. His research focuses on the sixteenth century and the Inquisition. His first monograph, Ideology and Inquisition: The World of the Censors in Early Mexico (Yale University Press, 2009), examines the legal and ideological origins of the Spanish Inquisition and the ways that institution was applied in the colonial context of Mexico. Rather than present an image of monochromatic thought, the Inquisition in Mexico revealed deep divisions and debates about humanism, the translation of Scripture, Erasmus, sexual norms, witchcraft and blasphemy. This study challenges the assumptions of the Black Legend, revealing the deep ideological and cultural divides within Mexican religious culture.
His work is also broadly informed by an interest in the sociology of religion and the culture of politics in Mexico. This forms the basis for his extensive work on the Inquisition as an ineffective agent of social and spiritual control. He has edited three volumes of books dealing with the social history of religion and ideas in Mexico. Local Religion in Colonial Mexico (University of New Mexico Press, 2006) and Religious Culture in Modern Mexico (Rowman and Littlefield, 2007) examine relationships of religion, politics and society in Mexico. A third volume Forgotten Franciscans (Pennsylvania State University Press, 2011), offers translation of works by largely ignored Franciscans: Alfonso de Castro, theologian and theorist of Inquisition of Salamanca; Alonso Cabello, Spanish-born friar twice convicted of Erasmian heresy; and Inquisitional deputy and missionary, Diego Muñoz. Their works offer continued consideration of the ideological diversity among early modern Catholics.
Currently, he is writing a book about the practical and cultural displeasure for and resistance to Inquisitional power in early Mexico. Tentatively titled The Xolotl Orgy, it reevaluates two perennial themes of historical anthropology. First, it assesses the intent and ability of colonial peoples to resist the designs of centralizing global empires, offering frequently violent opposition to the Inquisition and the missionary enterprise. Second, it examines frontier regions of colonial Mexico as sites of multi-ethnic acculturation, examining the ways that ethnic Spaniards ceased to be purely Spanish and were creolized, adapting to such practices as the consumption of peyote and hallucinogenic mushrooms, persistent worship of Mesoamerican deities, folk magic, and the consumption of Mexican goods like chocolate, chile and tortillas. He received a Charles A. Ryskamp Fellowship from the ACLS for continued work on this project.
He has also begun preliminary research on autochthonous land claims as a way of counterposing Spanish global power in rural New Spain and Spanish Italy. He has conducted research in and about Colima (in western Mexico), New Mexico and Sicily which considers the ways that local peoples asserted ethnic originality as a way of rejecting imperial claims to universal political authority.
In addition to his four books, he has published extensively in leading journals such as: Hispanic American Historical Review, The Americas, Ethnohistory, Latin American Research Review, Mexican Studies/Estudios Mexicanos, Boletín del Archivo General de la Nación, Church History, Colonial Latin American Review, and the Journal of Religious and Theological Information.
In addition to a grant from the ACLS he has received funding from the Mellon Foundation, the Fulbright Commission, and the National Endowment for the Humanities.
Professor Nesvig offers courses on, among other topics, the history of the Inquisition; the Mexican Revolution; the beach; and anarchism.
