Erin Rowe

About

Erin Rowe is a professor in the Department of History at Johns Hopkins University, with research interests centered on the religious culture of the early modern Iberian world. Her work emphasizes theology, race, gender, and visual culture, exploring how these elements intersected within the context of global Christianity, the Atlantic slave trade, and the veneration of saints. Her 2019 monograph, Black Saints in Early Modern Global Catholicism, investigates the role of black saints and the slaves who venerated them, highlighting how these figures and communities challenged and reshaped notions of race, holiness, and cultural authority during the sixteenth to eighteenth centuries. Her scholarly contributions include examining previously unstudied sculptures and paintings of black saints, analyzing controversies within the church regarding race and salvation, and providing new perspectives on blackness and sanctity in early modern history. Rowe has also co-edited volumes on the early modern Hispanic world, focusing on transnational and interdisciplinary approaches to understanding identity, community, and cultural exchange. Her earlier work, Saint and Nation, explores the symbolic role of sanctity in the national identity of early modern Spain, particularly through the case of St. Teresa of Avila. Rowe's research has been recognized with awards such as the Roland H. Bainton Prize and the Albert C. Outler Prize, and she acts as an editor for the series Iberian Encounter and…

Research topics

• History
• Art
• Art history
• Classics
• Religious studies

Selected publications

• Embodying the Sacred: Women Mystics in Seventeenth-Century Lima

  Hispanic American Historical Review · 2019-10-29 · 44 citations

  article1st authorCorresponding

  In this rigorously researched analysis of the lives of holy women in colonial Lima, Nancy van Deusen offers an exploration of female networks and their particular relationship to embodied holiness. She uses women's engagement with material objects as a primary focus to link a series of case studies, as such objects had both spiritual and didactic potential. As religious women moved in and out of spaces that were exclusively feminine, they communicated theological, devotional, and spiritual knowl…

  PublisherDOI

• Black Saints in Early Modern Global Catholicism

  Cambridge University Press eBooks · 2019-11-25 · 3 citations

  book1st authorCorresponding

  From the sixteenth to the eighteenth centuries, Spanish and Portuguese monarchs launched global campaigns for territory and trade. This process spurred two efforts that reshaped the world: missions to spread Christianity to the four corners of the globe, and the horrors of the transatlantic slave trade. These efforts joined in unexpected ways to give rise to black saints. Erin Kathleen Rowe presents the untold story of how black saints - and the slaves who venerated them - transformed the early…

  PublisherDOI

• Enslaved and Free Black Africans in Early Modern Spain

  2022-03-11 · 1 citations

  book-chapter1st authorCorresponding

  This chapter provides an overview of slavery, the slave trade, and representations of black Africans in early modern Spain. The widespread presence of enslaved and free black Africans in Spain, particularly southern Spain, was an important feature of early modern society. Afro-Spaniards acted as tradesmen, servants, musicians, and dancers, among other activities. This article highlights these activities while focusing on artistic and literary sources that portrayed Afro-Spaniards in a variety of…

  PublisherDOI

• “Black Like Me”: Community Formation and White Backlash

  Cambridge University Press eBooks · 2019-11-26 · 1 citations

  book-chapter1st authorCorresponding

  Analyzes how black confraternities created communities for slave and free Africans, their celebrations, and the racism they faced. It also talks about devotion to black saints in white communities

  PublisherDOI

• The Practice of Humility and Spiritual Authority in the Lives of Black Holy Women

  Cambridge University Press eBooks · 2019-11-26 · 1 citations

  book-chapter1st authorCorresponding

  Turns to living holy people, with an emphasis of black women in convents in Peru, Mexico, and Spain, and the gender of holiness for black women

  PublisherDOI

Frequent coauthors

• Mark Zamani

  3 shared

• Alla Vash‐Margita

  Yale University

  3 shared

• Anna Lynn

  3 shared

• Anne Sailer

  Yale University

  2 shared

• Nadia Solomon

  Yale University

  2 shared

• Alexander M Kuehne

  Yale University

  2 shared

• Christina Lepore

  Yale University

  2 shared

• Kimberly Lynn

  1 shared

Awards & honors

• Roland H. Bainton Prize by Sixteenth Century Studies (2020)
• Albert C. Outler Prize by the American Society of Church His…

Similar researchers at Johns Hopkins University

• Julian Limh-56
• John Marshallh-50
• Lawrence Jacksonh-29