Martha Few
· Associate Head, Department of History Liberal Arts Professor of Latin American History and Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality StudiesPennsylvania State University · History
Active 1995–2026
About
Professor Martha Few is an Associate Head of the Department of History and a Liberal Arts Professor of Latin American History and Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies at Penn State University. Her academic specialization focuses on colonial history in the Maya region, emphasizing Indigenous perspectives and experiences. Her research often explores themes related to medicine and public health, gender and sexuality, environmental history, and human-animal studies. Professor Few has authored several notable books, including 'Baptism Through Incision: The Postmortem Cesarean Operation in the Spanish Empire,' which received the Teaching Edition Prize from The Society for the Study of Early Modern Women and Gender, and 'For All of Humanity: Mesoamerican and Colonial Medicine in Enlightenment,' awarded honorable mention for the Bandelier-Lavrin Book Prize. She has also written 'Women Who Live Evil Lives: Gender, Religion, and the Politics of Power in Colonial Guatemala' and co-edited 'Centering Animals in Latin American History.' Her scholarly work has been recognized through fellowships from the American Council of Learned Societies, Harvard University’s David Rockefeller Center for Latin American Studies, the Newberry Library, the John Carter Brown Library, and the Humanities Institute at Penn State. Currently, she is working on a new book titled 'Insects and the Making of the New World,' which examines human relationships with six insects, and is co-authoring a monograph on the history of the cesarean operation from the 17th to 19th centuries. Her research contributions include numerous journal articles and book chapters on topics such as colonial medicine, indigenous healing practices, environmental history, and the social impacts of natural disasters in Latin America.
Research topics
- History
- Art
- Sociology
- Geography
- Ethnology
Selected publications
Doctrine and disease in the British and Spanish colonial world
The Seventeenth Century · 2026-03-04
article1st authorCorrespondingThe tame and the wild: people and animals after 1492
Colonial Latin American Review · 2025-01-02
article1st authorCorrespondingCreatures of Fashion: Animals, Global Markets, and the Transformation of Patagonia
Hispanic American Historical Review · 2025-04-29
article1st authorCorrespondingBiodiversity in Mesoamerica in the Colonial Period
Bielefeld University Press eBooks · 2024-08-22
book-chapterOpen accessSenior authorBiodiversity in Mesoamerica in the Colonial Period
Bielefeld University Press / transcript Verlag eBooks · 2024-08-02
book-chapterSenior authorInsects, Illness, and Other Biological Contestations
Oxford University Press eBooks · 2024-03-19
book-chapter1st authorCorrespondingAbstract For eight consecutive years, from 1798 to 1806, locust swarms repeatedly afflicted a significant portion of colonial Central America and southern Mexico. The locusts had economic, food supply, and biological effects on human populations far beyond the areas of the swarms’ physical and temporal presence. They also intersected with significant outbreaks of epidemic disease, including smallpox, measles, and typhus, during the same time period. These events, and economic, political, and religious responses to the insects, provides a case study in colonial food security, where various regions in Spanish America shared information on the swarms and their movements and came to each other’s aid with food supplies and seeds. They diverted tributary Indigenous labor from agricultural production to locust-killing campaigns. Local elites and members of scientific societies attempted agricultural innovation strategies and searched for new locust-killing methods amid this multiyear swarm.
Isis · 2022-12-02 · 1 citations
article1st authorCorrespondingThe Curing World of María García, an Indigenous Healer in Eighteenth-Century Guatemala
University of Pittsburgh Press eBooks · 2021-09-14 · 1 citations
book-chapter1st authorCorrespondingJournal of Global History · 2020-11-01 · 12 citations
article1st authorCorrespondingAbstract This article explores the tensions between well-intentioned humanitarianism and coercive colonialism during smallpox outbreaks in eighteenth-century Guatemala, when the state extended inoculation programmes to its predominant, culturally diverse Maya communities. Evidence from anti-epidemic campaigns shows public debates broadly comparable to the current COVID-19 crisis: debates about the measurably higher mortality rates for indigenous people and other marginalized groups; debates about the extent of the state’s responsibility for the health of its peoples; and debates on whether or not coercion and violence should be used to ensure compliance with quarantines and public health campaigns. While inoculations provided medical assistance and material help to Maya communities, and resulted in demonstrably lower mortality rates from smallpox, at the same time they functioned as avenues for the expansion of colonial power to intervene in the daily lives of people in those communities, characterized by colonial actors as necessary for their own good, and for the broader public good.
Penn State University Press eBooks · 2020-04-22
book-chapter1st authorCorresponding
Frequent coauthors
- 18 shared
Rachel O'toole
University of Wisconsin–Madison
- 10 shared
Zeb Tortorici
- 9 shared
Marco Curátola Petrocchi
Pontifical Catholic University of Peru
- 9 shared
Galen Brokaw
- 9 shared
Martha Chaik- Lin
University of Wisconsin–Madison
- 9 shared
Víctor Maqque
Texas Christian University
- 9 shared
Rolena Adorno
- 9 shared
Vio Lence
University of Wisconsin–Madison
Awards & honors
- Teaching Edition Prize in 2021 from The Society for the Stud…
- Honorable Mention for the 2016 Bandelier-Lavrin Book Prize f…
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