Dr Caroline Williams BA, PhD (Warwick)

Contact Details

• Telephone: (0117) 928 9877
• Fax: (0117) 331 8010
• Email: caroline.williams@bris.ac.uk
• Room: 1.49, 15 Woodland Road
• Research Publications

Teaching:

I teach on the following undergraduate units:

• HISP20081 ‘Spiritual Children’: Daily Life in the Catholic Missions of Colonial Spanish America
• HISP20046    Nationalism & National Identity in Argentina 1810-1955
• HISP30032    Conquest and Colonisation: Spanish America, 1492-1700
• HISP30083    Spain and Portugal in the Atlantic World, 1430-1830

At MA Level, I contribute to a number of core courses:

• ‘Critical Questions in Latin American Historiography’, for the MA in Latin American History
• ‘Constructing Identities’, for the Identities and Culture Pathway (MA Modern Languages)
• ‘Themes in the History of Colonialism’, for MA Empires (Historical Studies).

I also offer two optional units that can be taken by students on any of these programmes and pathways:

• Crossing Boundaries: Identity and Culture in the Early Modern Atlantic World
• Colonial Encounters: Spanish America c. 1492-1700

Research:

My principal research interests are in the colonisation of indigenous groups on the frontiers of Spain’s empire in the Americas, and cultural and commercial exchanges across imperial boundaries in the Atlantic World. I am currently working on a new study of indigenous-European relations on the contested frontier of Atlantic Honduras and Nicaragua, framed by the Anglo-Spanish conflicts of 1779-1783 and 1796-1802. I am also working on a biography of Robert Hodgson, adventurer, contrabandist, and one-time Superintendent of the ‘Mosquito Shore’.

Recent and Forthcoming Publications:

Bridging the Early Modern Atlantic World: Peoples, Products, and Practices on the Move, ed. and with an Introduction by Caroline A. Williams (Ashgate, 2009).

‘Adaptation and Appropriation on the Colonial Frontier: Indigenous Leadership in the Colombian Chocó, 1670-1808’, Bulletin of Latin American Research, Vol. 26, No. 2 (2007), pp. 181-199.

Between Resistance and Adaptation: Indigenous Peoples and the Colonisation of the Chocó, 1510-1753(Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2004).

‘Resistencia y rebelión en la frontera española: reacciones autóctonas a las colonización en el Chocó colombiano, 1670-1690’, Boletin Cultural y Bibliográfico del Banco de la República (Bogotá), Vol.XLI, No.65, 2004, pp. 33-57.