Bartolomé de las Casas, O.P.: History, Philosophy, and Theology in the Age of European Expansion marks a critical point in Lascasian scholarship. The result of the collaborative work of seventeen prominent scholars, contributions span the fields of history, Latin American studies, literary criticism, philosophy and theology. The volume offers to specialists and non-specialists alike access to a rich and thoughtful overview of nascent colonial Latin American and early modern Iberian studies in a single text.
Contributors: Rolena Adorno; Matthew Restall; David Thomas Orique, O.P.; Rady Roldán-Figueroa; Carlos A. Jáuregui; David Solodkow; Alicia Mayer; Claus Dierksmeier; Daniel R. Brunstetter; Víctor Zorrilla; Luis Fernando Restrepo; David Lantigua; Ramón Darío Valdivia Giménez; Eyda M. Merediz; Laura Dierksmeier; Guillaume Candela, and Armando Lampe.
David Thomas Orique, O.P. (Ph.D., University of Oregon) is Associate Professor at Providence College. His is author of To Heaven or to Hell: Bartolomé de Las Casas’s Confesionario (Penn State, 2018), and co-editor of Oxford Handbook of Latin American Christianity (2019). Rady Roldán-Figueroa (Th.D., Boston University) is Associate Professor at Boston University. He is the author of The Ascetic Spirituality of Juan de Avila (1499-1569) (Brill, 2010), and co-editor of Collected Works of Hanserd Knollys: Pamphlets on Religion (2017).
"This collection of extremely well-written and well-researched articles has managed to not only say some but very many new things about a seemingly over-studied subject. The editors and authors of this work are most assuredly to be congratulated."
Donald J. Kagay, University of Dallas. in The Sixteenth Century Journal 52.1 (2021): 165–167
“This new volume’s selection of themes and authors, as well as its overall design, makes it one of the last decade’s most significant contributions to research on the sixteenth-century Dominican and bishop of Chiapas. […] Orique and Roldán-Figueroa have done splendid work as editors in selecting essays that demonstrate the enduring history and complexity of Las Casas’s polemical propositions, which have shaped modern intellectual thinking about liberation, equality, and social justice.”
Santa Arias, University of Kansas. In: Hispanic American Historical Review, Vol. 101, No. 2 (May 2021), pp. 314–316.
“The introductory essay alone is worth obtaining the book, as it provides a fantastic bibliography for scholarship on Las Casas as well as a succinct but informative history of the reception of Las Casas by scholars from the nineteenth century to present day. Interested readers are directed to more detailed accounts of this history, but the framework of “three waves” provided by Orique and Roldán-Figueroa allows the essays that follow to fall into place as part of the 'third wave' of Lascasian scholarship. By this they mean that the volume is intentionally interdisciplinary in its content, as well as international in its scope. Without choosing either Latin America or Spain as the primary locus for interpreting Las Casas’s life, the editors and collaborators reveal the continued importance of Las Casas for a variety of projects and histories.”
Catherine Kuiper, Hillsdale College. In: Journal of Markets and Morality, Vol. 23, No. 1 (2020), pp. 237–238.
The editors of this volume envision that both specialists and non-specialists will value this work. Specialists will have the latest and most comprehensive multidisciplinary scholarship from leading Lascasian experts available in one volume. Non-specialists will have access to a rich and thoughtful overview of nascent colonial Latin American and early modern Iberian studies in a single text. Furthermore, both readerships will appreciate scholarly features to aid them in their research, such as detailed bibliographies, a topical index, and a list of contributing scholars. Keywords: Bartolomé de las Casas (1484-1566); Order of Preachers; Dominicans; Catholic missions; colonial Latin America; Spain; Conquest of Mexico; slavery; Just War; Human Rights; Franciscans; Canary Islands; Moctezuma; history of art; Puritans; New England; Utopianism; sixteenth century; Francisco de Vitoria (c. 1483–1546).