Claudia Ruth Brosseder

Claudia Ruth Brosseder is an Associate Professor in the Department of History at the University of Illinois, with additional affiliations in the Program in Medieval Studies and the Center for Latin American and Caribbean Studies. She holds a PhD and Habilitation from Munich University, specializing in ethnohistory, archaeology, and art history. Her research reconstructs prehistoric and early colonial Andean ontologies, focusing on human-animal relations, Amazonian-Andean exchanges, and colonial encounters.

Her recent work emphasizes Inka engagements with nature and cosmology, as seen in *Inka Bird Idiom: Amazonian Feathers in the Andes* (2023). Earlier publications include *The Power of Huacas* (2014), which won the American Academy of Religion's Excellence Award, exploring Andean sacred objects and colonial resistance.

Brosseder’s articles analyze colonial Andean rituals, transcultural processes, and indigenous responses to Christianization. They highlight themes like occult scripts, sacred object veneration, and the interplay between Andean and European knowledge systems. Her work bridges multiple disciplines, including environmental history, religious studies, and material culture analysis.

Her academic contributions span early modern Europe and colonial Latin America, with a focus on Germany’s Wittenberg astrologers and Peruvian colonial science. She actively participates in interdisciplinary dialogues about indigenous epistemologies and colonial power structures.