Jessica Delgado

Jessica Delgado is an Associate Professor in the Departments of History of Art and Women's, Gender, and Sexuality Studies at The Ohio State University. She holds a Ph.D. in History from the University of California at Berkeley (2009) and an M.A. in History from the University of California at Santa Cruz. Her research focuses on religion, race, gender, and sexuality in colonial Latin America, particularly in Mexico during the 16th-18th centuries. She previously taught at Princeton University’s Religion Department (2009-2019).

Research Highlights: Her first book, Troubling Devotion: Laywomen and the Church in Colonial Mexico, 1630-1770, examines how laywomen shaped colonial religious landscapes. Her current project, The Beata of the Black Habit: Race, Sexuality, and Religious Authority in Late Colonial Mexico, explores gender, race, and religious culture through the trial of a female mystic.

Advising & Grants: Open to graduate advisees in Autumn 2021. Her work intersects colonial Catholicism, embodiment, and the materiality of devotion in the early modern Atlantic World.