Global Catholicism in 10 Objects 1521-the Present

Catalog description

This course interrogates the phenomenon of global Catholicism, beginning in 1521—a year that marks both Magellan’s arrival in the Philippines and Cortés’ defeat of the Aztec Empire—through seventeenth-century China and eastern Canada, across the Atlantic between Africa and the Americas, via the eighteenth-century revolutions in Latin America, into the nineteenth century and the age of empire, and beyond to the mid-century decolonization of Africa and experimentations in Catholicism untethered to Rome. Although we could have chosen a different point of origin for our exploration of global Catholicism, the year 1521 seemed to us as good as any—and, indeed, maybe better than most, highlighting the ways in which Catholicism’s global migrations were, from the beginning, entangled with histories of exploration, empire, biological exchange, and conquest.