Jessica L. Delgado – författare

Religion in the Américas explores the fluid, dynamic, and complex nature of religion across Latin America and its diasporic communities in the United States. Utilizing a transdisciplinary and trans-hemispheric lens, this groundbreaking anthology transcends traditional scholarly boundaries—geographical, disciplinary, and temporal—as it explores ideas and cultural practices that share a common history of Iberian colonialism.This robust collection of essays forges a dialogue among scholars throughout the Americas who represent a variety of disciplinary perspectives. The book is divided into five sections: "Fluidity in the Afro-Latine Diaspora," "Aesthetics in Las Américas," "Critical Feminist Epistemologies and Activism," "The Limits of Institutional Religion," and "Spiritual Invasions and Contagions." Throughout the volume, the concept of "experience" serves as a foundational lens, as chapters examine how individuals and communities actively interpret and negotiate their realities within diverse historical and social contexts.Focusing on religion as a culturally conditioned epistemic practice, Religion in the Américas invites readers to engage with religion in the Americas on multiple, intersecting levels of knowledge, including local insights, scholarly analyses, and the positionality and queries of readers themselves. The book's dialogical approach encourages not only continual reevaluation of the complexities of religious experience in the Americas but also creative innovation that will inspire new avenues of inquiry.

Religion in the Américas explores the fluid, dynamic, and complex nature of religion across Latin America and its diasporic communities in the United States. Utilizing a transdisciplinary and trans-hemispheric lens, this groundbreaking anthology transcends traditional scholarly boundaries—geographical, disciplinary, and temporal—as it explores ideas and cultural practices that share a common history of Iberian colonialism.This robust collection of essays forges a dialogue among scholars throughout the Americas who represent a variety of disciplinary perspectives. The book is divided into five sections: "Fluidity in the Afro-Latine Diaspora," "Aesthetics in Las Américas," "Critical Feminist Epistemologies and Activism," "The Limits of Institutional Religion," and "Spiritual Invasions and Contagions." Throughout the volume, the concept of "experience" serves as a foundational lens, as chapters examine how individuals and communities actively interpret and negotiate their realities within diverse historical and social contexts.Focusing on religion as a culturally conditioned epistemic practice, Religion in the Américas invites readers to engage with religion in the Americas on multiple, intersecting levels of knowledge, including local insights, scholarly analyses, and the positionality and queries of readers themselves. The book's dialogical approach encourages not only continual reevaluation of the complexities of religious experience in the Americas but also creative innovation that will inspire new avenues of inquiry.

In the first history of laywomen and the church in colonial Mexico, Jessica L. Delgado shows how laywomen participated in and shaped religious culture in significant ways by engaging creatively with gendered theology about women, sin, and guilt in their interactions with church sacraments, institutions, and authorities. Taking a thematic approach, using stories of individuals, institutions, and ideas, Delgado illuminates the diverse experiences of urban and rural women of Indigenous, Spanish, and African descent. By centering the choices these women made in their devotional lives and in their relationships to the aspects of the church they regularly encountered, this study expands and challenges our understandings of the church's role in colonial society, the role of religion in gendered and racialized power, and the role of ordinary women in the making of colonial religious culture.