Mónica Díaz

About Fellow

Mónica Díaz is a historian of the colonial period in Latin America, with an emphasis on eighteenth-century Mexican ethnohistory. A professor at the University of Kentucky, she is particularly interested in the ways in which Indigenous peoples engaged with colonial institutions such as the Catholic Church, and how race, ethnicity, and gender came into play when Natives asserted power. She also problematizes the disjointed paper trail dispersed in various colonial archives, seeking creative ways to read the performative aspects of text, images, and material culture. Her current book project shows how Indigenous peoples in Mexico capitalized on the Church’s efforts to control them by appropriating a discourse that resonated with enlightened notions, and crafted petitions for additional spaces where they could acquire an education that led to social mobility and prestige.

Díaz received her PhD in 2002 from Indiana University, Bloomington. Her research has been funded by grants from the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Ministry for Cultural Cooperation between Spain and the United States, the Newberry Library, the Lilly Library, and the Fulbright-García Robles. She previously taught at Georgia State University, The University of Texas Pan American, and The University of Texas at Brownsville.

Selected Publications

• Díaz, Mónica. “Indigenous Women Writing and the Problem of Archives.” Early Modern Women: An Interdisciplinary Journal 20, no. 2 (2026): 337–41.
• Díaz, Mónica. “An Indigenous Congregation at the Colegio of San Gregorio: Dowries for indias and the Economy of Salvation.” Ethnohistory 69, no. 4 (2022): 477–91.
• Díaz, Mónica, ed. To Be Indio in Colonial Spanish America. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 2017.
• Díaz, Mónica, and Rocío Quispe-Agnoli, eds. Women’s Negotiations and Textual Agency in Latin America, 1500–1799. New York: Routledge, 2017.
• Díaz, Mónica. Indigenous Writings from the Convent: Negotiating Ethnic Autonomy in Colonial Mexico. Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 2010.