Spanish Faculty

Dr. Sara Guengerich

Associate Professor

Ph.D. University of New Mexico

Affiliated Faculty at the Medieval and Renaissance Studies Center and Board Member of the Indigenous and Native American Studies Circle.

Sara Vicuña Guengerich’s research on colonial Spanish America examines how marginalized individuals and organized sectors counteracted the systemic disenfranchisement of colonialism. As a literary historian, she aims to reconstruct the everyday experiences of a variety of historical subjects, particularly Indigenous people, some who were born into noble lines and thus retained both prestige and a variety of concrete legal claims, and many who were born without the privileges of power. She includes their stories in the larger historical narrative of the global early modernities. These stories, written from below and from within their sectors, chart how Indigenous people conceptualized and interpreted their status in colonial society to improve, resist, and claim privileges through their involvement as litigators in court, petitioners in royal audiences, and memberships of local and global networks. She has worked extensively in Bolivian, Peruvian, and Spanish archives, as well as in U.S. research libraries tracing the lives of native individuals and groups in their efforts to carve out spaces for themselves in a world that had been turned upside down.

For updates about her research beyond this page visit:
ORCID
ResearchGate 
#WomenAlsoKnowHistory.com

Areas of Research

• Colonial Latin America History
• Indigenous Peoples of the Andes (16th through 18th centuries)
• Cultural and Women's studies
• Migration and Mobility Studies in the Early Modern Hispanic World
• Afro-Hispanic Colonial Narratives
• Ecocriticism in the Colonial Spanish Northern Frontier
• Material Culture in the Early Modern Hispanic World

Selected Publications

Edited Books

Co-edited with Margarita R. Ochoa, The Cacicas of Spanish America, 1492-1825 (University of Oklahoma Press, 2021). — Awarded Best Collaborative Project by the Grupo de Estudios sobre la Mujer en España y las Américas, pre-1800 (GEMELA).

Special Issue Guest Editor:

“Female Lives in Motion. Transatlantic Migrations and Mobilities of Spanish Women and Women of Color in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries.” Colonial Latin American Review 34(4), 403-549. —with Amelia Almorza Hidalgo.

Selected Refereed Articles

“Across the ocean together: Indigenous women, care, and mestizo lives in the Spanish Atlantic empire (sixteenth and seventeenth centuries). Colonial Latin American Review, 34. 4 (2026): 444–465.

“Las mujeres de Vilcabamba” Histórica. Pontificia Universidad Católica del Perú 47.1 (2023): 173-198.

“No todos se honraban con el término ‘mestizo’: Cusqueños en Sevilla y la racionalización de la diferencia racial en los siglos XVI y XVII.” Historia y Cultura. Revista del Museo Nacional de Arqueología, Antropología e Historia del Perú 33 (2022): 13-41.

“On the Inclusion of ‘Other’ Women: Gender and Race in the Early Modernities.” Early Modern Women: An Interdisciplinary Journal 17.1 (2022): 2-5.

“Mining the Archive: The Global Microhistory of a Peruvian Coya” Modern Philology 119.1 (2021): 61-76.

“[Por] haberme cabido en suerte ser de la familia y sangre de los Incas”: Linaje, lengua y limpieza de la sangre materna en la obra del Inca Garcilaso de la Vega. Philologia Hispalensis 32.2 (2018): 117-130.

“Capac Women and the Politics of Marriage in Early Colonial Peru.” Colonial Latin American Review 24.2 (2014): 147-167.

Selected Refereed Chapters

“Alianzas indígenas en clave colonial: La reformulación de identidades andinas en el Cusco y el valle de Yucay, Siglo XVI.” 2025. In Liliana Pérez Miguel and Rocío Delibes, eds. [Re]-Construyendo identidades. Dinámicas indígenas en los andes coloniales. Asociación de Historiadores Latinoamericanistas Europeos. Madrid: Publicaciones de la Universidad Autónoma de Madrid, 25-52.

“Indigenous Peoples of the Andes During the Colonial Period.” In Oxford Bibliographies. New York: Oxford University Press (2024).

“Indigenous Andean Women and the Written Word in the Early Modern World.” In The Palgrave Encyclopedia of Early Modern Women’s Writing (2024).

“The Inca Garcilaso de la Vega on Women.” In Approaches to Teaching the Writings of Inca Garcilaso de la Vega. eds. Christian Fernández and José Antonio Mazzotti. New York: The Modern Language Association of America, (2022).

“A Royalist Cacica: Doña Teresa Choquehuanca and the Postrebellion Natives of the Peruvian Highlands.” In Cacicas: The Indigenous Women Leaders of Spanish America, 1492-1825, eds. Margarita Ochoa and Sara Guengerich. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, (2021).

“Inca Women Under Spanish Rule.” Women’s Negotiations and Textual Agency in Latin America, 1500–1799. Mónica Díaz and Rocio Quispe-Agnoli, eds. New York: Routledge, 106-29, (2016).

Public Scholarship/ Media Appearances

Inerview for the Archivo General de la Nación (Lima, Peru): Testigos de la historia — Available on the AGN’s social media platforms.

Interview for the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México (UNAM)-Históricas: “Mujeres, agencia y cambio social: Autoridades y Estrategias.” —Available on YouTube.

Interview for Las cosas tienen vida (podcast): “Tupus: Cultura material de las mujeres indígenas de los Andes”

Interview for The New Books Network (podcast): The Cacicas of Spanish America, 1492-1825 (University of Oklahoma Press, 2021)

Interview for Sucedió en el Perú (TV Show): Indigenous Women in Colonial Peru.

Teaching

Dr. Guengerich enjoys introducing undergraduate students to Latin America's dynamic past and complicated present in culture and language courses, as well as offering specialized upper-level courses on themes such as race, gender, and visual studies in colonial and contemporary Latin American societies. At the graduate level, she shares with students her fascination with the Spanish American colonial world, along with broader interests in women’s history, indigeneity, and the global early modernities.

Courses Commonly Taught

• The Cultural Legacy of the Andes (SPAN 4000 Cultural Topics)
• Fashion and Identity in Latin America (SPAN 3000: Cultural Topics)
• Introduction to Hispanic Literatures (SPAN 3000)
• Visual Encounters: Texts and Films of the Spanish American Colonial Period (SPAN 4000)
• Study Abroad Special Topics in Spanish Language and Cultures (SPAN 3000/4000)—Seville, Spain
• Indigenous Intellectuals in the Colonial 'Lettered City (SPAN 5370)
• Introduction to Colonial Spanish American Literatures and Cultures (SPAN 5370)
• The Women of Colonial Latin America (SPAN 5370)
• Colonial Blackness: Race and Identity in the Spanish American Colonial World (SPAN/HIST 5355)

Public Scholarship

“El archivo y sus testigos.” Documentos sobre el fascinante caso de doña Ana María Fernández Coronel Coya en el Archivo General de la Nación (Lima, Perú). Entrevista a Sara Vicuña Guengerich. August 7, 2026.
https://www.facebook.com/agn.gob.pe/videos/-nuevo-episodio-de-el-archivo-y-sus-testigosen-esta-edición-nos-acompaña-la-hist/1782143169467222/

“Mujeres, agencia y cambio social: Autoridades y Estrategias.” Interview for the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México (UNAM)-Históricas —Available on YouTube since November 12, 2025.
https://youtu.be/QPsA4NsCqpk?si=w34ASN0Ilm8_K5tS

“Las cosas tienen vida” Podcast interview on “Tupus: Cultura material de las mujeres indígenas de los Andes”—Aired on November 22, 2023 https://open.spotify.com/episode/3ANedmZfyZnUMOUTEVe9ym?si=de2ca152041741dd

“Cacicas: Las líderes indígenas de la Hispanoamérica colonial, 1492-1825”. Sección Mundus Alter, n.38, blog Los Reinos de las Indias, 2022. (Ed. Natalia Silva Prada) (open access, peer-reviewed collaborative blog). https://losreinosdelasindias.hypotheses.org/2594

“Mujeres Encomenderas en el Perú virreinal.” Interviewed as a professional historian at the Peruvian National TV show Sucedió en el Perú. February 8, 2022. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i2sU4jqzvPs&list=WL&index=1