Publications

BOOKS:

Republics of Difference: Religious and Racial Self-Governance in the Spanish Atlantic World (Oxford University Press, 2022)

  • Winner of the Transatlantic Studies Association Book Prize

With Our Labor and Sweat: Indigenous Women and the Formation of Colonial Society in Peru, 1550-1700. (Stanford University Press, 2007).

  • Winner of the Ligia Parra Jahn prize from the Rocky Mountain Council for Latin American Studies

BOOKS IN PROGRESS:

Making Malambo: Black Collective Action in Early Panama

Archival Fragments, Experimental Modes, by the Archival Fragments, Experimental Modes Collective (Kathleen Donegan, Karen Graubart, Sara Johnson, Sarah Knott, Renaud Morieux, Mairin Odle, Lorelle Semley, Kirsten Silva Gruesz, SJ Zhang)

ARTICLES:

Dialogic Depositions: Finding Black Women’s Presence in Spanish Legal Records Renaissance Quarterly 78 (2025): 349-384 [open access]

“Pesa más la libertad: Slavery, Legal Claims, and the History of Afro-Latin American Ideas,” William and Mary Quarterly 78:3 (July 2021): 427-58

    • Winner of the Kimberly Hanger Article Prize of the Southern Historical Association, Latin American and Caribbean Studies Section
    • Honorable Mention, Article Prize, Association for the Study of the Worldwide African Diaspora

“‘Of greater dignity than the negros’: Language and In-Group Distinctions within Early Afro-Peruvian Cofradías,” for Miguel Valerio and Javiera Jaque Hidalgo, eds., Indigenous and Black Confraternities in Colonial Latin America: Negotiating Status Through Religious Participation (University of Amsterdam Press, 2022): 135-62

“‘Women were governing before the Spanish entered in this kingdom’: The Institutionalization of the Cacica from the North Coast of Peru,” in Sara Vicuña Guengerich and Margarita Ochoa, editors, The Cacicas of Spanish America, 1492-1825 (University of Oklahoma Press, 2021): 139-64

“As Slaves and Not Vassals: Interethnic Claims of Freedom and Unfreedom in Colonial Peru,” Población y sociedad 27:2 (2020): 30-53 online here

    • Winner of the José María Arguedas Prize of the Latin American Studies Association, Peru Section

“Self-Representation and Self-Governance in Early Latin America,” in Yolanda María Martínez-San Miguel and Santa Arias, eds., The Routledge Hispanic Studies Companion to Colonial Latin America and the Caribbean (1492-1898) (Routledge, 2020): 57-70

“Imperial Conviviality: Producing Difference in the TransAtlantic Iberian World,” in Luciane Scarato, Fernando Baldraia, and Maya Manzi, eds., Convivial Constellations in Latin America: From Colonial to Contemporary Times (Routledge, 2020)

“‘Como esclavos y no vasallos’: leyendo la historia intelectual indígena a través de la historia de esclavitud,” Revista Andina 56 (2019): 70-75.

“Taxation, Obligation, and Corporate Identity in 16th-Century Lima,” in Emily Engel, ed., A Companion to Early Modern Lima (Leiden: Brill, 2019): 82-102

“On Being Disciplined and Counted in the Early Modern Circum-Caribbean,” Hemisphere 27 (2018): 14-18 online here

“Imperial Conviviality: What Medieval Spanish Legal Practice Can Teach Us About Colonial Latin Ameria,” MECILA Working Paper Series no. 8 (São Paulo: Maria Sibylla Merian International Centre for Advanced Studies on the Humanities and Social Sciences, 2018) online here

“‘Ynuvaciones malas e rreprouadas’: Seeking Justice in Early Colonial Pueblos de Indios,” in Brian Owensby and Richard Ross, eds., Justice in a New World: Negotiating Legal Intelligibility in British, Iberian, and Indigenous America (NY: NYU Press, 2018): 151-82.

“Containing Law Within the Walls: The Protection of Customary Law in Santiago del Cercado, Peru,” in Protection and Empire: A Global History, ed. Bain Attwood, Lauren Benton, and Adam Clulow (UK: Cambridge University Press, 2017): 29-46.

“The Bonds of Inheritance: Afro-Peruvian Women’s Legacies in a Slave-holding World,” in Mónica Díaz and Rocío Quispe-Agnoli, eds., Uncovering the Colonial Archive: Women’s Textual Agency in Spanish America 1500-1800 (NY: Routledge, 2017): 130-150.

“Shifting Landscapes: Heterogeneous Conceptions of Land Use and Tenure in the Lima Valley,” Colonial Latin American Review 26:1 (2017): 62-84.

“Competing Spanish and Indigenous Jurisdictions in Early Colonial Lima,” chapter in Ken Mills, Senior Editor for Colonial Spanish America, Oxford Research Encyclopedia in Latin American and Caribbean History (New York: Oxford University Press, 2016) available here

“Learning From the Qadi: The Jurisdiction of Local Rule in the Early Colonial Andes,” Hispanic American Historical Review 95:2 (May 2015): 195-228. Winner of the 2015 James Alexander Robertson Prize from the Conference on Latin American History.

“Catalina de Agüero: A Mediating Life,” in Jonathan Truitt and Mark Christensen, eds., Native Wills From the Colonial Americas: Dead Giveaways in a New World (University of Utah Press, 2015): 19-39

“Ethnicity,” Princeton Companion to Atlantic History, ed. Joseph C. Miller (Princeton University Press, 2015): 192-6.

“Los lazos que unen: dueñas negras de esclavos negros en Lima ss. XVI-XVII,” Revista Nueva Corónica [Lima, Peru] 2 (2013): 625-640

“’So color de una cofradía’: Catholic Confraternities and the Development of Afro-Peruvian Ethnicities in Early Colonial Peru,” Slavery and Abolition 33:1 (March 2012): 43-64.

“Towards Connectedness and Place,” response to “Mapping Ethnogenesis in the Early Modern Atlantic,” by James Sidbury and Jorge Cañizares, William and Mary Quarterly, 3rd. ser. 68, no 2 (April 2011): 233-235.

“The Creolization of the New World: Local Forms of Identity in Urban Colonial Peru, 1560-1640,” Hispanic American Historical Review 89:3 (August 2009): 471-499.

“Miguel de Estete” and “Bartolomé Arzáns de Orsúa y Vela,” in Guide to Documentary Sources for Andean Studies, ed. Joanne Pillsbury (University of Oklahoma Press, 2008), Vol II: 48-52, 206-210.

“De qadis y caciques,” Bulletin del Institut Français d’Etudes Andines 37:1 (2008): 83-96.

“La moda colonial: aproximaciones a la etnicidad en dos ciudades peruanas coloniales,” in Tejiendo Sueños en el Cono Sur, ed. Victória Solanilla (Barcelona, Grup d’Estudis Precolombins, 2005): 295-302.

“Hybrid Thinking: Bringing Postcolonial Theory to Latin American Economic History,” in Postcolonial Thought and Economics, ed. S. Charusheela and Eiman Zein-Elabdin. (Routledge, 2003): 215-234.

“Dressed Like an Indian: Ethnic Ambiguity in Early Colonial Peru,” SALALM Papers 47 (2002):1 -9

“Weaving and the Gender Division of Labor in Early Colonial Peru.” American Indian Quarterly, 24:4 (Fall 2000): 537-561.

“Indecent Living: Indigenous Women and the Politics of Representation in Early Colonial Peru,” Colonial Latin American Review 9:2 (December 2000): 213-235.

“El tejer y las identidades de género en el Perú en los inicios de la colonia,” Boletín del Instituto Riva-Agüero (Perú) 24 (1997): 145-165.

CO-AUTHORED AND COLLECTIVE SCHOLARSHIP:

Karen B. Graubart and María Cecilia Ulrickson, “Colonial Peru.” In Oxford Bibliographies in Latin American Studies. Ed. Ben Vinson III. (New York: Oxford University Press, 2017).

Participant with Jason Ruiz, “María Elena Martínez: A Roundtable Memorial,” Radical History Review no. 123 (October 2015): 177-184.

Karen Graubart and Edward Beatty, “Sabine MacCormack (1941-2012),” Hispanic American Historical Review 93:1 (February 2013): 99-101

Carmen Diana Deere, José Alvarez, Karen Graubart and William A. Messina, Jr. “An Annotated Bibliography on Post-1959 Cuban Agriculture.” International Working Paper Series, International Agricultural Trade and Development Center, University of Florida at Gainesville, January 1996.