Hugh Cagle portrait
  • Director of International Studies, College Of Humanities
  • Associate Professor, History
801-585-7804

Presentations

  • “Before the Fact: Science and Social Order at the Edge of the Amazon, ca. 1600.” For the Science in Human Culture Program at Northwestern University. Evanston, IL. May 2, 2022. Invited Talk/Keynote, Presented, 05/2022.
  • “Science and Social Order in the Portuguese Atlantic: The Curious Case of the Manatee.” For a panel titled “Knowledge, Reform, and the Body Politic in the Portuguese Empire.” The 134th Annual Meeting of the American Historical Association. New York, NY. January 3-6, 2020. Conference Paper, Presented, 01/2020.
  • Chair. “Mastering Natural Knowledge in the Portuguese Empire: Transforming Bodies, Exploring Nature, Governing Space.” Annual Meeting of the History of Science Society. Utrecht, The Netherlands. July 23-27, 2019. Presentation, Presented, 07/2019.
  • “Smoke: An Amazonian Technology of Being and Non-Being.” For a symposium on “Technologies in Use.” Maison Française at Oxford University. Oxford, UK. October 4-6, 2019. Invited Talk/Keynote, Presented, 04/2019.
  • “Global Empire, Jesuit Networks, and the Deniable Body: Nature and Disease in Colonial Brazil, 1549- 1565.” For a panel titled “Missionaries, Indigenous Knowledge, and Globalization in Early Modern Iberian Worlds.” The Annual Meeting of the History of Science Society. Seattle, Washington. November 1-4, 2018. Conference Paper, Presented, 11/2018.
  • “The Iberian Question in the Scientific Revolution.” For a panel titled “Thematic Fields and Rethinking the Canon for Early Modern Science.” The Annual Meeting of the History of Science Society. Toronto, Canada. November 9-12, 2017. Conference Paper, Presented, 11/2017.
  • “The Entanglements of Imperial Medicine: Episodes from the Gulf of Guinea, 1480-1900.” For a panel titled “African Encounters: Making Scientific Knowledge in Africa before and after European Colonization, 1500-2000.” The 25th Annual International Conference for the History of Science and Technology. Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. July 23-29, 2017. Conference Paper, Presented, 07/2017.
  • “Planters, Naturalists, and Predatory Fish: Cultures of Inquiry in the Portuguese Atlantic.” For a panel titled “The Making of an Empire: Food, Drinks, Drugs and Luxury Goods.” The 35th International Congress of the Latin American Studies Association. Pontificia Universidad Católica del Perú. Lima, Peru. April 29-May 1, 2017. Conference Paper, Presented, 04/2017.
  • "The Myths We Tell: Jesuits, Science, and Social Order in Colonial Brazil." For a panel titled "Narratives of Science and Faith: Colonial Brazil, Peru, and Mexico through Jesuit Letters." Latin American and Caribbean Section of the 2016 meeting of the Southern Historical Association. St. Petersburg, FL. November 2-5, 2016. Conference Paper, Presented, 11/2016.
  • “Empires, Diasporas, and Area Studies: The Portuguese Case.” For a symposium on “Latin American Studies: Past, Present, and Future.” University of Virginia. Charlottesville, VA. October 13-14, 2016. Invited Talk/Keynote, Presented, 10/2016.
  • “Of Manatees and Men: Interpretive Ambiguity at the Edge of the Amazon.” For a conference on “Translation and Transmission in the Early Americas: The Fourth Early Americanist Summit.” Omohundro Institute of Early American History and the University of Maryland. College Park, MD. June 2-5, 2016. Conference Paper, Presented, 06/2016.
  • "Natural History in the Portuguese Atlantic: Riddles, Reasons, and a Critique of 'Iberian Science.'" For a conference on "Experimentation and Expertise: Flows of Knowledge in the Atlantic World." New York University. New York, NY. May 6-7, 2016. Conference Paper, Presented, 05/2016.
  • "Imperial Alchemy: Pharmacy, the Tropics, and the Location of Expertise in Portugal's Empire." For a workshop on "Organizing the World of Healing Goods: Materia Medica, Pharmacopoeias, and the Codification of Therapeutic Knowledge in the Early Modern World." University of Wisconsin-Madison. Madison, WI. April 1-2, 2016. Invited Talk/Keynote, Presented, 04/2016.
  • Chair. Roundtable titled "It's Not About That: Revisiting Thematic Fields in the History of Science." 130th Annual Meeting of the American Historical Association. Atlanta, GA. January 7-10, 2016. Presentation, Presented, 01/2016.
  • “The Entanglements of Imperial Medicine: Episodes from the Gulf of Guinea, 1450-1900.” For a panel titled “New Frontiers, New Spaces: Africa and the Circulation of Knowledge, 16th to 19th Centuries.” The 2nd International Conference of the Centro de História d’Alem-Mar. Universidade Nova de Lisboa. Lisbon, Portugal. July 15-18, 2015. Conference Paper, Presented, 07/2015.
  • “Science and Empire at the Margins.” For a conference in honor of Michael Adas titled “The Individual in Global History.” Rutgers University. New Brunswick, NJ. April 17, 2015. Invited Talk/Keynote, Presented, 04/2015.
  • “The Deniable Body: Nature and Disease in Colonial Brazil, 1549-1565.” For a panel titled “Anatomies of Empire: Science and the Body in the Iberian Atlantic.” The 46th Annual Conference of the Association of Spanish and Portuguese Historical Studies. The Johns Hopkins University. Baltimore, MD. March 19-22, 2015. Conference Paper, Presented, 03/2015.
  • Chair. "Colonial Hybrids II: Indigenous Beliefs and Early Modern Medicine." For the 46th Annual Conference of the Association of Spanish and Portuguese Historical Studies. The Johns Hopkins University. Baltimore, MD. March 19-22, 2015. Presentation, Presented, 03/2015.
  • “The Limits of a Moral Imagination: Disease and Explanation in Colonial Brazil, 1550-1565.” For a panel titled “At the Hour of Our Death: Reinterpreting Illness in Iberian Empires.” 129th Annual Meeting of the American Historical Association. New York, NY. January 2-5, 2015. Conference Paper, Presented, 01/2015.
  • “Empires of Reason: Meanings of Medicine in the Gulf of Guinea, 1480-1900.” For a panel on “Decolonizing the Body? Ideology, Knowledge, and Medicine in Lusophone Africa.” African Studies Association of the United Kingdom. University of Sussex. Brighton, England. September 9-11, 2014. Conference Paper, Presented, 09/2014.
  • “Atlantic Leprosy: A New History, and Old Disease, and the Afro-Brazilian Past.” Co-authored with Monica Green for a panel titled “Unsettling Crosby’s Eurocentric Columbian Exchange: Old World Tropical Actors and Agencies in Remaking the Atlantic World.” Second World Congress on Environmental History. Guimarães, Portugal. July 8-12, 2014. Conference Paper, Presented, 07/2014.
  • “Without Warrant: Epidemics, Survival, and the Contest for Authority in Colonial Brazil, 1550-1565.” For a panel on “Health, Healing, and Authority in Colonial Latin America.” Latin American Studies Association. Chicago, IL. May 21-24, 2014. Conference Paper, Presented, 05/2014.
  • “The Entanglements of Imperial Medicine: Three Lives in the Face of Death.” Albert Mann Memorial Lecture and the lecture series on “Health, Disease, and Disability across Disciplines.” Seattle University. April 8, 2014. Invited Talk/Keynote, Presented, 04/2014.
  • “Elusive Objects: Plant Matter and Global Empires.” Symposium on “Early Modern Globalizations in the Iberian World: Ideology and Practice.” University of Kansas. February 27-March 1, 2014. Invited Talk/Keynote, Presented, 03/2014.
  • “Fault Lines: Economies of Illness in Colonial Brazil.” Symposium on the “Paths of Medical Un/Orthodoxy? Colonial Latin America and Its World.” Queens University. Belfast, Northern Ireland. November 8-9, 2013. Invited Talk/Keynote, Presented, 11/2013.
  • “Pre-modern Leprosy: An Imperial History of Calculated Imprecision.” For a panel on “A New History of Leprosy: The Global Health Implications of the Discovery of Mycobacterium lepromatosis.” American Association for the History of Medicine. Atlanta, GA. May 16-19, 2013. Conference Paper, Presented, 05/2013.
  • “Dead Reckonings: Disease, Explanation, and Encounter on the Epidemiological Frontier of Portuguese America.” Annual conference of the Renaissance Society of America. San Diego, CA. April 4-6, 2013. Conference Paper, Presented, 04/2013.
  • “Cultures of Inquiry, Myths of Empire: Natural History in Colonial Goa.” Symposium on “Inter-disciplinary Approaches to Science in Portuguese Asia.” Fundação Calouste Gulbenkian. Lisbon, Portugal. April 10-11, 2013. Invited Talk/Keynote, Presented, 04/2013.
  • “The Botany of Colonial Medicine: Gender, Authority, and Natural History across Iberian Empires.” Annual conference of the American Historical Association. New Orleans, LA. January 3-6, 2013. Conference Paper, Presented, 01/2013.
  • “A Science Out of Place: Enclave Colonialism and Authorship in Garcia de Orta’s Colóquios.” Joint meeting of the British Society for the History of Science, History of Science Society, and the Canadian Society for the History and Philosophy of Science. University of Pennsylvania. July 11-14, 2012. Conference Paper, Presented, 07/2012.
  • “Humoral Pathology and the Question of Tropical Medicine: Atlantic Encounters ca. 1480.” National Endowment for the Humanities (US) and the Wellcome Library (UK) seminar on “Health and Disease in the Middle Ages.” London, UK. July 11, 2012. Invited Talk/Keynote, Presented, 07/2012.
  • “A Disease and Its Classifications: Tertian Fever, Humoral Pathology, and Early Atlantic Exploration, 1415-1500.” Rocky Mountain Medieval and Renaissance Association conference on “Classifying the Medieval and Renaissance World.” Idaho State University. Pocatello, ID. April 12-14, 2012. Conference Paper, Presented, 04/2012.
  • “Moral Hazards: Disease and Dissent on the Epidemiological Frontier of Portuguese America.” Annual conference of the Rocky Mountain Council for Latin American Studies. Park City, UT. March 28-31, 2012. Conference Paper, Presented, 03/2012.
  • “Consumed by Water: Wetland Catastrophe in Portuguese Goa and the Existential Crisis of an Empire.” Annual conference of the American Society for Environmental History. University of Wisconsin-Madison. March 28-31, 2012. Conference Paper, Presented, 03/2012.
  • Discussant. Panel on “Domestic Servitude and Urban Slavery in Colonial Latin America.” Annual conference of the Rocky Mountain Council for Latin American Studies. Park City, UT. March 28-31, 2012. Presentation, Presented, 03/2012.
  • “The Limits of a Moral Imagination: Disease and Explanation on the Epidemiological Frontier of Portuguese America.” New York University. Conference on “Legends of Empire: Negotiating the Imperial Moral Compass.” New York, NY. February 17-18, 2012. Conference Paper, Presented, 02/2012.
  • “Islands in the Archive: Mapping the East Indies.” Annual conference of the American Historical Association. Chicago, IL. January 5-8, 2012. Conference Paper, Presented, 01/2012.
  • “A Science Out of Place: Text, Circumstance, and the Translation of Garcia de Orta’s Colóquios.” Birkbeck College of the University of London. Conference on “The Global Dimensions of European Knowledge, 1450-1700.” London. June 24-25, 2011. Conference Paper, Presented, 06/2011.
  • “Beyond the Senegal: Humoral Pathology and the Pre-History of European Colonial Medicine.” Forty-sixth International Congress on Medieval Studies. Western Michigan University. May 12-15, 2011. Conference Paper, Presented, 05/2011.
  • Discussant. Panel on “Public Places, Private Spaces in Japan and China.” Thirty-third Annual Warren I. Susman Graduate Conference in the History of Culture and Society. Rutgers University. March 26, 2011. Presentation, Presented, 03/2011.

Languages

  • Catalan, basic.
  • Portuguese, fluent.
  • Spanish, fluent.

Publications

  • Assembling the Tropics: Science and Medicine in Portugal's Empire, 1450-1700. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2018. Published, 10/2018.
  • “Beyond the Senegal: Inventing the Tropics in the Late Middle Ages.” Journal of Medieval Iberian Studies. Vol. 7, no. 2 (2015): 197-217. This is a special issue which I co-edited with Iona McCleery. Published, 06/2015.
  • "Cultures of Inquiry, Myths of Empire: Natural History in Colonial Goa." Pp. 107-128. In Medicine, Trade, and Empire: Garcia de Orta's Colloquies on the Simples and Drugs of India (1563) in Context. Edited by Andrew Cunningham and Palmira Fontes da Costa. Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2015. Published, 05/2015.
  • “The Botany of Colonial Medicine: Gender, Authority, and Natural History in the Empires of Spain and Portugal.” Pp. 174-195. In Women of the Iberian Atlantic. Edited by Sarah E. Owens and Jane E. Mangan. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2012. Published, 10/2012.
  • “Age of Settlement and Colonization, 1500-1900.” Co-authored with Michael Adas. Pp. 41-73. In Ashgate Companion to Modern Imperial Histories. Edited by Philippa Levine and John Marriott. Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2012. Published, 06/2012.
  • Review of Daniela Bleichmar, Visible Empire: Botanical Expeditions and Visual Culture in the Hispanic Enlightenment. Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press, 2012. In Itinerario 27 (2013): 129-131. Published, 09/2013.
  • Review of Jane Burbank and Frederick Cooper, Empires in World History: Power and the Politics of Difference. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2010. In Journal of World History 23 (2012): 943-945. Published, 12/2012.
  • Review of Lauren Benton, A Search for Sovereignty: Law and Geography in European Empires, 1400-1900. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2010. In Itinerario 25 (2011): 104-106. Published, 08/2011.
  • “From Colonialism to Global Health: Frameworks for the History of Medicine in Portugal’s Empire.” History Compass Vol. 21, no. 11 (2023): 1-13. https://doi.org/10.1111/hic3.12789. Published, 10/2023.
  • “Iberian Science, Portuguese Empire, and Cultures of Inquiry in Early Modern Europe.” Routledge Handbook on Science and Empire. Edited by Andrew Goss. New York: Routledge, 2021. Pp. 148-161. Published, 02/2021.
  • “Imperial Tensions, Colonial Contours: Jesuits, Slavery, and Race Within and Beyond the Portuguese Atlantic.” Jesuits, Slavery, and Race Within and Beyond the Portuguese Atlantic.” Routledge Hispanic Studies Companion to Colonial Latin America and the Caribbean. Edited by Yolanda Martínez-San Miguel and Santa Arias. New York: Routledge. Published, 02/2021.
  • "Objects and Agency: Latin American Studies, Science and Technology Studies, and Global Histories of Knowledge in the Early Modern World." Latin American Research Review. Vol. 54, no. 4 (2019): 976-991. Published, 12/2019.
  • “Science and Enlightenment in the Iberian World.” Co-authored with Matthew J. Crawford. The Iberian World. Edited by Pedro Cardim, Fernando Bouza Álvarez, and Antonio Feros. New York: Routledge. Published, 08/2019.
  • Review of Linda Newson, Making Medicines in Early Colonial Lima, Peru: Apothecaries, Science, and Society. Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2017. In Journal of Latin American Studies. Accepted, 02/2019.
  • Review of Pablo F. Gómez, The Experiential Caribbean: Creating Knowledge and Healing in the Early Modern Atlantic World. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press: 2017. In Medical History 62 (2018): 133-135. Published, 01/2018.
  • “Fluvial Communities and Amazonian Itineraries.” A review of Heather F. Roller, Amazonian Routes: Indigenous Mobility and Colonial Communities in Northern Brazil. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2014. In Ethnohistory 65 (2018): 157-160. Published, 01/2018.
  • Finnish translation of “The Botany of Colonial Medicine: Gender, Authority, and Natural History across Iberian Empires.” Originally published in Women of the Iberian Atlantic. Pp. 174-195. Edited by Sarah E. Owens and Jane E. Mangan. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2012. To be included in Contested Roads to Health: The Plurality of Healing Systems in Global History. Edited by Markku Hokkanen and Kalle Kananoja. Finnish title: Kiistellyt tiet terveyteen: Parantamisen monimuotoisuus globaalissa historiassa. Helsinki: Suomalaisen Kirjallisuuden Seura/Suomen Historiallinen Seura Helsinki, 2017. Published, 07/2017.