Academic Degrees:

• Ph.D, University of Texas at Austin, 1999
• M.A., University of Texas at Austin, 1994
• B.A., College of Saint Benedict and Saint John’s University (MN)

Academic Interests:

Latin America, especially Mexico and colonial Spanish America; Religious history

Research:

Professor Larkin is currently researching Eucharistic piety in the colonial Archdiocese of Mexico (c. 1550-1820).

Courses Taught:

• HIST 121: Aztecs, Incas, and Mayas: From Indigenous Empires to Colonized Peoples
• HIST 122: Revolution and Repression in Modern Latin America
• HIST 295E: Inventing the Conquest of Mexico
• HIST 321: Mexico: From Aztecs to Independence
• HIST 322: Mexico: From Independence to Today
• HIST 323/THEO 317: Religion in Latin America
• HIST 395E: Idols & Images in Colonial Mexico

Recent Publications:

Articles

“Christianity Converted: The Initial Encounters between Europeans and Latin Americans,” Christian History 130 (May 2019): 6-11.

“Beyond Guadalupe: The Eucharist, the Cult of Saints, and Local Religion in Eighteenth-Century Mexico City,” The Catholic Historical Review 104:2 (Spring 2018): 223-267. Winner of Nelson H. Minnich Prize for best article in the Catholic Historical Review in 2018

“Tridentine Catholicism in the New World,” in The Cambridge History of Religions in Latin American Religions, Virginia Garrard-Burnett, Paul Freston, and Stephen C. Dove. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2016.

Books

The Very Nature of God: Baroque Catholicism and Religious Reform in Bourbon Mexico City (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 2010). [Amazon][WorldCat]

Story:

After receiving his PhD, Professor Brian Larkin taught world history and Latin American history at the University of Maine at Presque Isle. Currently, he teaches lower-division courses on pre-contact, colonial, and modern Latin America and upper-division courses on colonial Mexico, modern Mexico, and religion in Latin America. He has led CSB/SJU semester-long study abroad programs to Guatemala and Spain.