Annual Besterman Lecture 2026
Saber/conocer: ways of knowing in the Hispanic Enlightenment
Professor Karen Stolley (Emory University)
Thursday 19 November, 17:00
Venue: Magdalen College Auditorium, followed by a drinks reception
Karen Stolley (Emory University)
We are delighted to welcome Karen Stolley (Emory University) as our Besterman speaker this year.
She is going to speak on ‘Ways of knowing in the Hispanic Enlightenment‘.
The global eighteenth century has emerged in recent years as a topic of scholarly inquiry that expands our understanding of the Enlightenment. This lecture will address the eighteenth century “en español” through a consideration of ways of knowing in the Hispanic Enlightenment. Spanish territories in the Americas were, in fact, a laboratory or proving ground for enlightened ideas about empire, governance, commerce, religion, science, language ideology and pedagogy. The lecture proposes an epistemological mapping of the Hispanic empire that is at both local and global. The ways of knowing I will explore include textual ways of knowing (editing, annotating, translating, censoring), social ways of knowing (corresponding, networking, collaborating), and material ways of knowing (collecting, drawing, circulating, exchanging). The writings of eighteenth-century Jesuits like José Gumilla and Rafael Landívar can deepen our understanding of the relationship between religion and science; colonial administrators like the Aragonese engineer Félix de Azara made important contributions to existing knowledge about American flora and fauna and provided a foundation for Humboldt and Darwin. Exiled Jesuits living in Italy like José Antonio Molina penned natural and civil histories of the American territories they had left behind, while Francisco Javier Clavijero exalted the cultural legacy of what he called “ancient” Mexico. These and other examples enable us to understand the Hispanic eighteenth century as a space that was pragmatic, multi-lingual, and engaged with a wide range of actors and publics in the production and circulation of knowledge that continues to resonate today as part of the legacy of the Enlightenment.
Karen Stolley is a scholar of colonial and eighteenth-century Spanish American literary and cultural studies. She is the author of Domesticating Empire: Enlightenment in Spanish America (2013); she recently co-edited with Catherine M. Jaffe The Black Legend of Spain and its Atlantic Empire in the Eighteenth Century: Constructing National Identities (2024).
The lecture is going to take place in the Magdalen College Grove Auditorium, Thursday 19 November, 5pm, followed by a drinks reception.
The event is free to attend but please register by emailing email@voltaire.ox.ac.uk.
