From the vantage point of colonial New Spain, my work engages both with cultural encounters on a local scale and questions of political, religious, and cultural change on a global scale. My four main areas of interest are in the history of colonial Latin America, early modern global Catholicism, Ibero-American art history, and the connected histories of the global early modern Iberian empires.

Within these geographic areas, my core thematic areas of interest include connected histories of cultural encounter, religious conversion, and knowledge production. My interests have also grown to include studies of the Spanish Pacific, natural disasters (earthquakes, volcanoes, tsunamis, and typhoons) in indigenous cosmologies and colonial knowledge-making in Latin America, and visual and material histories of Catholicism (including paintings, relics, and sculpture) between Asia, colonial Mexico, and Iberia. You can view a sample of my projects, both past and present, in the image carousel below.

I define the “digital humanities” as a set of interrelated practices, methods, and tools that use the functions of computers and the internet to advance, elucidate, and communicate the research of the humanistic disciplines. Much like “global history” or “microhistory,” I think that the digital humanities are best understood not as a delimited field of study, but rather as a particular set of approaches or methods to doing and sharing research. You can view my work in the digital humanities below.

If you have a question about my research, would like to speak on the Global History Podcast, or would like to present a workshop or paper for the Southeast Asia Working Group for Graduate Students, please don’t hesitate to send me an email at my institutional address: chasesmith[at]ucla.edu. Alternately, please feel free to fill out the contact form below.