Zeb Tortorici

- Ph.D., Department of History, UCLA, 2010

Zeb Tortorici’s research focuses on gender, sexuality, and religion in colonial Latin America, queer archives, and the archiving/censorship of erotica and the “obscene” in Latin America, from the 18th century to the present. His book Sins against Nature: Sex and Archives in Colonial New Spain (2018) received several prizes including the John Boswell Award from the Committee on LGBT History and the Alan Bray Memorial Book Prize. His edited or coedited books include Centering Animals in Latin American History (2013); Sexuality and the Unnatural in Colonial Latin America (2016); Global Encyclopedia of Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, and Queer (LGBTQ) History (2019); Ethnopornography: Sexuality, Colonialism, and Archival Knowledge (2020); and Baptism Through Incision: The Postmortem Cesarean Operation in the Spanish Empire (2020). He has coedited special issues of Radical History Review and TSQ: Transgender Studies Quarterly, and the Journal of Latin American Cultural Studies.

---2015-16, Mellon Postdoctoral Fellow, University of Pennsylvania, Penn Humanities Forum/Dept. of Romance Languages ---2011-12, ACLS New Faculty Fellow, Stanford University, Dept. of History ---2010-11, Visiting Assistant Professor, Tulane University, Dept. of History

PEER-REVIEWED JOURNAL ARTICLES

“Archival Seduction: Indexical Absences and Historiographical Ghosts,” in  Radical Archives, ed. Lisa Darms and Kate Eichhorn, special issue of  Archive Journal 5 (Fall 2015)
 

“Sexual Violence, Predatory Masculinity, and Medical Testimony in New Spain” in Scientific Masculinities, special issue of Osiris 30, ed. Robert Nye and Erika Milam (University of Chicago Press, 2015)

 

“Visceral Archives of the Body: Consuming the Dead, Digesting the Divine” in On The Visceral, special issue of GLQ: A Journal of Lesbian and Gay Studies 20:4, ed. Kyla Tompkins, Marcia Ochoa, and Sharon P. Holland (Duke University Press, 2014): 407-437

 

“Geografías nefandas y homosociabilidad en el México colonial” Katatay: Revista crítica de literatura latinoamericana 9:11-12 (Sept. 2014): 117-129

 

“Animals and Archives: Making Sense of the Discurso Filosofico Sobre el Lenguage de los Animales,” e-misférica 10.1 (Hemispheric Institute of Performance and Politics, New York University, 2013): http://hemisphericinstitute.org/hemi/en/e-misferica-101

 

“Against Nature: Sodomy and Homosexuality in Colonial Latin America,” History Compass 10:2 (Wiley-Blackwell Publishing, 2012): 161-178

 

“Masturbation, Salvation, and Desire: Connecting Sexuality and Religiosity in Colonial Mexico,” Journal of the History of Sexuality 16:3 (University of Texas Press, Sept. 2007): 355-372

 

“‘ Heran Todos Putos’: Sodomitical Subcultures and Disordered Desire in Early Colonial Mexico,” Ethnohistory 54:1 (Duke University Press, Jan. 2007): 36-67

 

ARTICLES AND BOOK CHAPTERS

“Female Homoeroticism, Heresy, and the Holy Office in Colonial Brazil” (co-authored with Ronaldo Vainfas) in Sexuality and the Unnatural in Colonial Latin America, ed. Zeb Tortorici (University of California Press, 2016)

 

“Animal Archive Stories: Species Anxieties in the Mexican National Archive” in The Historical Animal, ed. Susan Nance (Syracuse University Press, 2015), 75-98


 “‘Serving It’: Werq Queers Our Sex, $ex Queers Our Work” (co-authored with Michael McNamara and Virgie Tovar) in Queer Sex Work, ed. Nicola Smith, Mary Laing, and Katy Pilcher (Routledge, 2015): 43-52


 “Queering Archives: Intimate Tracings” (Editors’ Introduction co-authored with Daniel Marshall and Kevin P. Murphy),  Radical History Review 122 (2015): 1-10


"Queering Archives: Hitorical Unravelings" (Editors' Introduction co-authored with Daniel Marshall and Kevin P. Murphy), Radical History Review 120 (2014): 1-11

 

“Writing Animal Histories” (co-authored with Martha Few) in Centering Animals in Latin American History, ed. Martha Few and Zeb Tortorici (Duke University Press, 2013): 1-27

 

“‘In the Name of the Father and Mother of All Dogs’: Canine Weddings, Baptisms, and Funerals in Bourbon Mexico” in Centering Animals in Latin American History, ed. Martha Few and Zeb Tortorici (Duke University Press, 2013): 93-119

“Agustina Ruiz: Sexuality and Religiosity in Colonial Mexico” in The Human Tradition in Colonial Latin America (2^nd edition), ed. Kenneth J. Andrien (Rowman & Littlefield, 2013): 117-132

“Životinje, Indijanci i kategorija neprirodnoga u kolonijalnom Meksiku” (“Animals, Indians, and the Category of the Unnatural”) in Kulturni bestijarij II (“Cultural Bestiary II”), ed. Suzana Marjanić (Zagreb, Croatia: Institut za etnogiju i folkloristiku, 2012): 241-258

 

“Reading the (Dead) Body: Histories of Suicide in New Spain” in Death and Dying in Colonial Spanish America, ed. Miruna Achim and Martina Will de Chaparro (University of Arizona Press, 2011): 53-77

 

“Fare pornografia queer attraverso l’autoetnografia e l’attivismo” in Alterazioni: Introduzione alle sociologie delle omosessualità, ed. Cirus Rinaldi (MIMESIS, Milan, 2012): 317-333 

 

“Queering Pornography: Desiring Youth, Race, and Fantasy in Gay Porn” in Queer Youth Cultures, ed. Susan Driver (State University of New York Press, 2008): 199-220

 

EDITED COLLECTIONS

Sexuality and the Unnatural in Colonial Latin America, ed. Zeb Tortorici (University of California Press, 2016)

 

Queering Archives: Intimate Tracings, special issue of Radical History Review 122 (spring 2015), ed. Daniel Marshall, Kevin Murphy, and Zeb Tortorici (Duke University Press, 2015)

 

Queering Archives: Historical Unravelings, special issue of Radical History Review 120 (fall 2014), ed. Daniel Marshall, Kevin Murphy, and Zeb Tortorici (Duke University Press, 2014)

 

Centering Animals in Latin American History, ed. Martha Few and Zeb Tortorici (Duke University Press, 2013)

 

Ethnopornography: Sexuality, Colonialism, and Anthropological Knowing, ed. Pete Sigal, Zeb Tortorici, and Neil L. Whitehead ( under review)


Turning Archival, ed. Daniel Marshall, Kevin Murphy, and Zeb Tortorici (Duke University Press:  under review)


Trans*historicities, special issue of  TSQ: Transgender Studies Quarterly, ed. Leah DeVun and Zeb Tortorici ( in preparation )


On Fetal Baptisms and Cesarean Sections: An Eighteenth-Century Guatemalan Treatise in Historical Perspective, ed. Zeb Tortorici, Adam Warren, and Martha Few (Penn State University Press “Latin American Originals” Book Series,  in preparation)