Barbara Ganson, Ph.D., spent the spring semester as a Research Fellow at Institute for Advanced Jesuit Studies at Boston College where she completed a book to be published by Jesuit Sources in 2017

Barbara Ganson, Professor of History and Director of Caribbean and Latin American Studies, spent the spring semester as a Research Fellow at Institute for Advanced Jesuit Studies at Boston College where she completed a book to be published by Jesuit Sources in 2017.  This first bilingual English and Spanish edition of Peruvian Jesuit Antonio Ruiz de Montoya's  The Spiritual Conquest  (1639) is one of the most important sources for understanding the encounters in seventeenth-century Paraguay, Rio de la Plata, and southern Brazil.  It is rich for what it reveals about the process by which the Jesuits attempted to convert the Guaraní Indians to Christianity.  There was an intense struggle for dominance, resulting in the martyrdom of seven Jesuits and the creation of the early  reducciones  (settlements).  The volume helps scholars understand Paraguay's rich native past, as well as the Jesuits themselves, especially their struggle against Indian slavery.  The volume will lend itself well to use in the classroom for courses on Colonial Latin American History, Anthropology, and Spanish American Colonial Literature.  Professor Ganson collaborated with a Paraguayan scholar,  CLINIA M. SAFFI, Ph.D., Professor of Modern Foreign Languages at Presbyterian College and a graduate from the University of Miami.