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Aaron Stamper

Visiting Assistant Professor

Aaron Stamper studies interreligious relations in late medieval and early modern Iberia, Europe, and the Mediterranean. He holds a dual BA in Spanish and Religious Studies from the University of New Mexico, a dual MA in Religious Studies and History from the University of Colorado, and a PhD in History from Princeton University.

Stamper’s research draws on his interdisciplinary training to explore how sensory experiences shaped identity and religious conversion in premodern history. His current book project, True Intentions: The Conversion of Iberia’s Body and Soul, offers the first comprehensive sensory history of early modern European conquest and colonization, from the reign of the Spanish Catholic Monarchs to the expulsion of Spain’s converted Muslims - referred to as Moriscos (1474-1609). He foregrounds the lives of women, slaves, and heretic priests, alongside queens, kings, and archbishops, to show how they reshaped Iberian culture and society. More broadly, he considers the experiences of religious converts within the greater context of the Protestant Reformation, European-American contact, and potential Ottoman-Islamic conquest of the Mediterranean and beyond.

He has published on the soundscapes of conquest in premodern Spain, the cross-Mediterranean travels of Muslims and Christians, and has forthcoming publications on the experiences of enslaved Morisca women. His work has been supported by the U.S. Fulbright Research Award, the Charlotte W. Newcombe Dissertation Fellowship, and the European Research Council sponsored project, “Female Slavery in Mediterranean Catholic Europe, 1500-1800” (FemSMed).

Education

Ph.D. Princeton University

M.A. University of Colorado

B.A. University of New Mexico