Tom Robisheaux
Type: Lab
Trial records can be rich sources for researching and writing history. They point us to tensions and conflicts that often lie below the surface – in any society, at any time. Participants explored how trial records can open up new understandings of problems that engage us all. This workshop opened up fascinating new views of sexuality, for example. Anderson Hagler, Department of History, examined a sodomy case that took place in Sante Fe, New Mexico in 1731. A Spanish man accused two indigenous Pueblo men of committing sodomy in the countryside. Participants also interrogated the document and proposed multiple interpretations about its formulaic structure and attempt to connect this case to a broader historical trend about colonization in the Americas.