Professor
Heritage Hall 360N
(205) 934-7083
Research and Teaching Interests: Inquisition studies, history of science, history of medicine, cognitive science of religion
Office Hours: T/TH 12:30 - 2 p.m.
Education:
- Ph.D., University of California, Berkeley, 1998
Andrew Keitt's research interests have ranged from the religious history of early modern Spain, to the cognitive science of religion, to nineteenth-century history of medicine. He is the author of Inventing the Sacred: Imposture, Inquisition, and the Boundaries of the Supernatural in Golden Age Spain and A Physician in the Age of Liberal Reform: Ildefonso Martínez y Fernández and Medical Politics in Nineteenth-Century Spain, along with numerous other articles and book chapters. His current research project deals with the intersection of mysticism and esotericism in fin-de-siècle Spain.
Dr. Keitt teaches undergraduate surveys of Western Civilization, upper-division seminars on topics such as the Renaissance and Reformation and the Spanish Inquisition, along with graduate seminars on topics ranging from witchcraft and demonology to how to live a meaningful life in the modern world. He has introduced innovative teaching methods at UAB, such as Team-Based Learning and Reacting to the Past.
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Recent Courses
- Historian's Craft
- Science and Religion in Early Modern Europe
- Spain and the Spanish Inquisition
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Select Publications
Books:
- A Physician in the Age of Liberal Reform (LSU Press, 2024).
- Inventing the Sacred: Imposture, Inquisition, and the Boundaries of the Supernatural in Golden Age Spain (Brill, 2005).
Book Chapters:
- “Medical Martyrs: Nineteenth-Century Representations of Early Modern Inquisitorial Persecution of Spanish Physicians,” in Medicine and the Inquisition in the Early Modern World, Maria Pia Donato, ed. (Brill, 2019).
- “Preternatural Peasants and the Discourse of Demons: Xenoglossy, Superstition, and Melancholy in Early Modern Spain,” in Knowing Spirits, Knowing Demons, Michelle D. Brock, Richard Raiswell, and David Winter, eds. (Palgrave MacMillan, 2018).
- "The Supernatural," in Lexikon of the Hispanic Baroque: Transatlantic Exchange and Transformation, Evonne Levy and Kenneth Mills, eds. (University of Texas Press, 2013).
- "The Devil in the Old World: Anti-Superstition Literature, Medical Humanism, and Preternatural Philosophy in Early Modern Spain," in Angels, Demons, and the New World, Fernando Cervantes and Andrew Redden, eds. (Cambridge University Press, 2012).
Journal Articals:
- “Rethinking with Demons: The Campaign Against Late Medieval and Early Modern Superstition from a Cognitive Perspective.” Preternature 6, no. 2 (2017).
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Academic Distinctions & Professional Memberships
- Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching, CASE, Alabama Professor of the Year, 2010
- University of Alabama at Birmingham President's Award for Excellence in Teaching, 2010
- Society for Spanish and Portuguese Historical Studies Competition for Best First Book Published in 2004-06, Runner Up for Inventing the Sacred
- Harold Grimm Prize for "The Miraculous Body of Evidence: Miracles, Medical Discourse, and the Inquisition in Seventeenth-Century Spain"
- Frederick W. Conner Prize in the History of Ideas, for "Religious Enthusiasm, the Inquisition, and the Disenchantment of the World," 2004
- Student Groups