About
Brendan McMahon’s research addresses the visual and material culture of early modern Spain and the Spanish Americas, and is particularly concerned with the relationship between materiality, meaning, and epistemology. He is currently at work on a book project drawn from his dissertation, which examines the reception of iridescent materials such as textiles, feathers, shells, and minerals in seventeenth-century Spain and Mexico in the context of debates surrounding the limits of visual perception. He is also in the initial stages of two studies devoted to understanding early modern conceptions of space. The first is a collaborative project that aims to map geographies of material exchange across the early modern Pacific, while the second approaches the question of space through the lens of the history of ornithology, examining period theories of avian mobility, migration, and species distribution. In addition to support from the Michigan Society of Fellows, his research has been funded by a Fulbright-García Robles Grant and an Andrew W. Mellon Predoctoral Fellowship from the Center for Advanced Study in the Visual Arts, among others.
Field(s) of study
- Visual and Material Culture of the Early Modern Hispanic World
- History of Science
- Intellectual History
- Ornithology
- History of the Pacific World
