Nicole T. Hughes
Assistant Professor, Spanish and Portuguese
School of Humanities
School of Humanities
Email: nthughes@uci.edu
University of California, Irvine
Research Abstract
Nicole T. Hughes researches the early modern world with a special focus on New Spain (Mexico) and Brazil in the sixteenth century. Her primary sources take a crucial role in determining her methods and approaches, and her current research projects encompass literary and cultural studies, historical anthropology, and festive studies / theater history, as well as conceptual history and rhetorical analysis. She works with many kinds of texts—chronicles, historias, letters, autos, dialogues, epic and lyric poetry, novelas, legal treatises—as well as material / visual culture, such as feather mosaics, woodcuts, and pictographic codices. She works with texts originally written in Spanish, Portuguese, Classical Nahuatl, Tupi Antigo, French, and Latin, among other languages.
In her first book project, Staging History: New Spain, Brazil, and the Theater of the World (under review), she analyzes dramatic performances in which missionaries, conquistadors, and Indigenous elites superimposed depictions of far-flung conflicts and interpretations of local struggles. She argues that by envisioning other parts of the world and relating those images back to the Americas, participants in these theatrical spectacles created foundational narratives of New Spain and Brazil. The book is a substantial reworking of her dissertation, which was a finalist for the Latin American Studies’ Association Maureen Ahern Award for best dissertation in Colonial Latin American Studies (2017–2020).
Her research has appeared or is forthcoming in Representations, Colonial Latin American Review, Word & Image, and Renaissance Quarterly, which awarded her honorable mention for the William Nelson Prize for best article published in 2023.
Before joining UCI, she was a postdoctoral fellow in the Andrew W. Mellon Fellowship for Scholars in the Humanities at Stanford University. She subsequently served as Assistant Professor in the Department of Iberian and Latin American Cultures at Stanford University until she was reappointed in the spring of 2025. Prior to entering academia, she edited nonfiction at Penguin Press.
Explore her articles:
Her article “Crossed Gazes: Seeing Lepanto in the Conquest of the Americas” is forthcoming in Word & Image. In December of 1571, King Philip II of Spain ordered dozens of settlements in the Americas to celebrate his victory over the Ottoman Empire at Lepanto. This article uncovers how the people of Guadalajara, Cuzco, and Mexico City organized festivities in which they touted the completion or promise of completing their conquests by depicting themselves beholding Lepanto. Their resolve to reflect Philip II’s idealized image of Lepanto back to him while keeping their sights on their own ambitions produced what she calls crossed gazes.
Renaissance Quarterly published her article, “Fiestas Fit for a King: Contested Symbolic Regimes of Power in New Spain” in November of 2023. This piece explores how the conquistadors’ descendants adopted heraldry, hereditary titles, and royal ceremony “in jest” in mid-sixteenth-century Mexico City. It argues that the judges’ obsession with how wealthy settlers adopted royal pomp and circumstance, on the one hand, and refusal to recognize how they imitated the Mexica nobility, on the other, helped to consolidate Spanish power—symbolic and literal—in New Spain.
Colonial Latin American Review published her article, “Set in Stone: Jesuit Martyrdom at Land and Sea in Sixteenth-Century Brazil” in July of 2023. This piece explores how Jesuit missionaries in Brazil wanted adversaries to slay them in odium fidei (in hatred of the faith), a traditional requirement for martyrdom. The article argues that while the Soldiers of Christ found that their evangelical work remained on land, the sea’s narrative tropes suited the requirements for martyrdom best. To construct their case for Jesuit martyrs in Brazil, they subverted an age-old poetic landscape and constructed a fluid literary cartography.
Representations published her article, “The Sultan Hernán Cortés: The Double Staging of The Conquest of Jerusalem” in December of 2020. The piece argues that the festival account of the religious drama known as The Conquest of Jerusalem is a palimpsest. It contains both the Tlaxcalans’ ambitious diplomatic strategy, expressed in their performance, and the Franciscan Friar Motolinía’s efforts to steer Castile’s policies through his textual reconstruction of the drama.
In her first book project, Staging History: New Spain, Brazil, and the Theater of the World (under review), she analyzes dramatic performances in which missionaries, conquistadors, and Indigenous elites superimposed depictions of far-flung conflicts and interpretations of local struggles. She argues that by envisioning other parts of the world and relating those images back to the Americas, participants in these theatrical spectacles created foundational narratives of New Spain and Brazil. The book is a substantial reworking of her dissertation, which was a finalist for the Latin American Studies’ Association Maureen Ahern Award for best dissertation in Colonial Latin American Studies (2017–2020).
Her research has appeared or is forthcoming in Representations, Colonial Latin American Review, Word & Image, and Renaissance Quarterly, which awarded her honorable mention for the William Nelson Prize for best article published in 2023.
Before joining UCI, she was a postdoctoral fellow in the Andrew W. Mellon Fellowship for Scholars in the Humanities at Stanford University. She subsequently served as Assistant Professor in the Department of Iberian and Latin American Cultures at Stanford University until she was reappointed in the spring of 2025. Prior to entering academia, she edited nonfiction at Penguin Press.
Explore her articles:
Her article “Crossed Gazes: Seeing Lepanto in the Conquest of the Americas” is forthcoming in Word & Image. In December of 1571, King Philip II of Spain ordered dozens of settlements in the Americas to celebrate his victory over the Ottoman Empire at Lepanto. This article uncovers how the people of Guadalajara, Cuzco, and Mexico City organized festivities in which they touted the completion or promise of completing their conquests by depicting themselves beholding Lepanto. Their resolve to reflect Philip II’s idealized image of Lepanto back to him while keeping their sights on their own ambitions produced what she calls crossed gazes.
Renaissance Quarterly published her article, “Fiestas Fit for a King: Contested Symbolic Regimes of Power in New Spain” in November of 2023. This piece explores how the conquistadors’ descendants adopted heraldry, hereditary titles, and royal ceremony “in jest” in mid-sixteenth-century Mexico City. It argues that the judges’ obsession with how wealthy settlers adopted royal pomp and circumstance, on the one hand, and refusal to recognize how they imitated the Mexica nobility, on the other, helped to consolidate Spanish power—symbolic and literal—in New Spain.
Colonial Latin American Review published her article, “Set in Stone: Jesuit Martyrdom at Land and Sea in Sixteenth-Century Brazil” in July of 2023. This piece explores how Jesuit missionaries in Brazil wanted adversaries to slay them in odium fidei (in hatred of the faith), a traditional requirement for martyrdom. The article argues that while the Soldiers of Christ found that their evangelical work remained on land, the sea’s narrative tropes suited the requirements for martyrdom best. To construct their case for Jesuit martyrs in Brazil, they subverted an age-old poetic landscape and constructed a fluid literary cartography.
Representations published her article, “The Sultan Hernán Cortés: The Double Staging of The Conquest of Jerusalem” in December of 2020. The piece argues that the festival account of the religious drama known as The Conquest of Jerusalem is a palimpsest. It contains both the Tlaxcalans’ ambitious diplomatic strategy, expressed in their performance, and the Franciscan Friar Motolinía’s efforts to steer Castile’s policies through his textual reconstruction of the drama.
Link to this profile
https://faculty.uci.edu/profile/?facultyId=7319
https://faculty.uci.edu/profile/?facultyId=7319
Last updated
08/29/2025
08/29/2025