Dissertation: Seizing Sovereignty: Palenquero Suzerainty in Panamá and Nueva Granada (1520-1694)

Advisor: Dr. Daniel Domingues

Mariah A-K Bender is a PhD candidate in the Department of History. Their project “Seizing Sovereignty: Palenquero Suzerainty in Panamá and Nueva Granada (1520-1694),” focuses on free Black communities in Nueva Granda and Tierra Firme (modern-day Panama and Colombia) during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Their inquiry explores how the social, religious, and political landscapes of communities in the Spanish Americas were shaped by centuries of diverse legal cultures from the Greater Senegambian region and Iberia. Their research methodologies utilize material culture, ritual theory from African religions, and Black geographies to explore how Africans challenged sovereignty and contributed to the legal pluralism of the early modern world. Mariah is also a digital humanist whose project, Mapping Resistance, is a set of digitized archival material about Africans in the sixteenth and seventeenth century in colonial Panama and Colombia, access to historical maps, transcription and translation services, and paleography tools.