Associate Professor Heather Martel has a doctorate in American History from University of California, Irvine (2001). Her scholarship is on Protestantism, Science, Race, Gender, Sexuality, and Colonialism in the Early Atlantic World, culminating in her forthcoming book, Deadly Virtue: The Protestant Roots of American Whiteness, which looks at a failed French Protestant attempt to colonize Florida in the sixteenth-century. Frustrated with European monarchs, French Huguenots settled in the region that would become Georgia and Florida where they searched for gold and a rich, powerful Indigenous king willing to convert to Reformed Christianity and act as a patron for their Protestant empire. However, when the colony fell to bad weather and a Spanish massacre, they interpreted this as an expression of their god’s anger. Survivors believed their miraculous survival was due to their god’s “grace,” as well as his preference for the “elect,” the people who would come to believe they were white. Professor Martel is turning next to a study of the history of emotion, gender, and colonialism in the early Atlantic. She teaches classes in these areas, including a survey of U.S. Women and Gender history, the history of food, the history of the body, the history of Pride in the time of HIV/AIDS, and research and writing courses on theory and history.
Coming soon from University Press of Florida: Deadly Virtue: The Protestant Roots of American Whiteness
BOOK REVIEW. Nicholas Canny and Philip Morgan, eds. Oxford Handbook of The Atlantic World, 1450-1800. Journal of Early Modern History. Vol. 18 Issue ½ (2014): 190-192.
BOOK REVIEW. R. Todd Romero. Making War and Minting Christians: Masculinity, Religion, and Colonialism in Early New England. History: Reviews of New Books. Vol. 41 Issue 3 (July 2013): 96-96. ARTICLE. “Timucua in Deer Clothing: Friendship, Resistance, and Protestant Identity.” Atlantic Studies. Vol. 10 Issue 1, (2013):13-33.
ARTICLE. “Colonial Allure: Normal Homoeroticism and Sodomy in French-Timucuan Encounters in Sixteenth-Century Florida.” Journal of the History of Sexuality. Vol. 22 Issue 1, (Jan 2013): 34-64.
BOOK CHAPTER. “Ferocious Appetites: Hunger, Nakedness, and Identity in Sixteenth-Century American Encounters.” Poverty and Prosperity in the Middle Ages and Renaissance. Edited by Cynthia Kosso and Anne Scott. (Belgium: Berpols, 2012): 303–322.
BOOK REVIEW. Eve. M. Duffy and Alida C. Metcalf, The Return of Hans Staden: A Go-Between in the Atlantic World. Renaissance Quarterly. Summer 2012, Vol. 65 Issue 2 (2012): 585-586. BOOK CHAPTER. Dirty Things: Bread, Maize, Women and Christian Identity in 16th C America. In Food and Faith in Christian Culture. Edited by Ken Albala and Trudy Eden. (New York: Columbia University Press, 2011): 83–104.
ARTICLE. Hans Staden’s Captive Soul: Identity, Imperialism and Rumors of Cannibalism in 16th Century Brazil. Journal of World History. Vol. 17 Issue 1 (2006): 51–69.