Faculty

Research

The Body and Society in early modern Spain

Dr. Berco’s research program focuses on the body and society in the early modern Hispanic world. Though he has published widely on a variety of topics, including the decriminalization of sodomy in nineteenth-century Argentina and gender identity and self discipline in Baroque Spain, his main interests entail the following:

1. The Body, Sexuality and Society, specifically male homosexual behaviour, its reliance on gendered constructs, and its uneasy relationship to social status in early modern societies. Gleaned from Spanish trial records, this research focuses on the border between the hierarchies constructed through the sexed body and those available from public understandings of status. Dr. Berco’s book on the subject, Sexual Hierarchies, Public Status: Men, Sodomy, and Society in Golden Age Spain argues that, though homosexual behaviour was widespread due to a penetrative conceptualization of masculinity, public anger was mobilized into trials when these sexual relationships violated normalized power relations, as in the case of Muslim slaves sodomizing Christian adolescents. At the same time, because of the diffuse nature of an inquisitorial trial, magistrates did not always follow through on the public intent to punish, effectively shielding some groups like the clergy from harsh sentences. Dr. Berco has also published separately on the intimate connection between patriarchal forms of power and sodomy, both in practice and in terms of the constructs informing them.
2. The Body, Disease and Society. This research focuses on syphilis and its sociocultural implications as a lived illness. By combining institutional and notarial records, this research examines this chronic disease in its full personal and social dimensions. Dr. Berco’s book From Body to Community: Venereal Disease and Society in Baroque Spain traces the complex lives of syphilis patients at Toledo’s Hospital de Santiago, moving from the somatic aspects of infection and treatment to the sociocultural implications for patients living with this chronic illness in terms of marriage, work, and community relationships.
3. The Body, the Brain and Inquisitors. This new research interest grew out of combining Dr. Berco’s recent work on the perception of the clothes body and his collaboration with choreographer Isabelle Van Grimde on the body and its relationship to vision and movement. Relying on novel methodologies from the burgeoning field of neurohistory, Dr. Berco is thus currently focusing on historicizing the inquisitorial brain. Focusing mainly on sensory perception, motor-emotional control, and cognition, this research has already led to the publication of “Perception and the Mulatto Body in Inquisitorial Spain: A Neurohistory,” Past & Present 231, no. 1 (2016): 33-60”. Dr. Berco is currently continuing this work with an eye to writing a monograph on the inquisitorial brain.

Publications

Book

From Body to Community: Venereal Disease and Society in Baroque Spain (Toronto, University of Toronto Press, 2016)

• Winner: American Association for the History of Medicine Welch Medal (2018)
• Winner: European Association for the History of Medicine and Health Book Prize (2017)
• Finalist: Canadian Historical Association Ferguson Prize (2017)

Sexual Hierarchies, Public Status: Men, Sodomy, and Society in Spain’s Golden Age (University of Toronto Press, January 2007).

Articles in Journals and Chapters in Edited Collections

“Fashioning Disease: Narrative and the Sick Body in the Spanish Inquisition,” in Hilaire Kallendorf, ed., A Companion to the Spanish Renaissance (Leiden: Brill, 2019), pp. 205-232

“Determining Insanity in the Inquisition: Sensory Perception and Legal Culture in Seventeenth-Century Lima,” eHumanista: Journal of Iberian Studies 36 (2017): 42-61.

Perception and the Mulatto Body in Inquisitorial Spain: A Neurohistory,” Past & Present 231, no. 1 (2016): 33-60.

“The Great Pox, Symptoms, and Social Bodies in Early Modern Spain,” Social History of Medicine 28, no. 2 (2015): 225-244.

“Miscegenation” and “Sodomy”,  in Evonne Levy and Kenneth Mills, eds., Lexikon of the Hispanic Baroque: Technologies of a Transatlantic Cultural Transfer (Austin, TX: University of Texas Press, 2014), pp. 219-20 and 324-5 respectively.

“The Many Faces of Female Discipline: Gender Control, Subversion and the Nun-Confessor Relationship in Golden Age Barcelona,” in Manuela Scarci, ed., Creating Women: Representation, Self-Representation, and Agency in the Renaissance (Toronto, Centre for Reformation and Renaissance Studies, 2013), pp. 149-65.

“Syphilis, Sex, and Marriage in Early Modern Spain,” Journal of Early Modern History 15, no. 3 (2011): 223-53.

“Crossing Borders: Identity, Difference and Community,” Journal of Eastern Township Studies 37 (Fall 2011)

“Textiles as Social Texts: Syphilis, Material Culture and Gender in Golden Age Spain,” Journal of Social History 44, no. 3 (Spring 2011): 785-810.

With Stephanie Fink De Backer, coauthor. “Queerness, Syphilis and Enlightenment in Eighteenth Century Madrid,” Revista Canadiense de Estudios Hispanicos 35, no. 1 (2010): 31-48.

“Producing Patriarchy: Male Homosexuality and Gender in Early Modern Spain,” Journal of the History of Sexuality 17, no. 3 (September 2008): 351-376.

“The Masks of Normalcy: Homosexual Behaviour, Syphilis, and Decline in Juan Calvo’s Valencia,” in Kenneth Borris and G. S. Rousseau, eds., The Sciences of Homosexuality in Early Modern Europe (New York: Routledge, 2007), pp. 92-113

“Social Control and its Limits: Sodomy, Local Sexual Economies, and Inquisitors during Spain’s Golden Age,” Sixteenth Century Journal 36, no. 2 (2005): 331-358.

“Juana Pimentel, the Mendoza Family, and the Crown,” in Helen Nader, ed., Power and Gender in Renaissance Spain: The Mendoza Women (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2004), pp. 27-47.

“Revealing the Other: Moriscos, Crime, and Local Politics in Toledo’s Hinterland in the Late Sixteenth Century,” Medieval Encounters  8, no. 2-3 (2002): 135-159.

“Between Piety and Sin: Zaragoza’s Confraternity of San Roque, Syphilis and Sodomy,” Confraternitas 13, no. 2 (Fall 2002): 3-16.

“Silencing the Unmentionable: Non Reproductive Sex and the Creation of a Civilized Argentina, 1860-1900,” The Americas 58, no. 3 (January 2002): 419-441.

Research

1. Aboriginal Treaty Rights and historical memory: Treaty #9 and the process of colonization. The First Nations, of what is now called northern and northwestern Ontario, signed a treaty with the federal and provincial governments in 1905 and 1906. While the First Nations have an oral history of the negotiations which indicate that the treaty was simply one of ‘peace and friendship,’ the federal government believes that something much more was represented in the treaty’s terms. However, its corporate memory does not include an historical understanding of what those terms would have meant at the time of signing and beyond. This research explores the context under which the terms were drafted by the federal and Ontario governments and offers settler interpretations of those terms from an archival, technological and legal perspective.
2. Settler Images of First Nations and their traditional territories: Research in this area includes explorations of photographs and other visual images that have been created by settler authorities to project certain ideas and understandings of the First Nations and their traditional lands. It also includes examinations of landscape formation and how understandings of land use shape First Nations/settler relations.
3. Decolonizing the Academy: Working with scholars from Sociology and Education, this research examines the efforts of universities to decolonize their practices, policies and pedagogies and what barriers and challenges exist when doing so. It includes discussions of Canada’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission’s 94 Calls to Action and the contentious debates around the ideas of “Truth,” “Justice” and “Reconciliation.”

Publications

Books

2007

• The Culture of Hunting, principal editor, Vancouver: UBC Press, pp.276

1999

• Cross-Currents:  Hydro-electricity and the Engineering of Northern Ontario, Waterloo: Wilfrid Laurier University Press, pp.209.

Book Chapters and Journal Articles from 2000

2021

• “Responding to the Findings of Canada’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission:  A Case Study of Barriers and Drivers for Change at a Small Undergraduate Institution,” Journal of Higher Education, forthcoming (Co-authors:  Prof. Mary-Ellen Donnan and Prof. Avril Aitken).

2020

• “If not here, then where?  Making Decolonization a priority at an undergraduate university,” in Decolonizing and Indigenizing Education in Canada, Sheila Cote-Meek and Taima Moke-Pickering eds.  (Co-authors:  Prof. Mary-Ellen Donnan and Prof. Avril Aitken).
• “De-colonizing the Treaty #9 Photographs of Duncan Campbell Scott,” in the International Journal of the Image, Vol11:no.1, pp.21-38. https://doi.org/10.18848/2154-8560/CGP/v11i01/21-38

2017

• « Les Premières Nations et les Systèmes d’Énergie intracontinentaux:  un moyen de préserver l’état-nation? » Neuvo Mondo, on-line, (October). https://journals.openedition.org/nuevomundo/

2016

• “Treaty #3 and the Interactions of Landscape and Memory in the Rainy River and Lake of the Woods Area,” in Journal of Canadian Studies, Vol. 50: no.1: (Winter, 2016), pp.100-128. Peer reviewed.

2014

• “Treaty 3 and the interactions of landscape and memory,” submitted for publication consideration to the Journal of Canadian Studies.

2011

• “The Historical Erasure of an Indigenous Identity in the Borderlands: The Western Abenaki of Vermont, New Hampshire, and Quebec,” in Journal of Borderlands Studies, Vol.26: no.2, (August, 2011), pp.179-196.

2010

• Liberalism and the Numbered Treaties, Aboriginal Policy Research: a History of Treaties and Policy, Jerry B. White et al., eds., Toronto: Thompson Educational Publishing, Vol.VII, pp.41-57

2007

• “Modernity’s Contested Terrains of space and place:  Hunting and Algonquin Park, 1890-1950,” in The Culture of Hunting, Jean L. Manore and Dale G. Miner, eds., Vancouver:  UBC Press, chp.9, pp.121-147.

2006

• “Rivers as Text: From Pre-Modern to Post-Modern Understandings of Development, Technology and the Environment in Canada and Abroad,” in A History of Water, The World of Water, Vol.III, T.Tvedt and T. Oestigaard, eds., London: I.B. Taurus & Co. Ltd., pp.229-253.

2003

• “The Construction of Rivers and Community Transformation: An Alternative History of the St. Francis River,” in Journal of the Eastern Townships, No.23, Fall/Automne, 2003, pp.27-40.

2001

• “The Promise of Hydro? Comparative and contrasting hydro-electric development in Ontario and Quebec,” in Canada Confederation to Present, Chris Hackett and Robert Hesketh eds., CD-Rom, Edmonton: Chinook Multimedia Productions.

2000

• “Indian Reserves vs. Indian lands: Contrasting Views of Reserves, Crown Lands and Natural Resource Use in northeastern Ontario, 1906-1990,” in Ontario since Confederation, Edgar-Andre Montigny and Lori Chambers eds., Toronto: University of Toronto Press, pp. 195-213.

Conference Papers from 2000

2019

• “Consciously Adjusting the Volume of the Settler’s Voice,” Canadian Sociology Association Annual Conference, Vancouver, BC. Co-authors: Mary Ellen Donnan and Avril Aitken.
• “Responding to the Findings of Canada’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission: A Case Study of Barriers and Drivers for Change at a Small Undergraduate Institution,” International Conference on Learning, Belfast, northern Ireland, co-authors: Mary Ellen Donnan and Avril Aitken.

2018

• “Partnerships, Community Capacity Development and the 13 Principles at Bishop’s University,” Quebec Past and Present Colloquium on Quebec Studies, ETRC, Sherbrooke, Quebec in collaboration with Mary Ellen Donnan and Avril Aitken.

2017

• De-colonizing the Indigenous Image in Canada: An examination of the photographs of D.C. Scott taken during the Treaty #9 negotiations in 1905-06, International Conference on the Image, Venice Italy, October/November.
• “Higher Education, the 13 Principles and Indigenous Peoples: Putting Words into Action at Bishop’s,” Colloquium on the Struggle for Social and Environmental Rights Brazil and Canada in Solidarity, Sherbrooke, Quebec, with Mary Ellen Donnan and Avril Aitken.

2015

• « Les Premières Nations et les Systèmes d’Énergie intracontinentaux: un moyen de préserver l’état-nation? » and “Intervention in First Nations societies by the Canadian State” for the International Committee for Historical Sciences Congress, Jinan, China.

2014

• The survey and the map: the use of territorial technologies as instruments of colonization of Aboriginal lands in Canada, World History Congress, San Jose, Costa Rica.
• The Department of Indian Affairs, D.C. Scott and the Governmentality of Treaties 3 and 9, CHA, St. Catherines, Ontario.

2013

• The pen, the canoe, the survey: Technologies of Environmental Colonization, Quelques Arpents de Neige Environmental History Workshop, Kingston, Ontario.

2011

• Treaty #3 and the interactions of landscape and memory in the Rainy River area during the late nineteenth century, CHA, New Brunswick. « Le Traité no 9 et la perméabilité des frontières entre les rapports oraux et écrits des négociations, » Paper to be presented at the ACFAS Annual Conference, May, Sherbrooke ACFAS Sherbrooke.

2010

• “Treaties as tools for modern state formation? Aboriginal arguments to the contrary in Treaty #3 and #9” American Society for Ethnohistory, Ottawa.

2009

• “Indigeneity meets Industrialism: Contrasting and Colliding Views of a Canadian northern hinterland, 1870-1930” forthcoming (August), International Congress on Environmental History, Copenhagen.
• “Liberalism and The Numbered Treaties,” Aboriginal Policy Research Conference, Ottawa: Indian and Northern Affairs Canada/University of Western Ontario.

2007

• “Treaty 9 and the Borderland of Northern Ontario: Liberalism, Colonialism and Native Resistance to State Expansion,” Canadian Historical Association Annual Conference, University of Saskatchewan.

2006

• “Treaty 9:  Is it or is it not part of Canada’s ‘Liberal Order Framework?’” Wahnapitae Annual Aboriginal Conference, Temagami Ontario.

2005

• “Foreigners in their own Land: The erasure of Abenaki history in the Eastern Townships,” for Canadian Historical Association Annual Meeting, University of Western Ontario.
• “Professing an interest in First Nations History: Reflections on Teaching and Researching Native/settler Relations in a Canadian University” for “First Nations, First Thoughts,” School of Canadian Studies Annual Conference, Edinburgh.

2003

• “The Technology of Rivers and Community Transformation: An Alternative History of the St. Francis,” ETRC annual conference, Bishop’s University.

2001

• Modernity’s Contested Terrains of space and place: Hunting and Algonquin Park, 1890-1950,” Canadian Historical Association Annual Meeting, Laval.
• “Rivers as text: from pre-modern to post-modern understandings of development, technology and the environment in Canada and abroad,” International Water History Association Conference, Bergen, Norway.