Hannah Abrahamson

Welcome Hannah R. Abrahamson, 2024–2025 OI-NEH Postdoctoral Fellow

Hannah R. Abrahamson is Assistant Professor of Latin American History at College of the Holy Cross where she teaches courses on early modern Latin America, Indigenous history, and histories of gender and sexuality. She earned her Ph.D. from Emory University in 2022, which received dissertation awards from the Latin American Studies Association and the New England Council of Latin American Studies as well as a post-doctoral prize from the Conference on Latin American History. Her research interests include household dynamics, gendered labor structures, and bondage in the Atlantic World. She is currently writing her first book manuscript, provisionally titled: “Her Fists Full of Tribute: Domestic Labor and the Encomienda in Early Colonial Yucatan.”

Dr. Abrahamson will work on her book manuscript “Her Fists Full of Tribute: Domestic Labor and the Encomienda in Early Colonial Yucatan” during her position as an OI-NEH postdoctoral fellow. This will involve the heavy revision of her dissertation and the development of two new book chapters based on post-doctoral research. The first new chapter will examine the formation of multiethnic households in Yucatan, Mexico while the second chapter will analyze sexual violence within these households and encomienda-based Maya towns. Dr. Abrahamson looks forward to engaging with scholars of Indigenous history, gender, and the early Americas at the Omohundro Institute as well as the College of William & Mary.