Nora E. Jaffary, PhD

Dr. Jaffary is a Latin Americanist whose research focuses on social and gender history in colonial and nineteenth-century Mexico. Her book, Reproduction and Its Discontents in Mexico: Childbirth and Contraception from 1750 to 1905 (UNC-Chapel Hill, 2016) examining midwifery, monstrous births, infanticide, abortion and the emergence of Mexican obstetrics, won the Canadian Historical Association's Wallace K. Ferguson Prize in 2017, and Honorable Mention for the Latin American Studies Association's Howard F. Cline Book Prize in Mexican History in 2018. Her new Abortion in Mexico: A History was published in 2024 in Spanish (Tirant lo Blanch) and English (University of Nebraska Press). With Dr. Cassia Roth, she is currently writing a history of sexuality in colonial Latin America that will be published with Routledge in its Seminar Series.

Dr. Jaffary received her Ph.D. in Latin American History from Columbia University in 2000. Earlier in her career, she published a monograph on the Mexican inquisition’s investigation of popular religious practices, False Mystics: Deviant Orthodoxy in Colonial Mexico,  a volume of essays treating the comparative colonization of the Americas, Gender, Race, and Religion in the Colonization of the Americas, and two collections of primary sources in translation aimed at introducing students to Mexican history and to women's history: Women in Colonial Latin America: Texts and Contexts, 1526-1806, co-edited with Jane E. Mangan and Mexican History: A Primary Source Reader, co-edited with Edward W. Osowski and Susie S. Porter.

Dr. Jaffary regularly teaches classes on the colonial and modern history of Latin America including "Latin America Via the Novel," and "Mexican, Cuban, and US Relations."

Dr. Jaffary is interested in working with graduate students on issues involving Mexico’s social and cultural history in the colonial and modern eras, or more broadly on gender, race, crime, deviancy, and religion in colonial and nineteenth-century Latin America.

She has previously served as both Graduate Program Director, Department Chair, and as the Academic Code Administrator for the Faculty of Arts and Science. 

Education

B.A. University of Toronto; M.A. University of British Columbia; Ph.D. Columbia University.

Courses 2025/2026

Fall:
HIST 332: US-Cuban-Mexican Relations
HIST 346: Sex in History

Recent graduate students

Alonso Rangel (MA 2024-) Marriage and Divorce in Mexico

Gabrielle Merklein (MA 2024-) Gender and Identity in the early Andes

Camila Casgrain-Rodriguez (MA, 2022-2025) Abortion in Mexico

Luis Londoño (PhD, 2020-2025) Crime in Mexico

Hugo Rueda (PhD, 2017-2023). Memory and Nation in Chile.

Courses taught

HIST 276: Latin America: The Colonial Period
HIST 332: Mexican, Cuban and US Relations
HIST 346: Sex in History
HIST 336: Deviancy and Orthodoxy in Mexican History
HIST 372: Latin America Via the Novel
HIST 403: History and Methodology
HIST 457/640/840: The Idea of Race in Latin America
HIST 457/640/840: Crime in Mexican History
HIST 457/640: Sexuality and Gender in Latin American History
HIST 457/640: The US-Mexican Border

Selected publications

Abortion in Mexico: A History. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2024 (Engendering Latin American Series.)

Reproduction and its Discontents in Mexico:Childbirth and Contraception in Mexico, 1750-1905. Chapel Hill: University ofNorth Carolina Press, 2016.

Co-edited with Jane Mangan, Women in Colonial Latin America 1526 to 1806: Texts and Contexts. Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing Company, 2018.

Co-edited with Edward W. Osowski and Susie S. Porter, Mexican History: A Primary Source Reader. Boulder: Westview Press,2010.

False Mystics: Deviant Orthodoxy in Colonial Mexico. Lincoln: The University of Nebraska Press, 2004 (Engendering Latin America Series).  Paperback edition, 2008.