John Charles received a Ph.D. in Spanish from Yale University in 2003 and joined the Tulane faculty that same year. He specializes in the literature and history of colonial Spanish America and teaches a wide range of topics, including New World historiography, early missionary writings, interdisciplinary approaches to the study of Amerindian peoples, and the twentieth-century historical novel. His forthcoming book Allies at Odds: The Andean Church and Its Indigenous Agents, 1583-1671 (University of New Mexico Press, 2010) examines the history of the role of native intermediaries in the evangelization process in colonial Peru, with special focus on early native Andean uses of Spanish literacy in the legal realm of the Roman Catholic Church. He has served as an affiliate of the Pontificia Universidad Católica and Instituto Riva-Agüero of Lima, Peru, and his research has been supported by awards from the J. William Fulbright Foreign Scholarship Board and the National Endowment for the Humanities, among other institutions.

Abridged CV