Associate Professor
Heritage Hall 360N
(205) 934-7083
Research and Teaching Interests: Inquisition studies, history of science, history of medicine, cognitive science of religion
Office Hours: T/TH 12:30 - 2 p.m.
Education:
- Ph.D., University of California, Berkeley, 1998
Andrew Keitt studies the cultural and intellectual history of Spain. He is the author of Inventing the Sacred: Imposture, Inquisition, and the Boundaries of the Supernatural in Golden Age Spain, along with numerous other articles and book chapters. His current book project deals with the intersection of medicine and politics in nineteenth-century Spain.
Dr. Keitt teaches undergraduate surveys of Western Civilization, upper-division seminars on topics such as the Renaissance and Reformation and the Spanish Inquisition, along with graduate seminars on topics ranging from witchcraft and demonology to the cognitive science of religion. He has introduced innovative teaching methods at UAB, such as Team-Based Learning and Reacting to the Past.
He is the recipient of numerous awards for his research and teaching, including the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching, CASE, Alabama Professor of the Year award.
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Recent Courses
- Historian's Craft
- Science and Religion in Early Modern Europe
- Spain and the Spanish Inquisition
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Select Publications
Books:
- A Physician in the Age of Liberal Reform (LSU Press, 2024).
- Inventing the Sacred: Imposture, Inquisition, and the Boundaries of the Supernatural in Golden Age Spain (Brill, 2005).
Book Chapters:
- “Medical Martyrs: Nineteenth-Century Representations of Early Modern Inquisitorial Persecution of Spanish Physicians,” in Medicine and the Inquisition in the Early Modern World, Maria Pia Donato, ed. (Brill, 2019).
- “Preternatural Peasants and the Discourse of Demons: Xenoglossy, Superstition, and Melancholy in Early Modern Spain,” in Knowing Spirits, Knowing Demons, Michelle D. Brock, Richard Raiswell, and David Winter, eds. (Palgrave MacMillan, 2018).
- "The Supernatural," in Lexikon of the Hispanic Baroque: Transatlantic Exchange and Transformation, Evonne Levy and Kenneth Mills, eds. (University of Texas Press, 2013).
- "The Devil in the Old World: Anti-Superstition Literature, Medical Humanism, and Preternatural Philosophy in Early Modern Spain," in Angels, Demons, and the New World, Fernando Cervantes and Andrew Redden, eds. (Cambridge University Press, 2012).
Journal Articals:
- “Rethinking with Demons: The Campaign Against Late Medieval and Early Modern Superstition from a Cognitive Perspective.” Preternature 6, no. 2 (2017).
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Academic Distinctions & Professional Memberships
- Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching, CASE, Alabama Professor of the Year, 2010
- University of Alabama at Birmingham President's Award for Excellence in Teaching, 2010
- Society for Spanish and Portuguese Historical Studies Competition for Best First Book Published in 2004-06, Runner Up for Inventing the Sacred
- Harold Grimm Prize for "The Miraculous Body of Evidence: Miracles, Medical Discourse, and the Inquisition in Seventeenth-Century Spain"
- Frederick W. Conner Prize in the History of Ideas, for "Religious Enthusiasm, the Inquisition, and the Disenchantment of the World," 2004
- Student Groups