The Academy of American Franciscan History was founded in 1943 in Washington, D.C., as an institution to promote scholarship on the history of the Franciscan Order in the Americas. The inauguration of the Academy "brought together a large group of scholars in the Latin American field," including Howard Mumford Jones, John Tate Lanning, and Carlos E. Castañeda.
The core members of the Academy included Antonine Tibesar O.F.M. and Maynard Geiger, O.F.M., with Roderick Wheeler, O.F.M., serving as its first director. A number of non-Franciscans pursuing the history of the order were made corresponding members of the Academy, including John Tate Lanning, France V. Scholes, Herbert E. Bolton, and George P. Hammond. [1] The Academy is a research institute, now based in Oceanside, California, on the campus of Mission San Luis Rey and is affiliated with the Franciscan School of Theology. [2] Fr. Antonine Tibesar, O.F.M. was succeeded by its first lay academic director John Frederick Schwaller. Its current director is Jeffrey Burns, (PhD University of Notre Dame), who also holds a faculty position at the Franciscan School of Theology. [3]
The Academy's books, reference works, and pamphlets remain in the Washington, D.C. area, in Takoma Park, Maryland. Its rare books and archival material are part of the library at University of San Diego. There is a finding aid for its microfilm collection. [4] The academy is the publisher of the quarterly peer reviewed scholarly journal, The Americas , a leading journal in Latin American studies founded in 1944, published by Cambridge University Press [5] and available electronically via Project MUSE. [6] The editorial office is at Drexel University in Philadelphia. The journal has from its foundation "published articles unrelated to the Franciscans." [7] [8]
The Academy also publishes a monograph series and scholarly editions of writings of Franciscans, such as St Junípero Serra. The Academy also supports dissertation research on the Franciscans in the Americas. [2]
Mission Santa Barbara is a Spanish mission in Santa Barbara, California, United States. Often referred to as the 'Queen of the Missions', it was founded by Padre Fermín Lasuén for the Franciscan order on December 4, 1786, the feast day of Saint Barbara, as the tenth mission of what would later become 21 missions in Alta California.
Saint Junípero Serra Ferrer, popularly known simply as Junipero Serra, was a Spanish Catholic priest and missionary of the Franciscan Order. He is credited with establishing the Franciscan Missions in the Sierra Gorda, a UNESCO World Heritage Site. He founded a mission in Baja California and established eight of the 21 Spanish missions in California from San Diego to San Francisco, in what was then Spanish-occupied Alta California in the Province of Las Californias, New Spain.
Bonaventure was an Italian Catholic Franciscan bishop, cardinal, scholastic theologian and philosopher.
Latin American studies (LAS) is an academic and research field associated with the study of Latin America. The interdisciplinary study is a subfield of area studies, and can be composed of numerous disciplines such as economics, sociology, history, international relations, political science, geography, cultural studies, gender studies, and literature.
Catholic Theological Union (CTU) is a Catholic graduate school of theology in Chicago, Illinois. It is one of the largest Catholic graduate schools of theology in the English-speaking world and trains men and women for lay and ordained ministry within the Catholic Church. CTU is run and staffed by religious and lay men and women. International students constitute nearly one third of the student body.
Clarence Henry Haring was an American historian of Latin America and a pioneer in initiating the study of Latin American colonial institutions among scholars in the United States.
Studium Biblicum Franciscanum (SBF), Latin for 'Franciscan Biblical Studies', is a Franciscan academic society based in Jerusalem. It is a center of biblical and archaeological research and studies, established by the Franciscan Custody of the Holy Land.
Yakov Malkiel was a U.S. (Russian-born) Romance etymologist and philologist. His specialty was the development of Latin words, roots, prefixes, and suffixes in modern Romance languages, particularly Spanish. He was the founder of the journal Romance Philology.
Philotheus Boehner was a member of the Franciscan order known for medieval scholarship.
Leslie Michael Bethell is an English historian and university professor, who specialises in the study of 19th- and 20th-century Latin America, focusing on Brazil in particular. He received both his Bachelor of Arts and doctorate in history at the University of London. He is emeritus professor of Latin American history, University of London, and emeritus fellow of St Antony's College, University of Oxford. Bethell has served as visiting professor at the University Research Institute of Rio de Janeiro, the University of California, San Diego, the University of Chicago, the Fundação Getulio Vargas in Rio de Janeiro, the University of São Paulo and most recently the Brazil Institute, King's College London from 2011 to 2017. He has been associated with the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars for many years, most recently as senior scholar of the Brazil Institute from 2010 to 2015. He was a fellow of St Antony's College and founding director of the Centre for Brazilian Studies at the University of Oxford from 1997 to 2007. He was lecturer, reader and professor of Latin American history in the University of London from 1966 to 1992 and director of the University of London Institute of Latin American Studies from 1987 to 1992.
John Duns Scotus was a Scottish Catholic priest and Franciscan friar, university professor, philosopher and theologian. He is one of the four most important Christian philosopher-theologians of Western Europe in the High Middle Ages, together with Thomas Aquinas, Bonaventure and William of Ockham.
Henry Ansgar Kelly is distinguished research professor of English at the University of California, Los Angeles.
Conference on Latin American History, (CLAH), founded in 1926, is the professional organization of Latin American historians affiliated with the American Historical Association. It publishes the journal The Hispanic American Historical Review.
The Hispanic American Historical Review is a quarterly, peer-reviewed, scholarly journal of Latin American history, the official publication of the Conference on Latin American History, the professional organization of Latin American historians. Founded in 1916, HAHR is the oldest journal of Latin American history, and, since 1926, published by Duke University Press. On July 1, 2017, editorial responsibility shifted from Duke University to Penn State for the 2017–2022 term.
John Tate Lanning was a historian of Spanish America and held the James B. Duke Professor Emeritus position at Duke University. He was a major scholar of colonial Spanish American history and worked to strengthen organizations devoted to Latin American scholarship. In one obituary he was called, “a true giant” in the field. His work on the Spanish Enlightenment in Spanish America challenged received understandings of Spanish obscurantism.
The ideas of the Spanish Enlightenment, which emphasized reason, science, practicality, clarity rather than obscurantism, and secularism, were transmitted from France to the New World in the eighteenth century, following the establishment of the Bourbon monarchy in Spain. In Spanish America, the ideas of the Enlightenment affected educated elites in major urban centers, especially Mexico City, Lima, and Guatemala, where there were universities founded in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. In these centers of learning, American-born Spanish intellectuals were already participants in intellectual and scientific discourse, with Spanish American universities increasingly anti-scholastic and opposed to “untested authority” even before the Spanish Bourbons came to power. The best studied is the University of San Carlos Guatemala, founded in 1676.
John Frederick Schwaller is an American historian of Latin America, specializing in colonial Mexico, religion, and indigenous peoples. He has written monographs on religion in Mexico, edited scholarly editions of important colonial Mexican texts, and has coordinated and edited anthologies of articles on religion. His administrative service includes being President of State University of New York at Potsdam from 2006 to 2013 and Director of the Academy of American Franciscan History, 1993–95. He is currently professor of history at University of Albany, State University of New York.
The Americas: A Quarterly Review of Latin American History is a quarterly peer-reviewed academic journal covering political, social, economic, intellectual, and religious history of the Americas. It is published on behalf of the Academy of American Franciscan History by Cambridge University Press and the editor-in-chief is Ben Vinson III. The Conference on Latin American History awards an annual prize named for the journal's long-time editor, Antonine Tibesar, O.F.M., for the best article published in the previous year.
Antonine Tibesar, O.F.M. was a Franciscan friar, a scholar of the Catholic Church in Latin America, and director of the Academy of American Franciscan History. He edited four volumes of the writings Junípero Serra, founder of the Franciscan missions in late eighteenth-century Alta California, canonized in 2015. Tibesar served as editor of the peer reviewed scholarly journal, The Americas.
Decoration for a Thesis in Honor of Saint Francis Solano is an etched print in two sheets by the Italian printmaker Stefano della Bella, made in 1639 as an invitation or advertisement for a debate defending a theological thesis. The event took place in the Franciscan convent of Santa Maria in Aracoeli in Rome and was related to the writings of Friar Buenaventura de Salinas y Córdoba. The thesis was dedicated to the Spanish Franciscan friar, Saint Francis Solano for his works with the indigenous communities in the Peruvian Viceroyalty of Spain.