Brian Hamm is an historian of colonial Latin America and the early modern Atlantic world, specializing in religious history and the history of migration. Before coming to Samford in 2019, he was a Frankel Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of Michigan. He is currently working to finish a book manuscript entitled Strangers and Kinsmen: Portuguese Immigrants and Local Society in the Spanish Circum-Caribbean, 1492-1665. At Samford, he teaches a variety of courses in Latin American history, as well as a survey course in modern world history. Since 2021, he has served as the coordinator of Samford’s Global & Cultural Studies Program.

Degrees and Certifications

• PhD, History, University of Florida, 2017
• MA, History, University of Florida, 2012
• BA, History (Summa Cum Laude), Pepperdine University, 2010

Publications

• “The Role of ‘Pestilence’ in the Historical and Political Writings of Bartolomé de Las Casas.” In Making Sense of Diseases and Disasters: Reflections of Political Theory from Antiquity to the Age of COVID, ed. Lee Trepanier (New York: Routledge, 2022), 104-113
• “The Misadventures of Luis Méndez Chávez and the Origins of the Sephardic Colonization Movement.” Jewish History 35:1-2 (2021): 31-55.
• “Between Acceptance and Exclusion: Spanish Responses to Portuguese Immigrants in the Sixteenth-Century Spanish Caribbean.” In The Spanish Caribbean and the Atlantic World in the Long Sixteenth Century, eds. Ida Altman and David Wheat (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2019), 113-135.
• “Constructing and Contesting Portuguese Difference in Colonial Spanish America, 1500-1650.” Anais de História de Além-Mar 17 (2016): 303-336.

Courses

• FOUN 101: Foundations
• HIST 200: World History since 1500
• HIST 300: The Historian’s Craft
• HIST 350: Modern Latin America
• HIST 355: Colonial Latin America
• HIST 398: Witches, Heretics, and Inquisitions
• HIST 440: Riots, Rebellions, and Revolutions in Latin America
• UCCP 101: Core Texts I
• UCCP 102: Core Texts II