Assistant Professor / History Graduate Program Coordinator
Phone: (239) 590-7394
E-Mail: mcole@fgcu.edu
Office: Modular 1 - Office 4

Assistant Professor, Latin American History
mcole@fgcu.edu 

Ph.D., History, University of Florida, 2003
M.A., History, University of Florida, 1995
B.A., History, University of California, San Diego, 1993

Research and Teaching Interests

Native communities of colonial Latin America; colonial Mexico; colonial Central America

Courses Offered

• AMH 2020 U.S. History Since 1877
• EUH 1000 The Western Tradition, Part I
• HIS 3930 The Conquest and Colonization of Mexico
• HIS 4920 The Atlantic World to 1810
• HIS 4920 Witchcraft in the Early Modern World
• LAH 3130 Colonial Latin America
• LAH 3430 History of Mexico
• LAS 2000 Introduction to Latin American Studies
• WOH 1023 World Civilization 1500-1815
• Graduate Seminar: Teaching History at the College Level
• Graduate Seminar: The Age of Discovery
• Graduate Seminar: Colonial Latin American History
• Graduate Seminar: Research in Public History (organizing conferences and publishing proceedings)

Books

• Co-edited with Megan C. McShane (FGCU Department of Visual and Performing Arts), Xiao Lu (Image Theory Group, 2010).

Articles and Essays

• "Congregaciones" and "Witchcraft," in Thomas M. Leonard, J. Michael Francis, Monica Rankin, and Mark Burkholder, eds., Encyclopedia of Latin America, 4 vols. (Facts on File, 2010).
• Review of Martin Austin Nesvig, ed., Local Religion in Colonial Mexico. The Journal of Interdisciplinary History 38: 3 (Winter 2008): 485-487. 
• "Transportation -- Colonial (Royal Roads)," in J. Michael Francis, ed., Iberia and the Americas: Culture, Politics, and History, 3 vols. (Santa Barbara and Oxford: ABC-CLIO, 2006); 2500 word encyclopedia entry.
• "Tlacotalpa and Puctla: Native Strategies of Community Defense in Two Colonial Mexican Villages," SECOLAS Annals: Journal of the Southeastern Council on Latin American Studies, 2003 (expanded version of paper presented at the 50th annual meeting of SECOLAS). 
• "Peripheral Communities, Colonial Lifeline: Indian Villages along New Spain's Primary Route from Veracruz to Mexico City during the Seventeenth Century," SECOLAS Annals: Journal of the Southeastern Council on Latin American Studies, 2001 (expanded version of paper presented at the 48th annual meeting of SECOLAS).

Conference Presentations

• "Petty Entrepreneurs in the Native Communities of Seventeenth-Century Veracruz," paper presented at the 56th annual meeting of the Southeastern Council on Latin American Studies, New Orleans, Louisiana, April 2009. 
• "Indians and the Inquisition in New Spain in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries," paper presented at the 48th annual meeting of the Florida Conference of Historians, Fort Myers, Florida, Feb. 2008. 
• "'Help Me Devil, as I Am Doing the Work of Killing': A Witchcraft Trial in the Indian Pueblo of Orica, Honduras, 1688," paper presented at the 55th annual conference of the South  Eastern Council on Latin American Studies, Ybor City, Florida, April 2008.
• "A Hypothesis on the Etymology of the Placename Withlacoochee," paper presented at the 47th annual meeting of the Florida Conference of Historians, Jacksonville, Florida, Feb. 28th-March 2007. 
• "Witchcraft and Political Conflict in the Pueblo de Indios: San Francisco de Orica, Honduras, 1688," paper presented at the 46th annual meeting of the Florida Conference of Historians, Orlando, Florida, March 2007. 
• "'To Teach the Boys and Girls the Christian Doctrine in the Mexican Tongue:' A Native Response to Spanish Policies of Hispanization in Colonial Xalapa," paper presented at the 51st annual meeting of the Southeastern Council of Latin American Studies in Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic, March 2004. 
• "The Indian Pueblos of New Spain's Central Gulf Region in the Seventeenth Century," paper presented at In and Around the Gulf of Mexico: A Graduate Research Conference, Long Beach, Mississippi, April 2003.
• "Tlacotalpa and Puctla: Native Strategies of Community Defense in Two Colonial Mexican Villages," paper presented at the 50th annual meeting of the Southeastern Council of Latin American Studies in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, March 2003. (Honorable Mention in the competition for the Edward Moseley Award).
• "Peripheral Communities, Colonial Lifeline: Indian Villages along New Spain's Primary Route from Veracruz to Mexico during the Seventeenth Century," paper presented at the 48th annual meeting of the Southeastern Council of Latin American Studies in Veracruz, Mexico, 2001.
• "Brujería, politica local y procedimientos judiciales en los pueblos de indios: el caso de Texíguat, Honduras, siglo XVII," paper presented at the V Congreso Centroamericano de Historia, San Salvador, El Salvador, 2000.

Grants and Awards

• Fulbright IIE García-Robles Dissertation Grant (1999-2000)