Prof. Emily Colbert Cairns is an Associate Professor of Spanish at Salve Regina University. She graduated with a Ph.D. and M.A. in Spanish Literature from the University of California, Irvine. She is the co-editor of, Confined Women: The Walls of Female Space in Early Modern Spain (Hispanic Issues Online 2020) and the author of Esther in Early Modern Iberia and the Sephardic Diaspora: Queen of the Conversas (Palgrave 2017). Colbert Cairns specializes in gender, converso and crypto-Jewish identity in the early modern period and has published with eHumanista, Chasqui, Cervantes Journal and Hispanófila. She spent the fall of 2019 conducting research in the Archivo de la Diputación de Sevilla in support of her current book project on breastfeeding practices in the early modern period.
Last Updated
February 21, 2021
Books by the Author
Articles by the Author
Esther is the most beloved biblical figure among the crypto-Jews of the Spanish Inquisition—the conversos (fem. conversas)—who publicly converted to Catholicism but lived secretly as Jews. Remarkably, she was also upheld as a heroine among the Catholic-majority communities of early modern Iberia (Spain and Portugal), but for very different reasons.
Esther is the most beloved biblical figure among the crypto-Jews of the Spanish Inquisition—the conversos (fem. conversas)—who publicly converted to Catholicism but lived secretly as Jews. Remarkably, she was also upheld as a heroine among the Catholic-majority communities of early modern Iberia (Spain and Portugal), but for very different reasons.
