Historian awarded fellowship to study matrilineal networks in colonial Colombia

UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. — Penn State Department of History Postdoctoral Teaching Fellow Katherine Godfrey has spent the past couple of years gaining valuable classroom experience while continuing research on her first book.

Now she has the opportunity to complete the project, thanks to a prestigious American Council of Learned Societies (ACLS) Fellowship. Formed a century ago, ACLS is composed of more than 80 scholarly organizations and is among the leaders in American scholarship in the humanities and interpretive social sciences.

Godfrey was among 60 early-career scholars selected from 1,100 applicants for a 2024 Fellowship. She received $60,000 to support 12 months of research and writing, as well as an additional $7,500 to offset her research expenses.

“The applications we received this year were nothing short of inspiring — a powerful reminder of the capacity of humanistic research to illuminate and deepen understanding of the workings of our world,” said John Paul Christy, ACLS senior director of U.S. programs. “As scholars face increasing challenges to pursuing and disseminating their research, we remain committed to advancing their vital work.”

In January 2025, Godfrey will travel to Seville, Spain, where she’ll spend the duration of the fellowship completing the research and writing of her book manuscript, “Matrilineal Routes: Indigenous Kinship Networks, Gender, and Mobility in Early Modern Colombia.” She also plans to pursue other research projects.

“The fellowship lets me continue to do my work — I’m at the stage now where I have to write the book proposal itself,” Godfrey said. “Honestly, to receive this fellowship feels surreal, because the competition is so competitive. For a young professional in the humanities, it’s a wonderful thing.”

Godfrey has served as a teaching fellow in the History department since earning her doctorate at Penn State in 2022. Her research focuses on the relationship between Indigenous people and European colonial powers in 16th- and 17th-century Northern South America, particularly the New Kingdom of Granada (aka present-day Colombia).

Her book project, which is an extension of her dissertation, will examine how Indigenous matrilineal (i.e., the mother’s ancestral line) kinship networks and social practices influenced early colonial life and ethnic identity formation in the New Kingdom of Granada. Employing a gendered lens to analyze imperial-level correspondence, locally produced manuscripts, archaeological remains and visual sources, Godfrey seeks to highlight the critical yet largely overlooked role women played in supporting the Spanish Empire's colonial ambitions in the northern Andes.

Godfrey became interested in the subject while conducting research in Colombia’s National Archives in Bogotá several years ago. There, she came across numerous mentions of how Indigenous rulership, succession and inheritance practices were carried out through the matrilineal line. The more she found out, the more it seemed like a story that needed to be told, she said.

“It gave me real insight into the political prowess of Indigenous women,” Godfrey said. “The conquest of the Americas is such a male-heavy story, but the matrilineal line doesn’t go away when Europeans arrive, and I found myself wanting to ask more questions in hopes of uncovering the story more. If matrilineal, what does this mean for how family is formed and how land is passed down? And with the Spaniards being patrilineal, how does this relationship work? Understanding the conflicting and complimentary nature of it is really what the book seeks to do. And it seeks to put Indigenous women and children at the center of the story.”

As it happens, Godfrey is on a bit of a roll when it comes to fellowships. Before embarking for Spain, she’ll spend the summer and fall in Providence, Rhode Island, as a Long-Term Fellow at the John Carter Brown Library, which boasts one of the largest collections of books, maps and manuscripts from the early Americas.

Godfrey said the teaching experience she’s gained at Penn State has been invaluable, and she’s beyond grateful for mentors like Matthew Restall, Edwin Erle Sparks Professor of Colonial Latin American History; Martha Few, Liberal Arts Professor of Latin American History and Women’s, Gender and Sexuality Studies; and former Penn State faculty member Tatiana Seijas, associate professor of history at Rutgers, the State University of New Jersey.

That, along with the immersive research she’ll get to conduct during her fellowships, will only benefit her long-term career prospects, she said.

“To have 18 months of funding and be able to exhale before beginning to teach again is honestly such a huge help. It really gives me a lot of confidence going forward in my career,” Godfrey said. “As much as I love teaching, I fully recognize the value of stepping away from it to focus exclusively on research. Plus, I’m a true archival rat at heart. There’s something special about the act of opening 450-, 500-year-old manuscripts and seeing a fingerprint smudge accidentally put there by a scribe 400 years ago. What some people see as grunt work and boring, that’s where I truly come to life.”