Jessica Rutherford

Dr. Jessica Rutherford is an associate professor of Spanish in the department of World Languages, Literatures, and Cultures at Central Connecticut State University. She earned her PhD from The Ohio State University in 2017 in colonial Latin American literature and culture. Her research focuses on Indigenous history and culture from the pre-colonial period to the present in Latin/x America, with an emphasis on understanding the past to advocate for social-justice issues at present. Her current book project, Nature and Healing in the America: Jesuit Missionary Medicine1549-1650, works to trace the way in which Jesuit contributions to developments in early modern medicine in Western Europe largely draw from Indigenous peoples in the Americas. This contributes to the history of science and medicine through an examination of  how language mediates encounters among Indigenous communities and colonial institutions through a study of medicinal plants in the early modern transatlantic world.