Héctor Linares Gonzalez
Héctor Linares Gonzalez
Educational Background
Ph.D., The Pennsylvania State University, Early Modern Global History
M.A., Universidad Autonóma de Madrid, Early Modern History
M.Ed., Universidad Autonóma de Madrid, Teaching Training and Education
B.A., Universidad Autonóma de Madrid, History
Biography
Héctor Linares is an Assistant Professor of History, specializing in the history of the Iberian empires and the global Iberian world in the early modern period. He received his Ph.D. in Early Modern Global History from The Pennsylvania State University. Before coming to Santa Clara University, Héctor taught at Suffolk University in Boston.
Héctor is a sociocultural and legal historian interested in the intersection of law, religion, imperial building, and racialization during the 16th and 17th centuries. His research explores the role of people of Indigenous, Asian, and African descent in Iberian aristocratic institutions, particularly the military religious orders of knighthood. His first monograph, Las Políticas de la Merced: Encomiendas, Gobernanza, y Valimiento en el Consejo de las Órdenes, 1598-1621, will be published by Marcial Pons, Spain's most prestigious academic publisher, in December 2026. His current book manuscript, Global Knighthood: African, Indigenous, and Asian Knights in the Noble Military Orders of the Iberian World, examines how vassals of color of the Spanish king engaged with Castilian legal and institutional culture to obtain prestigious government offices, noble status, and honors and estates from the Spanish monarch. He analyzes these cases across the vast geography of the Iberian empires, from Portugal to the Philippines. My interdisciplinary approach employs literature, theater, art, and architecture to address and embrace the silences of the archive.
Héctor is the author of dozens of scholarly publications in English and Spanish. His work has appeared in the Renaissance Quarterly, the Sixteenth Century Journal, The Americas, and Tiempos Modernos (among others). He has also edited five volumes on race, chivalry, nobility, political culture, and legal mobilization in the Spanish Empire. His research has been generously funded by the RSA, the Huntington Library, the Sixteenth Century Society, the Newberry Library for Renaissance Studies, the Folger-Shakespeare Library, the John Carter Brown Library, and the European Union.
Héctor currently serves as a member of the Renaissance Society of America's Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Committee.
Selected Publications
2026. Héctor Linares, Las Políticas de la Merced: Encomiendas, Gobernanza, y Valimiento en el Consejo de las Órdenes, 1598-1621, (Madrid: Marcial Pons).
2026. The Contractual Monarchy of the Iberian World: Negotiating Power and Status in the Spanish Empire, 1500-1700, eds. Hector Linares and Rich Lizardo, (Leiden: Brill).
2026. Héctor Linares, “Black Knighthood in Renaissance Iberia: Joao de Sá, from Slavery to Knight of the Aristocratic Order of Santiago,” Renaissance Quarterly 79 (2026): 1-44.
2025. Héctor Linares, “An Inca Girl's Petitioning to Revindicate Atahualpa's Lineage: Bárbara de Atahualpa's Epistolary to the Spanish Monarch, 1610-1614,” The Sixteenth Century Journal, 56, no 3, 617-644.
2025. Héctor Linares, “Honor and Discord in the Council of Military Orders: Prosecutors versus Secretaries and the struggle for institutional preeminence, 1588-1700,” in The Routledge Companion to Military Orders, vol VII, eds. Emmanuel Buttigieg and Clara Almagro (New York: Routledge), 76-91.
2025. Héctor Linares, “Visualizing Black Knighthood in Early Modern Iberia: The Black Knight of the Order of Santiago in Chafariz d'el Rei,” in The Routledge Companion to Race and Visual Culture, eds. Nicholas R. Jones, Christina H. Lee, and Dominique Polanco (New York: Routledge), 130-145.
2024. Héctor Linares, “Antón Zape: Un Negro de Mucho Precio: Seeking Honor and Reward through Royal Service in Sixteenth-Century Panama,” The Americas 81, no 4, 533-567.