Sarah E. Owens

Sarah E. Owens is Professor of Spanish and former Director of the First Year Experience at the College of Charleston in Charleston, South Carolina. She received her Ph.D. from the University of Arizona and she specializes in the writings of colonial and early modern Spanish nuns. Her research has taken her to the archives of Mexico, Spain, Chile, Peru, and the Vatican. In 2009 she published an award-winning edition of a Spanish nun’s travel account called Journey of Five Capuchin Nuns. Her second book, co-edited with Jane Mangan, Women of the Iberian Atlantic (2012) won the award for best Collaborative Project from the Society for the Study of Early Modern Women. Her third book, Nuns Navigating the Spanish Empire (University of New Mexico Press, 2017) was supported by a Fellowship from the National Endowment for the Humanities and a sabbatical from the College of Charleston. It tells the remarkable story of a group of Spanish nuns that traveled from Spain–via Mexico–to the Philippines in order to establish the first female Franciscan convent in the Far East (1621). Her fourth book, Health and Healing in the Early Modern Iberian World: A Gendered Perspective, was co-edited with Margaret Boyle (2021). Sarah E. Owens is passionate about study abroad and has led College of Charleston students to Spain, Chile, and Cuba.In her free time, she enjoys walking different segments of the Camino de Santiago.