A scholarly article written by Spanish Professor Sarah Owens has been selected as best article in the women and gender category for 2015 by the Society for the Study of Early Modern Women.

Sarah Owens

Sarah Owens

The award committee praised the article, Crossing Mexico (1620–1621): Franciscan Nuns and Their Journey to the Philippines, for bringing to light the journey of a group of Franciscan nuns from Spain who traversed the globe to found a convent in the Spanish empire’s Asian outpost of Manila, according to the award letter from Society secretary Abby Zanger.

The committee also noted how Owens’s essay “integrates religious women into the story of early modern travel, colonization, and missionary endeavors, illustrating that the Spanish empire was not built by men alone, ‘staking a claim for a woman’s voice in the Atlantic and Pacific world.’”

Owens joined the College of Charleston’s Department of Hispanic Studies in 2000.