Women Breaking/Bridging Borders: Intercultural Performance in Transatlantic Literature
Instructor: Elizabeth Lagresa-González
Language of instruction: Spanish
The course will include drama, poetry, prose fiction, biographical essays, historical and theoretical texts, as well as visual materials, to help us think through the following questions: How are transatlantic and cross-cultural encounters represented artistically, linguistically, culturally and visually? How do they contest fixed identity categories of self and ‘other’? How do these representations participate in the production and re-envisioning of world views and build connections across the shores of the Atlantic?
Our course will highlight the transhistorical and transnational aspects of staging subaltern subjectivities, focusing primarily on the role women performed in both bridging and breaking borders. We will pay particular attention to representations of Indigenous women, Mestizas, Criollas, Blacks, Africans, and Ibero-Africans, as well as their instrumental contribution to the formation of national identities. Primary readings will include: autobiographical text by women that traveled to the new world as Catalina Bustamante (México) and Mari de Ledesma (Perú); plays, autos sacramentales and poetry by Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz; dramas by Juan Ruiz de Alarcón and Lope de Vega; epic poetry by Pedro de Oña and Alonso de Ercilla, among other literary, theoretical and historical texts.
Required texts:
- Provided as PDFs on Canvas.
Selected readings:
- Anzaldúa, Gloria. Borderlands = La Frontera. Madrid: Capitán Swing, 2016.
- Gómez-Lucena, Eloísa. Españolas del nuevo mundo: ensayos biográficos, siglos XVI-XVII. Madrid: Cátedra, 2013. ISBN 978-84-376-3202-5
- Jones, Nicholas R. Staging Habla de Negros: Radical Performances of the African Diaspora in Early Modern Spain. Pennsylvania: Penn State Univ Press, 2020.
- Lux Martelo, Martha Elisa. Las mujeres de Cartagena de Indias en el siglo XVII: lo que hacían, les hacían y no hacían, y las curas que les… Bogotá: Universidad de los Andes, Centro de Estudios Socioculturales e Internacionales Ediciones Uniandes, 2006. ISBN 958-695-237-1
- Martín, Luis. Las hijas de los conquistadores: mujeres del virreinato de Perú. Barcelona: Casiopea, 2000. ISBN 84-95446-02-2
- Maura, Juan Francisco. Españolas de Ultramar en la historia y en la literatura: aventureras, madres, soldados, virreinas, gobernadoras, adelantadas, prostitutas, empresarias, monjas, escritoras, criadas y esclavas en la expansión ibérica ultramarina (siglos XV a XVII). Valencia: Univ. De Valencia, 2005. ISBN 84-370-6245-4
- Morant, Isabel y María Ángeles Querol, et al. Historia de las mujeres en España y América Latina. Madrid: Cátedra, 2005-2008. ISBN 84-376-2262-X
- Piossek Prebisch, Teresa. Las conquistadoras: presencia de la mujer española en América durante el siglo XVI. Buenos Aires, 1990. ISBN 950-43-3228-6
- Pita Moreda, María Teresa. Mujer, conflicto y vida cotidiana en la ciudad de México, a finales del periodo español. Alcala de Henares: Centro Asesor de la Mujer, 1999. ISBN 84-87914-35-7
- Poska, Allyson M. Gendered crossings: women and migration in the Spanish empire. Albuquerque, Univ. of New Mexico Press, 2016. ISBN 978-0-8263-5643-7
- Pumar Martínez, Carmen. Españolas en Indias: mujeres-soldado, adelantadas y gobernadoras. Madrid: Anaya, 1988. ISBN 84-207-3121-8