Gender & Colonization in Latin America

(3 Credit Hours) · Undergraduate

In this course we will examine the historical construction of gendered roles in the Spanish colonial world. This will entail thinking about gender in the societies which "encountered" each other in the New World, and also thinking about how that encounter produced new forms of gendered relations. Among the questions we will consider: how was the conquest gendered? How did colonial society produce masculinity as well as femininity? What gendered forms of power were available to women? How did ethnicity and caste, as well as gender, determine people's sense of themselves and their "others"? The course will look at a mixture of primary and secondary materials, including letters and chronicles written by men and women, testimony before the Spanish Inquisition, poetry, and novels. While there are no prerequisites for this seminar, some familiarity with colonial Latin American history will be helpful.