Studies in Literature of 16th and 17th Centuries

3 units

The class will address the ways in which religion, empire and cultural contact converged to create new masculine identities in colonial Hispanic America. We will examine how European models of masculinity were shaped through contact with a religious and cultural "other" to produce a series of new colonial masculinities. We will read theoretical and critical works which will provide us with the tools to analyze masculinity not as a fixed and consistent concept, but rather as an evolving and contested idea which challenged Western notions of idealized manhood and revealed the anxiety behind society ́s need to maintain this same ideal. We will examine a series of texts authored by men and occasionally women whose work allows us to interrogate the construction of series of key masculine figures including the conquistador, the missionary, the "savage" and the martyr. Primary readings will include authors such as Ignatius of Loyola, Bartolomé de las Casas, Hernán Cortés, Guaman Poma, Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz and Valle y Caviedes. Secondary critical readings will feature, among others, selections from Connell, Wiegman, Laqueur and Breitenberg