Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz and the Gender Politics of Knowledge in Colonial Mexico

Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz and the Gender Politics of Knowledge in Colonial Mexico
Author: Stephanie Kirk
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 262
Release: 2016-06-23
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 1317052560

Each of the book's five chapters evokes a colonial Mexican cultural and intellectual sphere: the library, anatomy and medicine, spirituality, classical learning, and publishing and printing. Using an array of literary texts and historical documents and alongside secondary historical and critical materials, the author Stephanie Kirk demonstrates how Sor Juana used her poetry and other works to inscribe herself within the discourses associated with these cultural institutions and discursive spheres and thus challenge the male exclusivity of their precepts and precincts. Kirk illustrates how Sor Juana subverted the masculine character of erudition, writing herself into an all-male community of scholars. From there, Sor Juana clearly questions the gender politics at play in her exclusion, and undermines what seems to be the inextricable link previously forged between masculinity and institutional knowledge. Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz and the Gender Politics of Knowledge in Colonial Mexico opens up new readings of her texts through the lens of cultural and intellectual history and material culture in order to shed light on the production of knowledge in the seventeenth-century colonial Mexican society of which she was both a product and an anomaly.

Sor Juana Inde la Cruz and the Gender Politics of Knowledge in Colonial Mexico

Sor Juana Inde la Cruz and the Gender Politics of Knowledge in Colonial Mexico
Author: Stephanie Kirk
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 240
Release: 2016-06-23
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 1317052579

Each of the book's five chapters evokes a colonial Mexican cultural and intellectual sphere: the library, anatomy and medicine, spirituality, classical learning, and publishing and printing. Using an array of literary texts and historical documents and alongside secondary historical and critical materials, the author Stephanie Kirk demonstrates how Sor Juana used her poetry and other works to inscribe herself within the discourses associated with these cultural institutions and discursive spheres and thus challenge the male exclusivity of their precepts and precincts. Kirk illustrates how Sor Juana subverted the masculine character of erudition, writing herself into an all-male community of scholars. From there, Sor Juana clearly questions the gender politics at play in her exclusion, and undermines what seems to be the inextricable link previously forged between masculinity and institutional knowledge. Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz and the Gender Politics of Knowledge in Colonial Mexico opens up new readings of her texts through the lens of cultural and intellectual history and material culture in order to shed light on the production of knowledge in the seventeenth-century colonial Mexican society of which she was both a product and an anomaly.

Convent Life in Colonial Mexico

Convent Life in Colonial Mexico
Author: Stephanie Kirk
Publisher: University Press of Florida
Total Pages: 251
Release: 2018-10-18
Genre: History
ISBN: 0813063744

"A valuable and logical step in the progression of critical studies on convent writing. . . . We have moved from seeing women writers as working at the margins to seeing them as writing subjects."—Latin American Research Review "Consider[s] nuns not as merely secular or religious writers, but through the lens of interdisciplinary study, as multifaceted historical agents. . . . The importance of the kind of innovative theoretical work undertaken by this text . . . cannot be over-emphasized, and will offer a both provocative and illuminating read to scholars in a broad range of disciplines."—Journal of International Women’s Studies "Kirk reconstructs aspects of the lives of colonial nuns through close-up readings of select manuscripts and, additionally, of published primary sources. . . . A lively and provocative addition to the literature on colonial Mexico that offers new insights into the dynamics of religious community."—Bulletin of Latin American Research "A thought-provoking contribution to our understanding of community-building among colonial Latin American women."—A Contracorriente "A timely scholarly contribution to the field of gender and religion. . . . Presents a fresh look at convent literature by specifically analyzing alliances, friendships, and communities."—Colonial Latin American Historical Review "An interesting and ambitious study of the discourses associated with convent life in Mexico."—Catholic Historical Review

Poems

Poems
Author: Sister Juana Inés de la Cruz
Publisher: Bilingual Review Press (AZ)
Total Pages: 150
Release: 1985
Genre: Poetry
ISBN:

Margaret Sayers Peden, who is well known and respected for her translations of Fuentes, Neruda, Quiroga, and Paz, has made an admirable selection of poems that includes romances, redondillas, epigrams, decimas, sonnets, silvas, villancicos, and two excerpts from Sor Juana's theater. The introduction and notes provide the necessary context for those unfamiliar with the poet's life and times.

The Routledge Research Companion to the Works of Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz

The Routledge Research Companion to the Works of Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz
Author: Emilie L. Bergmann
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 702
Release: 2017-04-28
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 131704164X

Called by her contemporaries the "Tenth Muse," Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz (1648–1695) has continued to stir both popular and scholarly imaginations. While generations of Mexican schoolchildren have memorized her satirical verses, only since the 1970s has her writing received consistent scholarly attention., focused on complexities of female authorship in the political, religious, and intellectual context of colonial New Spain. This volume examines those areas of scholarship that illuminate her work, including her status as an iconic figure in Latin American and Baroque letters, popular culture in Mexico and the United States, and feminism. By addressing the multiple frameworks through which to read her work, this research guide serves as a useful resource for scholars and students of the Baroque in Europe and Latin America, colonial Novohispanic religious institutions, and women’s and gender studies. The chapters are distributed across four sections that deal broadly with different aspects of Sor Juana's life and work: institutional contexts (political, economic, religious, intellectual, and legal); reception history; literary genres; and directions for future research. Each section is designed to provide the reader with a clear understanding of the current state of the research on those topics and the academic debates within each field.

Feminist Perspectives on Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz

Feminist Perspectives on Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz
Author: Stephanie Merrim
Publisher: Wayne State University Press
Total Pages: 196
Release: 1999
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 9780814322161

Called the "Quintessence of the Baroque" and "Bridge to the Enlightenment," Mexican writer and nun Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz has also been celebrated as the "First Feminist of the New World." Feminist Perspectives on Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz fills a gap Called the "Quintessence of the Baroque" and "Bridge to the Enlightenment," Mexican writer and nun Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz has also been celebrated as the "First Feminist of the New World." Feminist Perspectives on Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz fills a gap in the scholarship on Sor Juana by exploring the implications of her feminist staus in literary and cultural terms. Editor Stephanie Merrim's introduction surveys key issues in Sor Juana criticism from a feminist literary perspective and suggests a blueprint for future studies. Essays by Dorothy Schons and Asunción Lavrin reconstitute essential dimensions or Sor Juana's world, addressing biographical questions about the norms and values of religious life. Moving from social norms to their verbal expression, Josefina Ludmer reads Sor Juana's Respuesta for its stratagems of resistance, and Stehanie Merrim uncovers in Sor Juana's theater the encoded drama of the conflicted creative woman.

Women, Culture, and Politics in Latin America

Women, Culture, and Politics in Latin America
Author: Emilie L. Bergmann
Publisher: Univ of California Press
Total Pages: 283
Release: 1990
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 0520065530

“This collection, because of its exceptional theoretical coherence and sophistication, is qualitatively superior to the most frequently consulted anthologies on Latin American women’s history and literature . . . [and] represents a new, more theoretically rigorous stage in the feminist debate on Latin American women.”—Elizabeth Garrels, Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Vintage Saints and Sinners

Vintage Saints and Sinners
Author: Karen Wright Marsh
Publisher: InterVarsity Press
Total Pages: 228
Release: 2017-09-12
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 0830892370

Saints were not simply superstar Christians with otherworldly piety. When we take a closer look at the lives of these spiritual heavyweights, we learn that they're not all that different from you and me. With humor and vulnerability, Karen Marsh introduces us afresh to twenty-five brothers and sisters who challenge and inspire us with their honest faith.

Sor Juana Ines de la Cruz

Sor Juana Ines de la Cruz
Author: Theresa A. Yugar
Publisher: Wipf and Stock Publishers
Total Pages: 129
Release: 2014-10-22
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 162564440X

In Sor Juana Ines de la Cruz: Feminist Reconstruction of Biography and Text, Yugar invites you to accompany Sor Juana Ines de la Cruz, a seventeenth-century protofeminist and ecofeminist, on her lifelong journey within three communities of women in the Americas. Sor Juana's goal was to reconcile inequalities between men and women in central Mexico and between the Spaniards and the indigenous Nahua population of New Spain. Yugar reconstructs a her-story narrative through analysis of two primary texts Sor Juana wrote en sus propias palabras (in her own words), El Sueno (The Dream) and La Respuesta (The Answer). Yugar creates a historically-based narrative in which Sor Juana's sueno of a more just world becomes a living nightmare haunted by misogyny in the form of the church, the Spanish Tribunal, Jesuits, and more--all seeking her destruction. In the process, Sor Juana "hoists [them] with their own petard." In seventeenth-century colonial Mexico, just as her Latina sisters in the Americas are doing today, Sor Juana used her pluma (pen) to create counternarratives in which the wisdom of women and the Nahua inform her sueno of a more just world for all.

The Answer / La Respuesta (Expanded Edition)

The Answer / La Respuesta (Expanded Edition)
Author: Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz
Publisher: The Feminist Press at CUNY
Total Pages: 270
Release: 2009-06-01
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 1558616233

Defiant writing by the first feminist of the Americas—the Mexican nun Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz—in response to the church officials that tried to silence her. Known as the first feminist of the Americas, the Mexican nun Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz enjoyed an international reputation as one of the great lyric poets and dramatists of her time. The Answer/La Respuesta (1691) is is Sor Juana's impassioned response to years of attempts by church officials to silence her. While earlier translators have ignored Sor Juana's keen awareness of gender, this volume brings out her own emphasis and diction, and reveals the remarkable scholarship, subversiveness, and even humor she drew on in defense of her cause. This expanded, bilingual edition combines new research and perspectives on an inspired writer and thinker. It includes the fully annotated primary text responding to the church officials; the letter that ultimately provoked the writing of The Answer; an expanded selection of poems; an updated bibliography; and a new preface.