Coded Encounters: Writing, Gender and Ethnicity in Colonial Latin America - Hardcover

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 087023885X ISBN 13: 9780870238857

Publisher: University of Massachusetts Press, 1994

Synopsis

Much has been written about the ways in which Columbus's "discovery" of America began a process of inventing a new world in European consciousness. But far less has been published about those on the margins of the dominant European discourse--Amerindians, Africans, and women--whose experience is reflected in documents written during the early years of European rule in Latin America. This volume brings together essays by leading scholars of colonial Latin America who address a series of topics relating to both the marginal and European-dominant discourses.

The book is divided into five sections: "Representing the New World," "The Institutionalization of the Colony," "Amerindian Texts," "Women in Colonial Latin America," and "The Later Colony and the Caribbean Experience." The essays range from a consideration of Amerindian codes of mapmaking to the career of a transvestite nun, from confessional "sin lists" used by priests to examine the transgressions of their American charges to a new view of colonial women's lives based on birth records, dowry agreements, and wills.

Contributors include Walter Mignolo, Maureen Ahern, Abel Alves, Rolena Adorno, Lúcia Helena Santiago Costigan, Pedro Lasarte, Raquel Chang-Rodríguez, Regina Harrison, Asunción Lavrin, Stephanie Merrim, Nina M. Scott, Antonio Carreño, Julie Greer Johnson, Karen Stolley, and Antonio Benítez-Rojo.

About this title

About the Author

Francisco Javier Cevallos-Candau and Nina M. Scott are professors of Spanish at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. Jeffrey A. Cole is director of the Center for International Programs at Virginia Commonwealth University. Nicomedes Suárez-Araúz teaches Spanish at Smith College.

Edition details

• Publisher: University of Massachusetts Press
• Publication date: 1994
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 087023885X
• ISBN 13: 9780870238857
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 304
• Editor: Cevallos-Candau Francisco Javier, Etc., Cole Jeffrey A., Scott Nina M., Suarez-Arauz Nicomedes