Stacey Schlau

In Gendered Crime and Punishment, Stacey Schlau examines the trial records of several women accused before the Hispanic Inquisitions, in order to shed light not only on their words and actions, but also on the ideological underpinnings and mechanisms of the societies in which they lived.

Women and/in the Hispanic Inquisitions

Gendered Crime and Punishment

Emilie L. Bergmann

"This volume addresses the religious, sociocultural, and political context of colonial society. Sor Juana lived in a convent, a community of women whose lives were strictly regulated by the rules of their order (in her case, the Hieronymites). She was subject to the authority of the bishop and other clerics. She lived in the capital of an enormously wealthy colonized region whose vast territory and many inaccessible rural areas created governance nightmares. She participated in a highly stratified colonial society in which class, race, religion, and gender determined performative behaviors to a great extent. She was subject to a power struggle between the secular and religious arms of government, as well as internecine church conflicts. Her ability to throw off some of the weight of restrictions and limitations on a woman of her temperament, vocation, and family background remains truly remarkable"--Emilie L. Bergmann and Stacey Schlau, Preface, p. xii.

Approaches to Teaching the Works of Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz

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.

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

Women's participation, both formal and informal, in the creation of what we now call Spanish America is reflected in its literary legacy. Stacey Schlau examines what women from a wide spectrum of classes and races have to say about the societies in which they lived and their place in them. Schlau has written the first book to study a historical selection of Spanish American women's writings with an emphasis on social and political themes. Through their words, she offers an alternative vision of the development of narrative genresÑcritical, fictional, and testimonialÑfrom colonial times to the present. The authors considered here represent the chronological yet nonlinear development of women's narrative. They include Teresa Romero Zapata, accused before the Inquisition of being a false visionary; InŽs Su‡rez, nun and writer of spiritual autobiography; Gertrudis G—mez de Avellaneda, author of an indigenist historical romance; Magda Portal, whose biography of Flora Trist‡n furthered her own political agenda; Dora Alonso, who wrote revolutionary children's books; Domitila Barrios de Chungara, political leader and organizer; Elvira OrphŽe, whose novel unpacks the psychology of the torturer; and several others who address social and political struggles that continue to the present day. Although the writers treated here may seem to have little in common, all sought to maneuver through institutions and systems and insert themselves into public life by using the written word, often through the appropriation and modification of mainstream genres. In examining how these authors stretched the boundaries of genre to create a multiplicity of hybrid forms, Schlau reveals points of convergence in the narrative tradition of challenging established political and social structures. Outlining the shape of this literary tradition, she introduces us to a host of neglected voices, as well as examining better-known ones, who demonstrate that for women, simply writing can be a political act.

Colonial Through Contemporary Narratives

Spanish American Women's Use of the Word

Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz—a witty, intellectually formidable, and prolific author—stands as an icon of women's early writing and of colonial New Spain. Living in the capital city of seventeenth-century Mexico, she was located in the center of her world, but, as a self-taught, illegitimate, Creole woman and as a nun subject to the authority of male religious leaders, she was also socially marginal within that world. Like other early modern women she took up the pen to challenge gendered norms of the time. In style and content her works, which draw on baroque stylistics, classical rhetoric, and the natural sciences, are key documents in the development of Western literature. Part 1 of this 98th volume in the Approaches to Teaching series evaluates the most useful materials among the wealth of resources available for teaching Sor Juana, reviews Spanish- and English-language editions of her work, highlights audiovisual and electronic resources for teaching, and recommends critical and historical studies of her writings and her period. The essays in part 2, "Approaches," aim to help teachers navigate with students not only the complex networks of meaning found in Sor Juana's works but also her complicated social world. Contributors discuss gender and religion in colonial society; the element of the baroque in Sor Juana's writing; the variety of ways Sor Juana subverted generic forms to render social criticism; and the relations between her writing and the twenty-first century.

Stacey Schlau

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