This study examines the interdependence of gender, sexuality and space in the early modern period, which saw the inception of architecture as a discipline and gave rise to the first custodial institutions for women, including convents for reformed prostitutes. Meanwhile, conduct manuals established prescriptive mandates for female use of space, concentrating especially on the liminal spaces of the home. This work traces literary prostitution in the Spanish Mediterranean through the sixteen...

Investigating the cultural construction of virginity, Emily Kuffner examines the cultural logic of purity and corruption in early modern Spain through the representation of virginity in texts on prostitution.It is often argued that women had only three options in early modern Spanish society-to become a wife, nun, or prostitute- and that these categories of female sexuality (two virtuous, one deviant) were discreet and life-long. However, the representation of virg...

Inclusion in Higher Education: Inquiry-Based Approaches to Change presents an inquiry-based approach to inclusion in higher education that embraces scholarly inquiry, collaborative efforts, and data-driven interventions to inform transformative institutional change. Contributors analyze inclusion initiatives that address the experiences of minoritized groups on college campuses and recommend tailored interventions for the needs of underrepresented students in varied fields of study.

Lesbian Realities/Lesbian Fictions in Contemporary Spain, edited by Nancy Vosburg and Jacky Collins, focuses exclusively on manifestations of lesbian cultures and identities in contemporary Spain. Bringing together key essays from a range of international scholars, this anthology of critical essays examines the changing cultural, sociological and political landscape of Spain at the turn of the millennium. Divided into two sections, the first contributions focus on the realities of...

"David Castillo takes us on a tour of some horrific materials that have rarely been considered together. He sheds a fantastical new light on the baroque."---Anthony J. Cascardi, University of California Berkeley"Baroque Horrors is a textual archeologist's dream, scavenged from obscure chronicles, manuals, minor histories, and lesser-known works of major artists. Castillo finds tales of mutilation, mutation, monstrosity, murder, and mayhem, and delivers them to us wi...

The image of biologically male people dancing while dressed in the traditional, colorful attire of Zapotec, Juchiteca, females stands in sharp contrast to the prevailing view of Mexico as the land of charros, machismo, and unbridled ranchero masculinity. These indigenous people are called los muxes, and they are neither man nor woman, but rather a hybrid third gender.After seeing a video of a muxe vela, or festival, sociologist Alfredo Mirandé was intrigued by the contradiction bet...

Queer Rebels is a study of gay narrative writings published in Spain at the turn of the 20th century. The book scrutinises the ways in which the literary production of contemporary Spanish gay authors – José Luis de Juan, Luis G. Martín, Juan Gil-Albert, Juan Goytisolo, Eduardo Mendicutti, Luis Antonio de Villena and Álvaro Pombo – engages with homophobic and homophile discourses, as well as with the vernacular and international literary legacy.The first part revolves arou...

This study by Cristina Ferreira-Pinto explores the poetic and narrative strategies twentieth-century Brazilian women writers use to achieve new forms of representation of the female body, sexuality, and desire. Female writers discussed include: Gilka Machado, Lygia Fagundes Telles, Marcia Denser, and Marina Colasanti. While creating new forms, these writers are also deconstructing cultural myths of femininity and female behavior. In order to understand these myths, the book also presents n...

Explore a little-known side of the lesbian artistic world!With this book, you’ll explore the work of the most significant contemporary Latina lesbian writers, artists, and performers in the United States, Latin America, and Spain. This book presents and analyzes literature, art, and poetry by women who, despite markedly different backgrounds and experiences, are all strongly influenced by the concept of lesbian identity.Latina Lesbian Writers and Artists begins with an esse...

Catalina de Erauso (1592-1650) was a Basque noblewoman who, just before taking final vows to become a nun, escaped from the convent at San Sebastián, dressed as a man, and, in her own words, "went hither and thither, embarked, went into port, took to roving, slew, wounded, embezzled, and roamed about." Her long service fighting for the Spanish empire in Peru and Chile won her a soldier's pension and a papal dispensation to continue dressing in men's clothing.This theoretically info...

Renaissance Europe was the scene of flourishing and innovative dramatic art, and seventeenth-century Spain enjoyed its own Golden Age of the stage. According to traditional studies of this period, however, men seemed to be the only participants. Now in Dramas of Distinction, Teresa Scott Soufas offers the first book-length critical study of five important women playwrights: Angela de Azevedo, Ana Caro Mallen de Soto, Leonor de la Cueva y Silva, Feliciana Enriquez de Guzman, and Ma...

"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 . . . ...