Women of the Iberian Atlantic

by Sarah E. Owens (Editor), Jane E. Mangan (Editor), Ida Altman (Contribution by), Ras Michael Brown (Contribution by), Matt Childs (Contribution by)

Overview

The ten essays in this interdisciplinary collection explore the lives, places, and stories of women in the Iberian Atlantic between 1500 and 1800. Distinguished contributors such as Ida Altman, Matt D. Childs, and Allyson M. Poska utilize the complexities of gender to understand issues of race, class, family, health, and religious practices in the Atlantic basin. Unlike previous scholarship, which has focused primarily on upper-class and noble women, this book examines the lives of those on the periphery, including free and enslaved Africans, colonized indigenous mothers, and poor Spanish women.
Chapters range broadly across time periods and regions of the Atlantic world. The authors explore the lives of Caribbean women in the earliest era of Spanish colonization and gender norms in Spain and its far-flung colonies. They extend the boundaries of the traditional Atlantic by analyzing healing knowledge of indigenous women in Portuguese Goa and kinship bonds among women in Spanish East Texas. Together, these innovative essays rechart the Iberian Atlantic while revealing the widespread impact of women's activities on the emergence of the Iberian Atlantic world.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780807147740
Publisher:	Louisiana State University Press
Publication date:	12/07/2012
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	288
File size:	2 MB

About the Author

Jane E. Mangan is an associate professor of history at Davidson College and the author of Trading Roles: Gender, Ethnicity, and the Urban Economy in Colonial Potosí. She is currently researching a book on the subject of family in sixteenth-century Spain and Peru.

Sarah E. Owens is an associate professor of Spanish at the College of Charleston. She is editor and translator of Madre María Rosa's Journey of Five Capuchin Nuns, winner of the 2010 Josephine Roberts Prize.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments vii

Introduction: Women of the Iberian Atlantic: Gendered Dimensions of Empire Sarah E. Owens Jane E. Mangan 1

1 Navigating the Atlantic Divide: Women, Education, and Literacy in Iberia and the Americas Lisa Vollendorf 18

2 An Ocean Apart: Reframing Gender in the Spanish Empire Allyson M. Poska 37

3 Spanish Women in the Caribbean, 1493-1540 Ida Altman 57

4 Indigenous Womens as Mothers in Conquest-Era Peru Jane E. Mangan 82

5 Women and Kinship in Spanish East Texas at the End of the Eighteenth Century Carla Gerona 101

6 Cloistered Women in Health Care: The Convent of Jesús María, Mexico City Nuria Salazar Simarro Sarah E. Owens 128

7 The Role and Practices of the Female Folk Healer in the Early Modern Portuguese Atlantic World Timothy D. Walker 148

8 The Botany of Colonial Medicine: Gender, Authority, and Natural History in the Empires of Spain and Portugal Hugh Glenn Cagle 174

9 Mother Nganga: Women Experts in the Bantu-Atlantic Spiritual Cultures of the Iberian Atlantic World Ras Michael Brown 196

10 Gendering the African Diaspora in the Iberian Atlantic: Religious Brotherhoods and the Cabildos de Nación Matt D. Childs 230

Contributors 263

Index 267