Separated only by a narrow body of water, Spain and England have had a long history of material and cultural interactions; but this intertwined history is rarely perceived by scholars of one country with a view toward the other. Through their analyses of the various modes of exchange of material goods and the circulation of symbolic systems of meaning, the contributors to the anthology-historians and literary critics-investigate, for the first time, the two nations' express points of contact and conflict during these historically crucial fifty years. Focusing on the half-century period that...

As the first comprehensive volume devoted entirely to women of both the Spanish and Austrian Habsburg royal dynasties spanning the sixteenth and the seventeenth centuries, this interdisciplinary collection illuminates their complex and often contradictory political functions and their interrelations across early modern national borders. The essays in this volume investigate the lives of six Habsburg women who, as queens consort and queen regent, duchesses, a vicereine, and a nun, left an indelible mark on the diplomatic and cultural map of early modern Europe. Contributors examine the...

Around the turn of 21st Century, Spain welcomed more than six million foreigners, many of them from various parts of the African continent. How African immigrants represent themselves and are represented in contemporary Spanish texts is the subject of this interdisciplinary collection. Analyzing blogs, films, translations, and literary works by contemporary authors including Donato Ndongo (Ecquatorial Guinea), Abderrahman El Fathi (Morocco), Chus Gutierrez (Spain), Juan Bonilla (Spain), and Bahia Mahmud Awah (Western Sahara), the contributors interrogate how Spanish cultural texts represent,...

Masculine Virtue in Early Modern Spain extricates the history of masculinity in early modern Spain from the narrative of Spain s fall from imperial power after 1640. This book culls genres as diverse as emblem books, poetry, drama, courtesy treatises and prose fiction, to restore the inception of courtiership at the Spanish Hapsburg court to the history of masculinity. Refuting the current conception that Spain s political decline precipitated a crisis of masculinity, Masculine Virtue maps changes in figurations of normative masculine conduct from 1500 to 1700. As Spain assumed the role of...

Drawing on history, literature, and art to explore childhood in early modern Spain, the contributors to this collection argue that early modern Spaniards conceptualized childhood as a distinct and discrete stage in life which necessitated special care and concern. The volume contrasts the didactic use of art and literature with historical accounts of actual children, and analyzes children in a wide range of contexts including the royal court, the noble family, and orphanages. The volume explores several interrelated questions that challenge both scholars of Spain and scholars specializing in...

Alicia Gimenez Bartlett's popular crime series, written in Spanish and organized around the exploits of Police Inspector Petra Delicado and Deputy Inspector Fermin Garzon, is arguably the most successful detective series published in Spain during the previous three decades. Nina L. Molinaro examines the tensions between the rhetoric of gender differences espoused by the woman detective and the orthodox ideology of the police procedural. She argues that even as the series incorporates gender differences into the crime series formula, it does so in order to correct women, naturalize men's...

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...