Scandal and Gender in Colonial and Nineteenth-Century Latin America - Introduction

Autor/innen

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.15460/jbla.60.2184

Abstract

Violating the norms of gender frequently provoked scandal. This section presents the connections between scandal and gender by introducing the articles that are included in this special issue. Scandals may not seem worthy of scholarly work, but they provide an entry into the interstices of gender performance and the ways that people disrupted social norms. Scandals have three components: the transgression, its dissemination, and the receptive public. Gossip about individuals was often at the heart of scandals but it was also an important social force that established community values. The news of scandalous conduct was often spread by murmurings but also by pasquines and in later periods, in newspapers. The definition of the word “scandal” has changed over time as have the elements that seem shocking have evolved. In this special issue, the authors show how space of honor such as convents, recogimientos, and the family home could be violated. Institutions such as the Church and the State tried to enforce a gender binary but many cross-dressed for their own amusement in dramas or as a disguise. Single women were often the most vulnerable to accusations of scandalous behavior, but young men also were the target of accusations of vagrancy when they surpassed their families’ tolerance for youthful antics.

Autor/innen-Biografien

  • Sonya Lipsett-Rivera, Carleton University
    Professor of History at Carleton University in Canada. Her work ranges from environmental to gender, emotions, and cultural history. She is the author of several monographs. The latest, The Origins of Macho: Men and Masculinity in Colonial Mexico, was the recipient of the María Elena Martínez Prize for Mexico History. She co-edited several the anthologies The Faces of Honor: Sex, Illegitimacy and Violence in Colonial Latin America and Emotions and Daily Life in Colonial Mexico. Her many chapters, articles, and encyclopedia entries and essays cover a wide variety of topics. Currently, she is editing the nineteenth-century volume for A History of Love.
  • Verónica Undurraga Schüler, Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile

    PhD in History and Associate Professor at the Institute of History, Pontifical Catholic University of Chile. Her lines of research are the history of gender and emotions, addressing topics such as scandal, gender violence and female insertion in the word of knowledge. Among her more than forty publications, stand out the books: Los rostros del honor. Normas culturales y estrategias de promoción social en Chile colonial (2012); Pioneras. Mujeres que cambiaron la historia de la ciencia y el conocimiento en Chile (2022); Hilvanando emociones. Rupturas y vínculos desde lo femenino. Chile y Argentina, siglos XVII al XX (2022); and Las que abrieron el camino. Historia de las mujeres en la Universidad Católica de Chile, 1888-1950 (in press). She is currently leading a research on female emotional communities in Chile during the 19th and 20th centuries and another about the life stories of women deprived of liberty in current Chile.

Veröffentlicht

2024-02-02

Zitationsvorschlag

Scandal and Gender in Colonial and Nineteenth-Century Latin America - Introduction. (2024). Jahrbuch für Geschichte Lateinamerikas, 60, 1-8. https://doi.org/10.15460/jbla.60.2184