This course considers how early modern concepts of the body play into ideas of race, religion, class, sex, gender, conversion, miracles, and monstrosity in Spanish society. For instance, to what extent was honor dependent on hereditary nobility, a woman’s physical integrity, or noble deeds? How was religious background rendered legible on the bodies of new converts as well as their descendants? What possibilities for fluidity and change existed for bodies deemed medically and socially intelligible? How did the miraculous and the monstrous tie into other bodily discourses? Furthermore, how did foundational narratives draw on bodies to exclude and include? Students will analyze early modern texts from a range of genres (from poetry to polemics) that relate to the theme of the body. Taking seriously the theories of the body contained therein, we shall put these works in conversation with contemporary theory about the body and scholarship in early modern studies.

This course counts as literature credit for the Spanish minor.

Class Format:

This class will be conducted in Spanish.