Beyond Nation: Feminism and Protest in Nineteenth-Century Latin American Print Culture

Session Submission Type: Panel

Abstract

By the latter half of the nineteenth century, intellectual women in Latin America had advanced a women's rights agenda in regards to civil status, family duties, and participation in political, economic, and cultural life. Magazines, newspapers, and other forms of print culture that circulated throughout the continent were the international forum for women to exchange their views and interests. This panel traces the connection between printed culture, popular culture and the quest for a national image in which class, gender, and race played a crucial role. By working with canonical authors, such as Eduarda Mansilla and Soledad Acosta de Samper, as well as less known female writers, such as Ana Roqué, Teresa González de Fanning, and Úrsula Coimbra de Valverde, this panel analyzes the different ways Latin American intellectual women contested social exclusion and negotiated their participation in the public sphere. The aim of this panel is to encourage a cutting-edge conversation about the emergence of voices that claimed for gender equality, and the role of the press as a vehicle of protest and contestation beyond national borders. Finally, this panel contributes to our understanding of women’s leadership roles in nineteenth-century Latin America.

Sub Track

• Literary Studies: Colonial and 19th Century

Session Organizer

• Maria Alejandra Aguilar Dornelles, University at Albany-SUNY

Chair

• Brenda Ortiz-Loyola, University of Louisville

Individual Presentations

• Eduarda Mansilla and the Limits of Feminist Critique - Kristen M Turpin, University of Pennsylvania

• Literatas, Education and Secularization in Peru, 1870-c. 1900 - Gracia Solis

• Soledad Acosta de Samper, pionera de la crítica social en la prensa limeña del siglo XIX. - Laura Liendo, University of Notre Dame

• Gender Violence and Rape in Nineteenth-Century Puerto Rico - Brenda Ortiz-Loyola, University of Louisville

• My Beloved Commodity: Women Intellectuals and Artists in the Caribbean Print Culture (1868-1912) - Maria Alejandra Aguilar Dornelles, University at Albany-SUNY

Discussant

• Adriana M Pacheco, Universidad de las Américas Puebla