LASA/EANLAS: Rethinking Trans-Pacific Ties: Asia and Latin America

“A Gendered Ocean: Women’s Journeys in the Pacific during the Spanish Empire”

• In Event: “Imagining the Trans-Pacific, part 2: Creating Places, Institutions, and Cultural Legacies”

Abstract

Contrary to what has been traditionally believed, women did have a pivotal role in Spain’s imperial project in the Pacific. They crossed boundaries and carried with them news, material goods, family and community ties from the Iberian Peninsula to the Philippines passing through the American lands. Their experiences had the power to both reassert and to question Spain’s imperial desires and hierarchies of power, including gender relations.

My presentation examines travel narratives that incorporate woman travelers and the textual strategies produced to negotiate gender paradigms in the transpacific context. My analysis focuses on how the texts manipulate the female traveler’s body in order to deal with her unexpected power and her place in the imperial enterprise. By interrogating the image of the woman traveler and the potential power that this image has to confront a gendered social hierarchy, this analysis opens the door to a wider discussion about the multiple, and often contradictory perspectives that these texts offer on women’s subjectivity in the colonial context.

Author

• Ana M Rodriguez-Rodriguez, University of Iowa