70 min listen
Nicholas R. Jones, "Staging Habla de Negros: Radical Performance of the African Diaspora in Early Modern Spain" (Penn State UP, 2019)
Nicholas R. Jones, "Staging Habla de Negros: Radical Performance of the African Diaspora in Early Modern Spain" (Penn State UP, 2019)
ratings:
Length:
78 minutes
Released:
Mar 20, 2020
Format:
Podcast episode
Description
Nicholas R. Jones’s book, Staging Habla de Negros: Radical Performance of the African Diaspora in Early Modern Spain (Penn State University Press, 2019), analyzes white appropriations of black African voices in Spanish theater in the sixteenth through eighteenth centuries, when performing habla de negros—how Africanized Castilian was commonly referred to—was in fashion. Jones problematizes long-held beliefs among literary critics and linguists that habla de negros as represented in dominant Spanish literature was exclusively racist stereotypes, and instead seeks to theorize habla de negros as a radical performance that “allow[s] black expression and black sensibilities to emerge whether there are black bodies present or not.” This elegant book demonstrates that black voices, speakers, bodies, subjects, were visible, present, and constitutive parts of the early modern Castilian soundscape and society and succeeds in drawing modern readers’ attention to their importance. By centering black historical and literary figures, Jones shows how black populations of early modern Spain participated in the formation of Black experience beyond Brazil, the Caribbean and the United States.
Elizabeth Spragins is assistant professor of Spanish at the College of the Holy Cross. Her current book project is on corpses in early modern Mediterranean narrative. You can follow her on Twitter @elspragins.
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Elizabeth Spragins is assistant professor of Spanish at the College of the Holy Cross. Her current book project is on corpses in early modern Mediterranean narrative. You can follow her on Twitter @elspragins.
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Released:
Mar 20, 2020
Format:
Podcast episode
Titles in the series (100)
Virginia Scharff, “The Women Jefferson Loved” (HarperCollins, 2010): Most Americans could tell you who George Washington’s wife was. (Martha, right?) Most Americans probably couldn’t tell you who Thomas Jefferson’s wife was. (It was also Martha, but a different one of course). They might be able to tell you, however, by New Books in Early Modern History