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José R. Jouve-Martín

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Assistant Professor,
Department of Hispanic Studies,
McGill University

Current Hispanic Baroque Research
Related Baroque Research
Recent Publications

Current Hispanic Baroque Research:

Slavery, Literacy and Colonialism in Latin America

The assumption that African slaves and their descendants were fundamentally illiterate, confined to a mostly oral culture, and, as such, unable to participate in the written culture that developed throughout the colonial world has been commonplace in the historiography of slavery in Spanish America. A careful review of the historical record suggests that this might have been a misconstruction and that, particularly in the urban setting, peoples of African origin interacted more often than previously assumed with written documents and literate practices. "Slavery, Literacy and Colonialism in Latin America" focuses on literacy and the problem of how writing as a technology was used by African slaves and their descendants in 17th- and 18th-century Latin America in order to negotiate their social position, history and identity. An important first step in this direction has been the publication of Prof. Jouve-Martin's book Esclavos de la ciudad letrada: Esclavitud, escritura y colonialismo en Lima, 1650-1700 (Lima: Instituto de Estudios Peruanos, 2005), which addresses the conditions under which the Afro-Peruvian community of Lima came into contact with the lettered culture of the 17th century, and the ways in which slaves and freemen interacted with the European written tradition in a colonial setting. Prof. Jouve-Martín has been generously funded by both FQRSC and SSHRC in order to expand this research both geographically and diachronically.

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Related Baroque Research:

Colonial Latin America on the Opera Stage

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Recent Publications:

Books

Esclavos de la ciudad letrada: Esclavitud, escritura y colonialismo en Lima (1650-1700). Lima: Instituto de Estudios Peruanos, 2005.

Articles

"Death, Gender, and Writing: Testaments of Women of African Origin in 17th-century Lima" (1651-1666). Forthcoming in the volume Afro-Latino Voices: Documentary Narratives from the Early Modern Iberian World edited by Kathryn McKnight and Leo Garofalo.

"Werner Egk's opera Columbus (1933/ 1942) and the Recreation of the Discovery of America in Nazi Germany". Forthcoming in Bulletin of Spanish Studies.

"Incas y aztecas en la imaginación transatlántica: Teatro, música y memoria en The Indian Queen de John Dryden y Henry Purcell". Forthcoming in Hispanófila.

"Literatura, música e historia: La Conquista de México en la ópera Montezuma (1755) de Federico II y Carl Heinrich Graun". Forthcoming in Bulletin of Hispanic Studies

"Public Ceremonies and Mulatto Identity in Viceregal Lima: A Colonial Reenactment of the Fall of Troy (1631)". Forthcoming in Colonial Latin American Review.

"De la Lima colonial al París del Segundo Imperio: Música, historia y literatura en La Périchole de Jacques Offenbach". Siglo XIX. 12 (2006): 117-138.

"Un salvaje en Milán. Música, literatura e historia en Il guarany de Antonio Carlos Gomes". Deseo, poder y política en la cultura hispánica. Ricardo de la Fuente (Ed.). Valladolid: Universitas Castellae, Colección Cultura Iberoamericana nº 25. 59-71.

"De esclavos a escribas: Memoria, escritura y autobiografía en la literatura afro hispanoamericana". Revista Canadiense de Estudios Hispánicos 30: 1 (2006). 129-144.

"La difusión de la cultura letrada en en la comunidad negra de Lima del siglo XVII". In: Salles-Reese, Verónica (Ed.). Repensando el pasado, recuperando el futuro: Nuevos aportes interdisciplinarios para el estudio de la América colonial. Bogotá: Editorial Pontificia Universidad Javeriana, 2005. 288-299.

"Ópera, teatro y memoria en Die Eroberung von Mexiko de Wolfgang Rihm". Theatralia 6 (2005): 1-21.

"En olor de santidad: Cultos locales y política de canonizaciones en el Virreinato del Perú". Colonial Latin American Review 13: 2 (2004): 181-198.

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