This book explores the significance of gender in shaping the Portuguese-speaking world from the Middle Ages to the present. Sixteen scholars from disciplines including history, sociology, anthropology, linguistics, literature and cultural studies analyse different configurations and literary representations of women's rights and patriarchal constraints. Unstable constructions of masculinity, femininity, queer, homosexual, bisexual, and transgender identities and behaviours are placed in historical context. The volume pioneers in gendering the Portuguese expansion in Africa, Asia, and the New World and pays particular attention to an inclusive account of indigenous agencies.
Contributors are: Darlene Abreu-Ferreira, Vanda Anastácio, Francisco Bethencourt, Dorothée Boulanger, Rosa Maria dos Santos Capelão, Maria Judite Mário Chipenembe, Gily Coene, Philip J. Havik, Ben James, Anna M. Klobucka, Chia Longman, Amélia Polónia, Ana Maria S. A. Rodrigues, Isabel dos Guimarães Sá, Ana Cristina Santos, and João Paulo Silvestre.
Francisco Bethencourt, Ph.D. (1992), European University Institute, is Charles Boxer Professor of History at King’s College London. He is the author of
Racisms From the Crusades to the Twentieth Century (2013) and
The Inquisition: a Global History, 1478-1834 (2009). He is completing a new monograph on
The New Christian Trading Elite, 1497-1773.
“[...] o livro coloca em diálogo várias linhas historiográficas dentro do estudo de gênero e das sexualidades em Portugal, Brasil, Angola, Moçambique e outros locais que tiveram contato com esses países em decorrência da colonização e construção (plural) do império, principalmente, em relação à homossexualidade, às pessoas transgênero e às identidades queer. A obra atualiza a discussão teórica sobre os países envolvidos incluindo, de fato e como é mencionado, tópicos pouco estudados nesses lugares.”
The book is addressed both to an academic audience of social sciences and humanities studying the Portuguese-Speaking World, and to a wider cultivated public interested in gender studies.