Showing 1 - 3 of 3 Items

Date: 2022-01-01

Creator: Miranda Viederman

Access: Open access

The aim of this Honors project is to investigate representations of female virginity in Renaissance English dramatic works. I view the period as one in which the womb became the site of a unique renewal of cultural anxieties surrounding the stability of the patriarchy and the inaccessibility of female sexual desire. I am most interested in virginity as a “bodily narrative” dependent on the construction and maintenance of performance. I analyze representations of virginity in female characters from four works of drama originating in the Jacobean period of the English Renaissance, during and after the end of the reign of Elizabeth I, the Virgin Queen. Across four chapters, I examine the characters of Isabella from Shakespeare’s Measure for Measure (1604), Beatrice-Joanna from Thomas Middleton’s The Changeling (1622), the Jailer’s Daughter from Shakespeare and Fletcher’s The Two Noble Kinsmen (1634), and Helen from Shakespeare’s All’s Well That Ends Well (c. 1602-1605). To establish a framework for my readings, I situate each work in its contemporary cultural context, drawing upon Catholic and Protestant religious doctrines, period medical texts, and popular culture. I intend to explore the complex, often contradictory nature of the forms of virginity the plays depict. Still, I hope by uncovering the opportunities these four characters are provided by their virginity, that I can widen the confines of the category.

Date: 2020-01-01

Creator: Uriel López-Serrano

Access: Open access

Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz (c. 1648-1695) was a Mexican nun, poet, playwright, and scholar from the colonial era. She has become an icon for various global, social, and political movements. This project looks at four dramatic works created by Sorjuanistas who reimagine Sor Juana’s story for contemporary audiences living in the United States. The works included in this essay are Estela Portillo-Trambley’s Sor Juana (1986), Karen Zacarías’s The Sins of Sor Juana (2001), and Alicia Gaspar de Alba’s “Interview with Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz” (1998/2014) and her newest work, Juana: An Opera in Two Acts (2019), libretto by Carla Lucero. In addition to reimagining Sor Juana’s story, these dramatic works expose the sexism, racism, and xenophobia perpetuated by U.S institutions of power that discriminate against Latin@ and Chican@ individuals. By shedding light on the social injustices that existed during the colonial era, an embodied Sor Juana teaches audiences how to resist and mobilize against such oppressive powers. Sor Juana’s narrative on stage is necessary because she is a role model for Latin@s/Chican@s. Sorjuanistas remind us that the body can be used to retell the narratives of the silenced individuals who are victims of oppression. By developing heritage performances, Sorjuanistas challenge histories that silence and overlook social injustices. Witnessing Sor Juana on stage triggers emotional responses to the past which allow historical actors to obtain intellectual, emotional, and political agency in an effort to affirm and remember particular contemporary and future commitments to fighting social injustices.

Date: 2018-05-01

Creator: Sarah Claudia Bonanno

Access: Open access