Shirley Cushing Flint, No mere Shadows. Faces of widowhood in Early Colonial Mexico

Marvels of Medicine makes a compelling case for including sixteenth century medical and surgical writing in the critical frameworks we now use to think about a genealogy of cultural expression in Latin America. Focusing on a small group of practitioners who differed in their levels of training, but who shared the common experience of having left Spain to join colonial societies in the making, this book analyses the paths their texts charted to attitudes and political positions that would come to characterize a criollo mode of enunciation. Unlike the accounts of first explorers, which sought to amaze audiences back in Europe with descriptions of strange and astonishing lands, these texts instead engaged the marvellous in an effort to supersede it, stressing the value of sensorial experience and of verifying information through repetition and demonstration. Vernacular medical writing became an unlikely early platform for a new form of regionally anchored discourse that demanded participation in a global intellectual conversation yet found itself increasingly relegated to the margins. In responding to that challenge, anatomical treatises, natural histories and surgical manuals exceeded the bounds set by earlier templates becoming rich, hybrid narratives that were as concerned with science as with portraying the lives and sensibilities of women and men in early colonial Mexico.

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Exporting the Catholic Reformation: Local Religion in Early-Colonial Mexico

Hispanic American Historical Review ◽

10.1215/00182168-78.2.331 ◽

1998 ◽

Vol 78 (2) ◽

pp. 331-333

Author(s):

Sarah Cline

Keyword(s):

Colonial Mexico ◽

Catholic Reformation ◽

Local Religion ◽

Early Colonial

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Reforming birth in early colonial Mexico, or, did Mexican women really have a counter-reformation?

Global Reformations ◽

10.4324/9780429399152-12 ◽

2019 ◽

pp. 211-230

Author(s):

Jacqueline Holler

Keyword(s):

Colonial Mexico ◽

Mexican Women ◽

Early Colonial ◽

Counter Reformation

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Painting the Aztec Past in Early Colonial Mexico: Translation and Knowledge Production in the Codex Mendoza

Renaissance Quarterly ◽

10.1017/rqx.2019.377 ◽

2019 ◽

Vol 72 (4) ◽

pp. 1362-1415

Author(s):

Daniela Bleichmar

Keyword(s):

Knowledge Production ◽

Colonial Mexico ◽

Early Colonial ◽

Complex Process ◽

Codex Mendoza ◽

Knowledge Ontology

The “Codex Mendoza” is one of the earliest, most detailed, and most important postconquest accounts of pre-Hispanic Aztec life. Nahuas and Spaniards manufactured the codex through a complex process that involved translations across media, languages, and cultural framings. Translations made Aztec culture legible and acceptable to nonnative viewers and readers by recasting indigenous practices, knowledge, ontology, and epistemology. Following a stratigraphic approach that examines the process through which natives and Spaniards created a transcultural manuscript, the article examines the multiple interpretations and negotiations involved in producing images, books, and information about the indigenous world in early colonial Mexico.

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