This original collection of essays explores the work and life choices of Spanish women who, through their writings and social activism, addressed social justice, religious dogmatism, the educational system, gender inequality, and tensions in female subjectivity. It brings together writers who are not commonly associated with each other, but whose voices overlap, allowing us to foreground their unconventionality, their relationships to each other, and their relation to modernity. The objective of this volume is to explore how the idea of "queerness" played an important role in the personal lives and social activism of these writers, as well as in the unconventional and nonconformist characters they created in their work. Together, the essays demonstrate that the concept of "queer women" is useful for investigating the evolution of women’s writing and sexual identity during the period of Spain’s fitful transition to modernity in the nineteenth century. The concept of queerness in its many meanings points to the idea of non-normativity and gender dissidence that encompasses how women intellectuals experienced friendship, religion, sex, sexuality, and gender. The works examined include autobiography, poetry, memoir, salon chronicles, short and long fiction, pedagogical essays, newspaper articles, theater, and letters. In addition to exploring the significant presence of queer women in nineteenth- and twentieth-century Spanish literature and culture, the essays examine the reasons why the voices of Spanish women authors have been culturally silenced. One thrust in this collection explores generational transitions of Spanish writers from the romantics and their "hermandad lírica" ("lyrical sisterhood") through to "las Sinsombrero" ("Women Without Hats"), and finally, current Spanish writers linked to the LGBTQ+ community.

A-to-Z overview of modern Latina lesbian authors and performers in the United States, Latin America, and Spain. This book has been co-published simultaneously as Journal of Lesbian Studies, volume 7, number 3 (2003).

Spanish literature is one of the major European literatures, with an extensive array of canonical and important writers from the Middle Ages to the present. Because Spain was a crossroads of Christian, Jewish, and Islamic cultures, its cultural traditions weave together issues related to homoerotic practices and beliefs from these diverse origins. Homoeroticism, as a consequence, has always been a highly charged issue for Spain. But only since the return to a constitutional society after the death of Franco in 1975 and the international growth of interest in queer issues has it been possible to establish a reliable history of homoeroticism in Spanish culture. Many of these issues have been treated in Spanish literature, since the literature of a country so closely records its culture. This reference book examines the prominence of gay and lesbian themes in the works of Spanish writers and thus illuminates the homoerotic element in Spanish culture from the medieval period to the twentieth century. The volume presents entries for more than 50 Spanish writers, such as Federico García Lorca, Ignatius of Loyola, Juan de la Cruz, Miguel de Unamuno, María de Zayas, and Esther Tusqueto. The writers included fall chiefly into two groups: those of the canon whose works contain elements of interest to an agenda of sexual dissidence, and those who constitute a lesbigay inventory for contemporary Spain. Included are those writers whose works are of interest to lesbigay scholarship, regardless of whether the writers themselves were lesbigay. The volume also includes entries for several Spanish cultural figures such as filmmaker Pedro Almodóvar and painter Salvador Dalí, who were not writers but nonetheless inform the homoerotic background of Spanish writing and culture. Entries are arranged alphabetically and are written by expert contributors. Each includes a brief biographical profile, a discussion of gay and lesbian themes in the writer's works, and a bibliography. The volume also includes an extensive introductory essay and a list of major studies.

In this dynamic collection of essays, many leading literary scholars trace gay and lesbian themes in Latin American, Hispanic, and U.S. Latino literary and cultural texts. Reading and Writing the Ambiente is consciously ambitious and far-ranging, historically as well as geographically. It includes discussions of texts from as early as the seventeenth century to writings of the late twentieth century. Reading and Writing the Ambiente also underscores the ways in which lesbian and gay self-representation in Hispanic texts differs from representations in Anglo-American texts. The contributors demonstrate that--unlike the emphasis on the individual in Anglo- American sexual identity--Latino, Spanish, and Latin American sexual identity is produced in the surrounding culture and community, in the ambiente. As one of the first collections of its kind, Reading and Writing the Ambiente is expressive of the next wave of gay Hispanic and Latin scholarship.

This volume brings together cutting-edge research on modern Spanish women as writers, activists, and embodiments of cultural change, and simultaneously honors Maryellen Bieder’s invaluable scholarly contribution to the field. The essays are innovative in their consideration of lesser-known women writers, focus on women as political activists, and use of post-colonialism, queer theory, and spatial theory to examine the period from the Enlightenment until World War II. The contributors study women as agents and representations of social change in a variety of genres, including short stories, novels, plays, personal letters, and journalistic pieces. Canonical authors such as Emilia Pardo Bazán, Leopoldo Alas “Clarín,” and Carmen de Burgos are considered alongside lesser known writers and activists such as María Rosa Gálvez, Sofía Tartilán, and Caterina Albert i Paradís. The critical analyses are situated within their specific socio-historical context, and shed new light on nineteenth- and early twentieth-century Spanish literature, history, and culture. Published by Bucknell University Press. Distributed worldwide by Rutgers University Press.

Gema Pérez-Sánchez argues that the process of political and cultural transition from dictatorship to democracy in Spain can be read allegorically as a shift from a dictatorship that followed a self-loathing "homosexual" model to a democracy that identified as a pluralized "queer" body. Focusing on the urban cultural phenomenon of la movida, she offers a sustained analysis of high queer culture, as represented by novels, along with an examination of low queer culture, as represented by comic books and films. Pérez-Sánchez shows that urban queer culture played a defining role in the cultural and political processes that helped to move Spain from a premodern, fascist military dictatorship to a late-capitalist, parliamentary democracy. The book highlights the contributions of women writers Ana María Moix and Cristina Peri Rossi, as well as comic book artists Ana Juan, Victoria Martos, Ana Miralles, and Asun Balzola. Its attention to women's cultural production functions as a counterpoint to its analysis of the works of such male writers as Juan Goytisolo and Eduardo Mendicutti, comic book artists Nazario, Rubén, and Luis Pérez Ortiz, and filmmaker Pedro Almodóvar.

This title explores the rich literary history of Spain which resonates with contemporary debates on transnationalism and cultural diversity. It introduces readers to the ways in which Spanish literature has been read in and outside Spain explaining misconceptions, outlining insights of scholarship and suggesting new readings.