Between Political Intervention and Personal Inscription: Women Writers in Latin America 1880-1930

MÓNICA SZURMUK

Londres

Conferencia; Institute of Modern Languages Research Lectures; 2017

University of London, Institute of Modern Language Research

In the late nineteenth century, as the new Latin American republics were consolidating, a group of women became professionalized in relation to these emerging states. These professional women were agents and beneficiaries of modernisation processes in the region that started in the mid-nineteenth century and crystallised in the first decades of the twentieth century.In this talk the professionalisation of women (in the fields of literature, education, journalism, and science) will be treated in the context of the construction of modern national states in the region. A particular focus is on how lettered culture housed these new professionals, and how women sought out literature as a place to record their professional as well as their personal experiences. Through an analysis of these women's roles within modernization, state formation, and the creation of state apparatuses, it is hoped that they will be shown as active participants in collective action, rather than as eccentric personalities, pioneers, or rebels.