TRAVEL WRITERS, JOURNALISTS, AND WORKING WOMEN

MÓNICA SZURMUK

San Juan, Puerto Rico

Congreso; Latin American Studies Association; 2015

Latin American Studies Association

In the mid-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 modernization processes in the region that started in the mid-nineteenth century and crystallized in the first decades of the twentieth century. In this chapter we treat the professionalization of women (in the fields of literature, education, journalism, and science) in the context of the construction of modern national states in the region. We are especially interested in how lettered culture housed these new professionals, and how women sought out literature as a place to record their professional and personal experiences. While earlier in the nineteenth century motherhood and domesticity were republicanized through the figure of the ?angel of the hearth,? the emerging professionalization of women hailed new identities. Women became key agents in the expansion of the reading public through teaching, editing, and writing. We will analyze the trajectories of these professional women, focusing on how they took advantage of social and political changes related to the processes of state creation and modernization. Through an analysis of these womens? roles within modernization, state formation, and the creation of state apparatuses, we hope to show them as active participants in collective action, rather than as eccentric personalities, pioneers, or rebels. Authors treated include teachers Adela Zamudio (Bolivia), Juana Manso (Argentina-Brasil), and Ada María Elflein (Argentina); union leaders Luisa Capetillo (Puerto Rico), Salvadora Onrrubia (Argentina), and Benita Galeana (México); scientist Cecilia Grierson (Argentina); journalists Eduarda Mansilla (Argentina), Laureana Wrigth de Kleinhass (México), and Dolores Jiménez y Muro (México); and textbook writer Emma Catalá de Princivalle (Uruguay).