This course focuses on the problem of religious conversion in Spain prior to 1492, its expression in writing, and in the cultural representation of human subjects as they become protagonists of consciousness. Spanish cultural history has tended to assume that conversos formed a homogeneous, resistant group. Traditional historiography offers a vision of conversos that is structured fundamentally around binary oppositions and articulated along cultural and religious fault lines. In this model the exercise of power in society tends to manifest itself only as a repressive or resistant force as it underscores gestures and attitudes that are either imposed upon conversos or prohibited for them by institutionalized forms of authority (i.e., estatutos de pureza de sangre, allegations of Judaizing, censorship, Inquisition, etc.). The result is that conversos are portrayed as persistently threatened, marginalized subjects living under the specter of ostracism, shame, or abjection. This course will challenge the binary understanding of conversos, especially in the period during the second half of the 15th C leading up to the Expulsion (1492) when the images of the Jew and the converso become more problematical than previously imagined and are marked by fluidity and ambiguities that fail to denote discrete borders of identity constructed by society. To do this, we will examine 5 converso authors and one nuclear family of them (Mosen Diego de Valera, Fernando del Pulgar, Teresa de Cartagena, Antón de Montoro, and Juan de Lucena, the printer, and his six daughters) who successfully negotiated the corridors of power, legitimacy, and prestige in Castile during the period leading up to 1492, and whose "converso condition" proved socially and politically advantageous.
3 units · Letter or Credit/No Credit
This course focuses on the problem of religious conversion in Spain prior to 1492, its expression in writing, and in the cultural representation of human subjects as they become protagonists of consciousness. Spanish cultural history has tended to assume that conversos formed a homogeneous, resistant group. Traditional historiography offers a vision of conversos that is structured fundamentally around binary oppositions and articulated along cultural and religious fault lines. In this model the exercise of power in society tends to manifest itself only as a repressive or resistant force as it underscores gestures and attitudes that are either imposed upon conversos or prohibited for them by institutionalized forms of authority (i.e., estatutos de pureza de sangre, allegations of Judaizing, censorship, Inquisition, etc.). The result is that conversos are portrayed as persistently threatened, marginalized subjects living under the specter of ostracism, shame, or abjection. This course will challenge the binary understanding of conversos, especially in the period during the second half of the 15th C leading up to the Expulsion (1492) when the images of the Jew and the converso become more problematical than previously imagined and are marked by fluidity and ambiguities that fail to denote discrete borders of identity constructed by society. To do this, we will examine 5 converso authors and one nuclear family of them (Mosen Diego de Valera, Fernando del Pulgar, Teresa de Cartagena, Antón de Montoro, and Juan de Lucena, the printer, and his six daughters) who successfully negotiated the corridors of power, legitimacy, and prestige in Castile during the period leading up to 1492, and whose "converso condition" proved socially and politically advantageous.
Offered in Spring 2026 at Stanford University.