Speaker: Ana M. Rodriguez-Rodriguez, Department of Spanish and Portuguese, University of Iowa

Abstract: »Kidnapping and isolation are types of violence against women which prevent their contact with the outside world beyond the familiar or domestic realm, with different degrees of violence being used to attain this goal, in a variety of conditions, places, and durations. This is one of the most disturbing examples of violence against women, often used to physically and psychologically subjugate them, that is explored in a number of texts by María de Zayas and other 17^th-century women writers. I will analyze the treatment of space and its relation to gender, especially in the domestic sphere, in this context, and also to the representation of torture mechanisms that impact victims and the social system organizing their relations with their abusers.
These writers are a precedent to 21^st-century movements denouncing women’s situation, creating alternative stories, challenging the ones that annihilate their subjectivity, and claiming wider, more meaningful spaces for them at home and in the wider society. Reading Zayas and some of her contemporaries, we realize that 17^th-century Spanish writers offer stories that today’s movements may benefit from, reflecting on these issues from an informed perspective that illuminates a path to the end of gender violence and the confinement of women.« (Source: Online Program)

Wikipedia: History of Europe: History of Spain / Habsburg Spain | Fiction: Fictional victims of sexual assault | Literature: Spanish literature / María de Zayas | Sex and the law: Sexual assault