Non-Motherhood, (In)Fertility, and Choice in Two Recent Spanish Narratives

This summer (2026) my most recent article was published in the Hispanic Studies Review: “Se nos pasó el cuento, no el arroz: Non-Motherhood, (In)Fertility, and Choice in Míriam Aguilar’s ¿Y ahora qué? (2024) and Paola Andrea Ghirardi’s Diario de una bordadora (2023) (PDF here). I had begun working on this essay during the fall of my sabbatical year back in 2024 (somehow 2 years ago!!), after having read both books during the summer of 2024 when I was in Spain. I couldn’t stop thinking about these non-motherhood, “hybrid” narratives and how they fit into broader discourses on feminism and motherhood in Spain (and indeed globally) that I have been working with — and seen evolve — over the past decade. My full article open access via Hispanic Studies Review‘s website here. Below, I’ll give a brief intro to each text and the core arguments of the article, then excerpt the first paragraph from each of the article’s three sections.

General Introduction

First published in late 2023, Diario de una bordadora was penned by Argentinian-born, Barcelona-based artist Paola Andrea Ghirardi, also known by her pseudonym “Señorita Lylo,” which she uses for her artist persona. Ghirardi’s illustrated text – which is often sold in the graphic novel section of Spanish bookstores – intertwines two narratives, presenting her motherhood quest alongside her development as an embroidery artist by effectively using embroidery as a metaphor for the intricate and tangled nature of her emotional journey to (non-)motherhood. The visual components of sewing and embroidery art enrich Ghirardi’s first-person narrative, reflecting the difficulties of giving voice to invisible reproductive loss and non-motherhood.

The second text, published in 2024, is Míriam Aguilar’s ¿Y ahora qué? Una reflexión sobre la no maternidad por circunstancias, which is both an attentive, first-person reflection on non-motherhood and a guide for those grappling with the challenges and grief associated with infertility or involuntary childlessness. In blending memoir and social commentary, Aguilar advocates for alternative models of womanhood beyond biological motherhood, redefines what constitutes a happy ending to reproductive journeys, and offers “otros finales felices” for those struggling to accept non-motherhood (35). 

Both Ghirardi’s and Aguilar’s accounts trace the uncertainty and grief of prolonged fertility struggles, resist (un)consciously internalized societal pressures and cultural norms about biological motherhood as central to female identity, and reveal both the complexities of maternal desire and the unpredictability of non-motherhood by circumstance. In the end, ¿Y ahora qué? and Diario de una bordadora challenge how we think about choice in relationship to (non-)motherhood by rejecting the simplistic notion that motherhood can be either embraced or rejected, while extending empathy and support to others navigating fertility struggles, maternal grief, or the absence of motherhood.

Images via Moderna del Pueblo Facebook page
Images via Moderna del Pueblo Facebook page

Míriam Aguilar’s definition of non-motherhood by circumstance (la no maternidad por circunstancias) as a deeply desired yet unrealized motherhood provides a useful lens through which to approach both narratives. Appearing in her title and defined early in the text, Aguilar characterizes the experience as one of profound desire and loss:

La no maternidad por circunstancias es aquella que no se concreta pese a haber existido el deseo y, en muchas ocasiones, años de búsqueda de un embarazo, incluso con pérdidas gestacionales en el proceso, que nos dejan a las puertas de esa maternidad deseada. Todas las mujeres sin hijos por circunstancias somos mujeres que quisimos ser madres y no lo fuimos… Aunque cada historia es diferente, la no maternidad por circunstancias es dolorosa siempre. (17)

Aguilar’s “non-motherhood by circumstance” is more encompassing than “infertility” because it accounts for various barriers to motherhood that include, but are not limited to, infertility, perinatal or neonatal loss, illness or health concerns, or social infertility. To discuss the complexity of the non-motherhood experiences that Aguilar and Ghirardi expose, this article is divided into three thematic sections: presumed motherhood, liminal motherhood, and beyond motherhood. Each corresponds with the general chronology of fertility journeys undertaken by women who desire to become biological mothers, attempt to conceive (with or without assisted reproductive technologies, or ARTs) and maintain a pregnancy, and are ultimately unable to birth biological children.

Presumed Motherhood: Education and Sociocultural Preparation

I use the phrase “presumed motherhood” to refer to the social and cultural preparation or education for motherhood, which is often “understood as a quest process” (Bogino Larrambebere, “Impossible Motherhood: From Desire for Motherhood to Non-Motherhood”, 2023, p. 270). This journey toward motherhood begins long before a woman first attempts to conceive, as her education and understanding of sexual relations, pregnancy, and motherhood are conditioned by social and cultural messages. In late twentieth-century Spain, like in many other western nations, women were often raised with conflicting messages about fertility, sex, and motherhood… (read more here)

Sección Femenina, modelo de mujer (image via La Verdad)
Imagenes by Señora Milton, via Pikara Magazine.

Liminal Motherhood: The Costs of Seeking Pregnancy

Building on Bogino Larrambebere’s language of “impossible motherhood,” which she uses to describe the uncertain timeframe in which women repeatedly pursue pregnancy (often through ARTs) without reaching the desired outcome of childbirth (“Impossible” 360), as well as Alison Reiheld’s theorization of miscarriage as a “liminal state” of transition (“The Event That Was Nothing: Miscarriage as a Liminal Event, 2015, p. 10), I use the phrase “liminal motherhood” to foreground the suspension and ambiguity that characterize motherhood journeys defined by infertility, ARTs, and/or pregnancy loss, and that culminate in non-motherhood. Unlike “impossible motherhood,” which points to a thwarted outcome, or Reiheld’s “liminal state” that refers specifically to the embodied experience of natal loss, “liminal motherhood” highlights the protracted instability of a maternal identity repeatedly and indefinitely in the process of becoming. Relevant to this line of thinking is Jennifer Scuro’s The Pregnancy =/= Childbearing Project (2017), in which she situates pregnancy itself as a complex maternal experience with multiple outcomes, rather than a step towards a singular outcome of eventual childbirth and motherhood (189–90). Scuro’s “disentanglement” (189) of pregnancy and childbearing offers a space for non-mothers by circumstance within motherhood literature and for a discussion of non-motherhood not as a failure, but rather as one possible experience or outcome of maternal desire. In this section, I focus on three characteristics of liminal motherhood that are visible in Aguilar’s ¿Y ahora qué? and Ghirardi’s Diario de una bordadora. First, a woman’s relationship with her own body becomes fraught, as it is progressively defined by anxiety, grief, medicalization, and perceived failure. Second, extended liminality places a strain on both a woman’s sense of self and on her intersubjective relationships. And third, the prolonged and indefinite path toward motherhood exacts significant costs in terms of time, energy, and resources, on financial, physical, emotional, and psychological levels… (read more here)

From Diario de una bordadora (images mine)
From Diario de una bordadora (images mine)

Beyond Motherhood: Acceptance and Redefined Success

In ¿Y ahora qué? and Diario de una bordadora, Aguilar and Ghirardi ultimately reject the idea that non-motherhood is synonymous with failure or tragedy, admitting that it took time to arrive at that sentiment. For Aguilar, this involves validating the grief that remained unrecognized, dismissed, or denied throughout non-motherhood journeys: “Seamos conscientes o no, pues no haber podido ser madre quizá se viva durante un tiempo como un duelo negado” (17). Both narratives correspond with what Bogino Larrambabere observed in the participants in her non-motherhood by circumstance study, in which the “desire for motherhood is transformed and new projects appear” that reinvent goals and (re)shape the women’s subjectivity (“Impossible” 374–75). In the case of Aguilar and Ghirardi, both turned to creative outlets to share their experiences and joined supportive communities to engage in various degrees of activism. As Albarrán Caselles has observed, recent motherhood narratives often reveal a deep connection not only between the reproductive body and the creative process, but between the individual and the broader social fabric, even in texts like Nanclares’ Quien quiere ser madre, which closes with an “unsuccessful” fertility journey: “la maternidad constituye una relación humana y no un mero rol identitario desligado de la interacción intersubjetiva” ((Pro)creación. Escritura y maternidad en la España contemporánea, 2022, pp. 23–24). Reading Aguilar’s and Ghirardi’s work through this lens highlights how their storytelling itself constitutes a (pro)creative act with value beyond reproductive “success,” ultimately reframing their isolated maternal journeys to non-motherhood as both generative and intersubjective. Both authors’ transition to and acceptance of non-motherhood allows them to proactively shift their identities and influence beyond the limits of their previously solitary reproductive journeys.. (read more here)

Learn more about Ghirardi on her website, Señorita Lylo, or Instagram @srtalylo, and about Aguilar on her website, Mir Aguilar, or Instagram: @holasoymir.

Paola Andrea Ghirardi (image via www.srtalylo.com)
Míriam Aguilar (image via Mamagazine interview)

I would love for you to download the full article here, and please do let me know what other non-motherhood texts — in Spanish or English — you have read recently. Below are a few of my own recommended readings on non-motherhood in Spain and Spanish literature… including the books I featured I my article. I’ve listed them starting with the most recent, and all links are via Amazon because the Kindle versions are often the most affordable options ($5-10) for quick access in the USA to contemporary Spanish publications.

2026: Madres, no madres y madres en limbo, by Maricel Días (ExLibric) – poetry

2026: Narrating Infertility in Spain, by Catherine Bourland Ross (Bucknell University Press) – academic study of five Spanish narratives published since 2017.

2024: ¿Y ahora qué? Una reflexión sobre la no maternidad por circunstancias, by Míriam Aguilar (Koan).

2023: Diario de una bordadora, by Paola Andrea Ghirardi, aka Srta. Lylo. (Lumen) – first-person narrative/memoir with the author’s illustrations

2023: Placenta by Alaine Agirre, translated from Basque by Xabier Mendiguren (Tres Hermanas). Título original en Euskara: Karena (Elkar) – narrative centered on a protagonist struggling with the desire to be a mother and the difficulties posed by ARTs and (late-term) pregnancy loss

2019: El vientre vacío, by Noemí López Trujillo (Capitán Swing)

2017: No madres: Mujeres sin hijos contra los tópicos, by Maria Fernández-Miranda (Plaza & Janes) – essays and interviews

2017: Quien quiere ser madre by Silvia Nanclares (Alfaguara)

Students’ Study Abroad Projects: Bridging Language and Research in Spain

First post of 2026! This year my goal is to return to posting at least once per month (*fingers crossed*). This past August 2025 I returned to my role as Associate Professor of Spanish – and Director of Graduate Studies – after over 2 years as Interim Department Head, which was followed by a one year, long-awaited and postponed sabbatical (2024-2025). Since the fall, I’ve been enjoying teaching undergraduate classes again (especially my Almodóvar film class this semester), trying to preserve time for research and writing during the week, and continuing to plan and recruit students for this summer’s study abroad program in Spain — which will mark the 6th year (5th in a row!) that I’ll be taking students to Madrid and Pamplona for just over a month.

What I’m teaching this semester, which has been really fun so far!

I thought I’d share what several students co-presented with me at the recent Kansas World Languages Association’s (KSWLA) annual conference in November, 2025. Each of these students had done exceptional work in Spain over the summer and I wanted them to be able to share their projects beyond our classroom – especially since we did not have a traditional classroom, of course! – and to showcase how Spanish language skills and Spanish study can enhance any other major. Our panel was titled “Beyond the Classroom, Beyond Tourism: Interdisciplinary Student Research in Short-Term Study Abroad (Spain),” and the goals were: (1) for students to share their research structures, on-the-ground activities, results, and reflections on linguistic, cultural, and professional growth, (2) to demonstrate how world language study can meaningfully intersect with STEM and other fields, and (3) to highlight language learning and continued language study as a pathway to global citizenship and intercultural competence, while also promoting creative models of student-centered research abroad.

Presenting with students at the Kansas World Languages Association’s (KSWLA) annual conference (November 2025).

I began the discussion sharing two opposing views of study abroad that have existed for decades and that are summarized in Student Learning Abroad. What Our Student Are Learning, What They’re Not, and what We Can Do About It (Vande Berg et al, 2012 & 2023). On the one hand, there is a [perhaps overly] optimistic and enthusiastic view that the experience is “naturally transformative” and students learn and grow simply by being in this new location, almost as if by some sort of “osmosis” (I’ve found this to be common with students’ expectations of “language immersion”). On the other hand, critics are more skeptical and may soberly argue that many programs amount to little more than tourism, or even a vacation from serious studies. The authors pointed to the below New Yorker cartoon, which I included to represent this view (below, right). I suspect that many familiar with student abroad (as faculty leaders or student participants) may have seen or experienced both of these sides! When I created this program, I wanted to try to strike a balance between formal learning and education… and the potential transformative power of students’ so-called “free-time” or unstructured explorations of their environment outside of official academic channels. This is where the individualized research component for my “Spain Today” course came in.

In “Education Travel and Personal Development: Deconstructing the Short-Term Study Abroad Experience” (2024), Dou, Fan, and Cai divided popular components of study abroad programs into “Travel” (tourism) and “Education” (academic) categories. This deconstruction is useful to me, as I’ve participated in programs that were less beneficial than others and, upon reflection, I believe it is the unstructured or unconscious fusion of these two components that may negatively impact learning and personal development or the overall success of a program (from a student point-of-view). Viewing each component within its respective category can help instructors more intentionally balance academic objectives and tourism/travel experiences, and ideally structure them in mutually beneficial ways. The authors note that not all travel experiences produce learning or personal development — which reflects the perspective offered by the New Yorker cartoon. They found that experiences in the “travel” category were only beneficial to learning when they were guided and intentional, or when students organized elements of the travel plans/logistics themselves (and short-term programs require minimal planning on the part of students)…. and unstructured sightseeing was one of the least effective experiences in terms of learning and growth. In the “education” category, the two most beneficial experiences were experiential, hands-on or interactive activities and academic or professional interactions with locals. These interactions, in fact, proved more beneficial than formal classroom study (even if characterized by “immersion”) and homestays (Duo et al, 335-86).

Education components identified by Duo et al (p. 386) – Experiential Learning and Academic/Professional Interactions with locals proved most beneficial.
Travel components identified by Duo et al (p. 386)

A well-designed research project is, at its core, experiential learning. But in the context of study abroad — especially short-term — it should also push students to interact with purpose and apply their Spanish language skills in real-world contexts. Research projects as part of study abroad have been shown “to facilitate a more intensive immersion into the local culture” (Streitwieser and Leephailbul 166), but meaningful engagement does not just happen spontaneously. I’ve found, over several years, that projects must by carefully planned before students step foot in Spain, and this starts with our on-campus meetings in March and April. Arriving in Spain with a research plan immediately gives purpose and structure to students’ interactions during their free time. Additionally, research has show that “only when immersion is combined with intervention int he form of cultural mentoring do most students learn and develop in meaningful ways” (Vande Berg et al 415). While immersion is often romanticized (as in the optimistic view above) and students often think that simply by living in another country they will absorb its language and culture, research tells us otherwise. Guided engagement or “intervention” on the part of the mentor or faculty leader is often essential to ensure a productive experience. I’ve learned this (and changed my thinking) over the years, as I initially thought maximizing student freedom and taking a more “hands-off” approach would give them more autonomy to explore on their own. However, in a short 3-4 week program, this can hinder student progress if they are unsure of where to begin, if they have even one negative interaction, or if something they intended to do is no longer possible upon arrival. Here is where we must recognize that learning in study abroad is “a dialogic and situated affair whose success depends not only on the student, but also on how they are received within their host community”(Kinginger 60; 67). No matter how motivated a student may be, many factors are simply beyond their control — locals may be too busy, the language barrier may feel higher than expected, access to certain spaces may be limited. In a faculty-led program, the instructor/mentor can help problem-solve in real time, and rather than distracting from an “authentic” experience (which had been my fear in the past), research shows that this “intervention” facilitates it, especially in short-term programs when time is precious.

The embedded research projects that form part of my study abroad program offer language majors the opportunity to connect their language skills to professional interests and academic areas of study that they typically only experience in English. Moreover, it offers language students the rare opportunity to make their work meaningful and visible, and even to earn funding. Language study is a field that many students (and administrators) do not readily associate with “research,” given that we don’t require labs, fancy equipment, rodents, or scary chemicals!! For this advanced Spanish course, each student designed and carried out an original project connecting Spanish language and culture to their primary field of study or their main areas of professional interest. The projects demonstrate the kinds of interdisciplinary learning and personal and linguistic growth than can happen when study abroad moves beyond both tourism or travel and the classroom, while also recognizing that “transformative” learning and personal growth occurs most readily when there is purpose, structure, and motivated engagement with the community and surrounding environment.

Below is a summary of each student’s research topic. At the end of this post you can access the full presentation via Google Slides (although without student explanations, of course!) and links to a few of the articles I referenced.

Laura Armbruster (’27) (top left) is a Spanish and Fine Arts major, and she declared her Spanish major right away upon enrolling in courses at K-State. She was interested in delving into the language/linguistic aspect of living in another country by examining the visibility/prevalence of multi- and bilingualism in Pamplona. She paid close attention to where she saw bilingual or non-Spanish materials in Pamplona and interviewed several shopkeepers, her professors, tour guides, and locals about their day-to-day language use (and needs) in her afternoon walks around the city. Rachel Gillam (’26) (top right) is a Psychology major who initially planned to minor in Spanish, but converted to a Spanish major after realizing she could complete 2 upper-level courses in the summer. For this course, Rachel chose to create a small-scale project in Spanish inspired by (and translated and adapted from) a study in the Psych Lab where she worked. As her survey dealt with somewhat sensitive topics about attitudes towards masculinity and child-rearing, she created a QR code link to her survey and spent her time introducing herself to locals and perfecting a 1-minute pitch in Spanish. She received over 60 responses.

Emma Hamilton (’26) (top left) has 3 majors – Agronomy, Entomology, & Spanish – and like Rachel, she converted her Spanish minor to a major shortly after taking a few courses at K-State and planning study abroad experiences (first in Chile, then Spain, and soon in Argentina!). For this course, she was able to integrate her Spanish skills directly into a research project that would build on her specialization in her main majors of Agronomy and Entomology, specifically looking at rural apiculture (bees!), as she is also a beekeeper in her home state of Wisconsin. She independently visited a rural apiary in the Ultzama Valley, and 3 other students went with her “for fun” (student field trip!), and she spent her free time after morning classes and on the weekends chatting with vendors at local markets; honey is an important local product in Pamplona and the Navarra region. Ashley Taylor (’27) (top right) is also an Entomology and Spanish major, who added Spanish as a second major after initially intending to minor. Ashely set the record for most interviews conducted, this year and in past years, with her well-designed, concise, and “attention-getting” survey that allowed her to talk to over 130 Spaniards about their attitudes towards and perceptions of insects. She also took time to seek out participants in every age group, talking to Spaniards ranging in age from 16 to mid-90s. She even learned about insects unique to the northern region of Spain, and we had to really dig to find out exactly what insect a Basque speaker in the Valle de Baztán was referring to!

One of my biggest lessons from taking students abroad – the 0.5 selfie attracts the group immediately! (Gen Z are pros; I’m still working on it myself, and continue to favor the millennial front-camera selfie!)

Overall, this was great way for students to showcase their work beyond the classroom and even beyond the university, as KSWLA is attended by teachers and professionals across Kansas, Missouri, and the surrounding states. It also helped me further refine my approach to these projects and learn more about the research that has been done in this area so that I can continue to improve this individualized, high-engagement learning experience for students. I’m excited to see what projects students will come up with this summer – so far I know I have Spanish majors also studying Biochemistry (pre-med), Architecture, Horticulture, and Engineering… so we’ll be doing a lot of creative brainstorming this spring at our pre-departure meetings!

Below are the presentation slides (students’ “on-the-ground Research” slides are great!), the full abstract for our presentation, and a short bibliography of sources I explored in the framing of the projects and integrated research experience:

Presentation, via GoogleSlides – Student slides include: Project Structure, On-the-ground Research in Spain, Results, and Reflection.

Abstract: How can short-term study abroad program in world languages foster intercultural engagement, connect with students’ disciplinary interests, and advance language proficiency? This session presents a model for integrating individualized, small-scale research projects into a 4.5-week faculty-led program in Pamplona, Spain. Drawing on research that highlights the transformative potential of educational travel for personal and intellectual growth (Dou, Fan, & Cai, 2024), the program moves beyond both tourism and the traditional language classroom by engaging students in independent inquiry situated in their new global, but local, context. Student participants include majors in Agriculture, Health Sciences, Psychology, and the Fine Arts, who also pursue Spanish as a secondary major. Each designed and carried out an individualized research project in Spanish on themes such as masculinity, insect attitudes, culinary heritage, and bilingualism in public spaces. In this panel, student presenters will share their research structures, on-the-ground activities, results, and reflections on linguistic, cultural, and professional growth. Attendees will see how language study can meaningfully intersect with STEM and other fields. The session highlights language learning and continued language study as a pathway to global citizenship and intercultural competence, while also promoting creative models of student-centered research abroad.

Bibliography (select)

Dou, Xueting (Katherine), Alei Fan, and Liping A. Cai. “Education Travel and Personal Development: Deconstructing the Short-Term Study Abroad Experience.” Journal of Hospitality & Tourism Education, vol. 36, no. 4, 2024, pp. 383-98. Full article: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/10963758.2023.2192936

Goldstein, Susan B. “A Systematic Review of Short-Term Study Abroad Research Methodology and Intercultural Competence Outcomes.” International Journal of Intercultural Relations, vol. 87, 2022, pp. 26-36. Link to PDF.

Kinginger, Celeste. “Enhancing Language Learning in Study Abroad.” Annual Review of Applied Linguistics, vol. 31, 2011, pp. 58-74. Doi: 10.1017/S0267190511000031. 

Streitwieser, Bernhard and Robin Leephaibul. “Enhancing the Study Abroad Experience through Independent Research in Germany.” Die Unterrichtspraxis / Teaching German, vol. 40, no, 2, 2007, pp. 164-170. JSTOR: https://www.jstor.org/stable/20479958. 

Vande Berg, Michael, R. Michael Paige, and Kris Hemming Lou, eds. Student Learning Abroad. What Our Students Are Learning, What They’re Not, and What We Can Do about It. Routledge, [2012] 2023. Proquest eBOOK: https://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/ksu/detail.action?docID=987044

Divorce in Spain, by Carmen de Burgos (1904): An English Translation & New Spanish Edition

This week, in addition to starting my long-awaited sabbatical (yay!), I was excited to receive my copies of the companion volumes of the English translation and a new Spanish edition of Carmen de Burgos’s El divorcio en España (1904). I wrote the introduction to both volumes and worked with the translator, Slava Faybysh, on the editing. Slava did an enormous amount of work on the entire translation and the footnotes, and I worked with him to expand and revise the footnotes and ancillary materials of each text. The English Translation volume is Influencers, Activists, and Women’s Rights: A Translation of Divorce in Spain, and the Spanish edition is Influencers, activistas y los derechos de las mujeres: Una publicación de ‘El divorcio en España.’ Together, both texts capture the historic debate on divorce in early 20th-century Spain, a key moment in the country’s very early feminist movement. The English translation makes the diversity of Spanish opinion on the matter available to non-Spanish speakers. Both volumes were published this August (paperback) and September (eBooks via Kindle, Nook, Apple) by the Modern Language Association (MLA) in the Texts and Translation Series. 

Below I’ll excerpt a bit of my introduction, which is directed at a general audience and undergraduate students who may have limited to no knowledge of Carmen de Burgos or the early women’s movement in Spain. I wrote it framing Carmen de Burgos as a sort of early 20th-century “influencer,” hence the title of the volumes.

Divorce in Spain is the result of one of her first initiatives as a columnist for the Diario Universal, one of Madrid’s most prestigious, liberal-leaning newspapers in the early twentieth century. This book-length publication, translated to English for the first time here, is the result of a survey that Burgos published in late 1903, calling for editorials reflecting her readers’ opinions on divorce. After receiving hundreds of responses, she compiled several from high profile individuals and published them together as Divorce in Spain in 1904. This early publication is unique in terms of Burgos’s literary output, as she did not write the full text herself, but rather compiled the writings of others, edited them into a cohesive volume, and added her own introduction and commentary. Divorce in Spain reflects the Spanish public’s opinions on the definition and purpose of divorce in Spain’s legal codes, but it also contains a contribution from Burgos herself, in which she argues in support of divorce reform. Her clever essay, “The Divorce of Nuns,” cheekily proposes that, if Catholic nuns could renounce their vows and divorce the most perfect of all “husbands” (Jesus Christ), then Spanish women should certainly be permitted to divorce their mortal, imperfect husbands. As a result of her brave initiative, Divorce in Spain prompted public debate on a contentious topic related to the early women’s movement and played a pivotal role in the eventual legalization of divorce in the 1930s, although this victory that was later rolled back during Franco’s dictatorship (1939-75).

Caption reads, “In 1982, Spain and Ireland were he only countries in the European Union where you could not get divorced.” Image via Canal Sur: Cuando el amor se acaba, 40 años de la ley del divorcio

[… After Burgos left her husband and their rural Almerian village, she] relocated to Madrid in August of 1901, established contact with the intellectual world, and developed professional relationships with some of Madrid’s top journals and newspapers. […] By 1903 she began publishing a regular column, “Readings for Women,” in the prestigious Diario Universal. It was the director of this newspaper who gave her the pseudonym “Colombine,” a playful namesake that she would retain throughout her career, not to hide her identity, but rather to appeal to working-class readers (Kirkpatrick 172). In a sense, we might say that Burgos took to early 20th-century Madrid and its far-reaching print media like 21st-century influencers take to Los Angeles or New York to deploy the power of their identities and brands through popular media like Instagram, YouTube, or TikTok. Her control over “Readings for Women” gave her access to a large audience of predominantly female readers. Her role as editor afforded her a degree of authority, while her knowledge, personal experiences, professional position, and carefully cultivated relationship with her audience granted her a uniquely modern influence over her readers’ opinions. As a writer and journalist, she frequented the most exclusive, male-dominated intellectual and avant-garde circles of her time, even establishing her own popular social-gathering (tertulia) in Madrid in 1906, “Colombine’s Wednesdays.” Like today’s influencers, Burgos aimed to engage her audience by publishing hot-button content that would raise awareness and prompt discussions on evolving social or cultural issues.

Image mine… (of course, my readers know I have amazing graphic deign skillz!)

This was the case with divorce, and Burgos in late 1903 began surveying her regular readers, or “followers,” and suggested that a “Club of Unhappily Married Couples” be formed in Madrid to study the Spanish divorce laws and present an argument for their reform in parliament. She immediately received letters supporting this endeavor, and the swift replies prompted her to launch a poll requesting the opinions of her readership and of Spain’s most eminent literary and political personalities. Among the most prominent intellectuals who responded were the novelist, poet, and philosopher Miguel de Unamuno; the novelist Pío Baroja; and early feminist novelist and essayist Emilia Pardo Bazán. As high-profile responses to her query continued to arrive over the following months, she selected contributions to publish weekly in the Diario Universal, then compiled them into a cohesive volume published as Divorce in Spain in 1904. This ongoing project on divorce was enormously popular and, not surprisingly, controversial. In publicizing and promoting debate on divorce, Burgos “manifested a lack of respect for and adherence to the Catholic Church, a cornerstone of middle-class Spanish women’s existence and the public expression of their moral character” (Bermúdez & Johnson 178). Consequently, she earned a new nickname, “the Divorcer,” which was pejoratively used to challenge her authority and mire her reputation. Today we might say that this hashtag-worthy moniker was deployed in a failed attempt to “cancel” her, or to discredit her arguments and stifle her ambitions.

Images via Wikimedia and the Biblioteca Nacional de España, BNE

You can read my full introduction to Divorce in Spain / El divorcio en España — covering Carmen de Burgos and her relationship to early Spanish feminism, as well as the status and definitions of divorce and separation in the Spanish legal codes — in either the English translation volume or the Spanish edition. They’re both available via the MLA bookstore below. You can also email me if you’d like a copy of the introduction, or access it via my Academia page.

The original Spanish version of El divorcio en España, published in 1904, is available online, open access in PDF format, via the Biblioteca Virtual Miguel de Cervantes.

Both volumes can be purchased from the MLA Bookstore. Members receive 30% off; and other readers can obtain a 20% discount with the code MLA20.

Geographies of Urban Female Labor and Nationhood in Spanish Culture (1880-1975) (review)

It’s been a LONG time since I wrote a new post, as the past three years have been unpredictable and anxiety-ridden, to put it mildly! I was able to take students to Spain again this summer (2022) which was so exciting… but also very busy and time-consuming, especially after being “out of practice” with international travel and study abroad since 2019! While it was a fantastic summer and felt like a return to normalcy in some ways, it also flew by and I arrived back from Spain to begin a new position this year as Interim Department Head. So… I will end this little intro here.

I’ve had an itch to get back to writing a few blog posts lately (hmm… wonder why?!), and I remembered that last year I wrote a full-length book review of Geographies of Urban Female Labor and Nationhood in Spanish Culture, written by Dr. Mar Soria, Associate Professor of Spanish at the University of Missouri. My review was published in Feministas Unidas in Spring 2022. So, like I’ve done before, I’ve adapted it to a blog-style summary with images, links, and some informal commentary… all the (fun?!) things I think about when writing academic book reviews, but can’t actually include. You can check out my other blog-post-style-academic-reviews here:

REVIEW: Soria, Mar. Geographies of Urban Female Labor and Nationhood in Spanish Culture, 1880-1975. U of Nebraska P, 2020. 334 pp.

Mar Soria’s Geographies of Urban Female Labor and Nationhood in Spanish Culture (1880-1975) offers an innovative examination of how working women in 19th- and 20th-century Spain experienced and interpreted urban spaces. This is the first academic monograph to examine female labor primarily within the realm of Spanish cultural production, including literary, cinematic, and performative texts. While previous studies on Spanish women’s entrance and increasing presence in the public labor economy have been grounded in historiography or sociology, Soria’s Geographies privileges representations of female labor in cultural artifacts, which are valued as sites through which power is negotiated (11). The diversity of literary and cultural texts analyzed – from 19th-century zarzuelas and realist narratives to 20th-century avant-garde novels, journalism, and film – is one of this book’s greatest strengths. In opposition to the dominant discourse celebrating the wholly domestic, middle-class ideal of the ángel del hogar, the urban working woman was undomesticated, public, and viewed suspiciously as (sexually) uncontrollable and hazardous to both Spanish womanhood and national identity (3-4). According to Soria, this urban working woman – a marginal Other or “deviant from the conventional ideal of femininity” – was either excluded from nation-building projects or, somewhat paradoxically, incorporated into them by way of a deliberate (re)fashioning of their identity as traditionally or authentically Spanish in the face of a threatening modernity (10).

The book’s six chapters chronologically explore literary and cultural representations of the “urban working woman.” Beginning in the late 19th century, Chapter 1, “The Castiza Working Woman: Regeneracionismo in Género Chico,” analyzes portrayals of female cigar factory workers, flower vendors, and cupletistas, or risqué song performers in three zarzuelas: Las cigarerras (1887), by Ángel Munilla and Luis Ferreiro; La suerte de Isabelita (1911), by María de la O Lejárraga (María [Gregorio] Martínez Sierra); and Los de Aragón (1927) by Juan José Lorente. In each performance piece, the idealized urban working-class woman is not only a “good patriot” who “defends the space she considers her nation from foreign incursions” (66), but she embodies an “authentic Spanishness” that is key to the zarzuelas’ middle-class nationalist project (37). Of note is Soria’s reading of las cigarreras – female workers in the cigar factories – whose patriotic reconfiguration in these fictional representations directly contradicts their historical lived experiences as politically active demonstrators who changed wage labor for women (38).

Female cigar workers in Sevilla, at the end of the 19th century. Image via Archivo EcuRed.

Reading this chapter – and given the painting that serves as the cover for Soria’s book (Las cigarerras by Gonzalez Bilbao Martínez, 1915, Sevilla) — I couldn’t help but recall the “Americans in Spain” exhibit from my visit the Milwaukee Museum of Art last summer (2021). Spanish cigarerras were a well-known figure outside the Tobacco Factories of Madrid’s and Sevilla’s modernizing urban landscapes. In fact, they served as artistic inspiration for foreign travelers to Spain, and especially for American painters like John Singer Sargent and Walter Gay in the late 19th-century. Like Walter Gay’s painting (below) of these women working in the cigarette factory — and even the Spaniard Bilbao Martínez’s, to some extent — foreign artists and writers viewed labor performed by the “charming and colorful” Spanish working classes “in the most picturesque terms, as preindustrial and romantic, the antithesis of factories and mass production in the rest of western Europe and the US” (75). The female cigarerras were the epitome of this, as outsiders exoticized both their femininity and “Spanishness”.

“Las cigarreras de Sevilla” / “Cigarette Girls, Seville” by Walter Gay (1895). Image mine from my visit to the “Americans in Spain” exhibit at the Milwaukee Museum of Art (summer 2021).

Chapter 2, “Homebound Workers: The Reconfiguration of Bourgeois Domestic Space in Realism,” centers on depictions of maids, arguing that servants’ labor blurred the boundaries between the public and private spheres and challenged the construction of the home as a site of leisure and passive domesticity. Reading Benito Pérez Galdós’s Tormento (1884) and two cuentos by Emilia Pardo Bazán, “Casi artista” and “El mundo” (1908), Soria reconfigures the home as a site of remunerated female labor and economic production. These homes become permeable spaces in which economic exchange and female labor intersect to undermine the separate spheres ideology dependent on hermetic domestic spaces free of capitalist transactions.

Moving to the twentieth century, Chapter 3, “Commodifying the Nation: The Story and the Shopgirl in Avant-Garde Literature,” examines working women exclusively outside the domestic sphere. This chapter juxtaposes shopgirls from two aesthetically and ideologically distinct novels: Carmen de Burgos’s La rampa (1917) and Ramón Gómez de la Serna’s La nardo (1930). Soria locates commonalities in these Madrid-based narratives that portray the downfall of a shopgirl-protagonist resulting from her desire to escape urban labor’s drudgery through consumerism and bodily pleasure. Soria’s reading of Burgos’s La rampa identifies inconsistencies, as the narrator condemns the bourgeoisie while maintaining class prejudices that denigrate female servants and weaken the novel’s feminist message (121-22). Both novels suggest a parallel degeneration of Spanish womanhood and Spanish national identity. As I have written several articles on La rampa, I’ll admit that I initially found Soria’s placement of the novel within Avant-garde literary trends to be somewhat misguided; but her analysis and framing ended up offering a convincing and innovative perspective. I recommended this chapter to one of my undergraduate students who was working on her Narrative Cartography for my fall 2020 Mapping Madrid seminar (she continued her project with funding in Spring 2021); I had just received my copy of this book in January of 2021. My undergraduate student (a senior at the time) reported that she enjoyed reading Soria’s analysis of La rampa in this chapter, as it gave her more insight into how she might interpret the spaces of the city dedicated to women’s work or leisure (or both). So as a first-hand report, this book and Soria’s writing style are very accessible to undergraduate students!

Chapter 4, “Working for Change during the Second Republic: A New Woman for the Nation in Conservative and Left-Wing Literature,” features narratives by historically overlooked women writers. The 1934 avant-garde novel Tea Rooms: Mujeres obreras, by communist Luisa Carnés, shares similarities with Burgos’s La rampa in denouncing the exploitation of working women. Stylistically, Soria emphasizes Carnés’s ability to capture the highly sensorial and fragmented nature of urban life through a “cinematic narration” (146-50), while also incorporating profane, working-class language that ruptures literary norms and traditional beliefs about women’s writing and behavior (152). Cristina Guzmán, profesora de idiomas is a 1935 romance novel-inspired tale by Carmen de Icaza, an upper-class, regional leader of the Sección Femenina. Although little has been written on female fascists who commented on class, Soria shows that they contributed greatly to the discourse of their day (157). Militant women in the Sección Femenina represent a fascinating paradox, as they “had to become active outside the domestic realm precisely so as to defend and save what was perceived as their natural habitat, the home, from the ills brought about by the Republican political reforms” (159). Despite Carnés’ and Icaza’s opposing perspectives, Soria argues that both present a similar new paradigm of Spanish womanhood: a self-assured, independent, modern worker “who feels at ease in the urban geography” (143). Highlighting this paradox called to mind the below video that I use in my literature courses when talking about women during the Franco era – the interviews with the women in the video are fascinating because they point to the sense of empowerment and purpose that they felt as a part of the Sección Femenina and the ideology it promoted. Students often anticipate that any reading of the Franco era will and must include women denouncing their submissive, powerless positions; but the reality is more complex, for better of worse, as the Sección Femenina was a powerful ideological machine that produced effective propaganda to mobilize generations of women to uphold the mission of the dictatorship and Spanish National Catholicism.

Chapter 5, “Back Home? Counterdiscourses of Female Labor and Nationhood in Postwar Women’s Short Fiction,” delves into the 1950 novella Yo he sido estraperlista by Ángeles Villarta, and two short stories by Carmen Martín Gaite, “La oficina” and “Los informes” (1954). Martín Gaite’s narratives critique the increasingly factory-like office, particularly for its hierarchical divisions and increasingly alienated labor that mirror the city’s processes as Spain’s capitalist center. Villarta’s Yo he sido estraperlista offers an intriguing critique of the black market, focusing on a common illegal female job after the war: selling and trading food. These narratives suggest that women were not only patriotic angels of the home, but many did in fact labor in traditionally male jobs (189) or even in the peripheral (underground) economy (190). Chapter 6 plays on the mid-century slogan of Spanish difference. “Spanish Women Are Different: Cinematic Anxieties of Female Work in Late Francoism” examines three cinematic features: Peppermint frappé (Carlos Saura, 1967); Las que tienen que servir (Jose María Forque, 1967); and Españolas en París (Roberto Bodegas, 1971). I enjoyed reading this chapter in particular because it introduced me to a wealth of new texts (films) that were completely new to me, as I do not specialize in cinema. In each of the 3 films, Soria argues that the female worker’s body becomes a battleground upon which the conflict of traditional Spanish values and foreign modernity is negotiated (212). Soria’s commentary on Españolas en Paris’s portrayal of abortion and motherhood (228-30) is especially insightful, and I was surprised that such themes were to be found in a Spanish film from 1971. The discussion in this chapter made me really want to watch the movie and, when I found a YouTube clip showing the beautiful Parisian city and the glorious aesthetic of late 60s/early 70s women’s fashion — not to mention the movie poster with my favorite: MAP ART — I was sold!

image via IMDB

Finally, the book closes with an Epilogue, “The Story is Not Over, which synthesizes the chapters’ themes and suggests a similar dynamics between female work, national identity, and the urban economy that has emerged steadily, and repeatedly, over the century covered by this study. Geographies is an exceptional blending of literary analysis and cultural studies that re-examines (often invisible) urban women’s labor and challenges the traditional gendering of city spaces. Soria’s writing style and her focus fiction and cultural productions makes Geographies accessible and appropriate for undergraduate or graduate literature or cultural studies seminars. In terms of limitations, readers must be careful not to conflate fictional representations with historical events or Spanish women’s actual lived experiences (see the Cigarreras photograph vs. paintings above). Soria is skilled, however, at contextualizing her analyses of cultural constructions such that they do not purport to reflect historical circumstances, but rather offer additional layers of context that will enrich readers’ understanding of the complexities of Spanish history and culture.

If you’re interested in more academic details and less YouTube videos, check out my full review over at Feministas Unidas, Inc and consider becoming a member of the organization, which seeks to create and sustain a national network of feminist scholars in the fields of Spanish, Spanish-American, Luso-Brazilian, Afro-Latin American, and U.S. Hispanic Studies. Every fall they publish a multidisciplinary journal, Ámbitos Feministas. Their objectives are to join together scholars and advocates to strengthen the intellectual environment in which they work through: exchange of ideas and information; cooperative research projects; organization of conferences; preparation and presentation of papers and panels; gathering and dissemination of bibliographical data; interchange of classroom materials and methodologies; assistance with publication; career counseling and mentoring; contacts with feminist scholars in Spain, Portugal, and Latin America; and other appropriate joint intellectual endeavors. Annual membership is affordable at only $15 for graduate students and instructors, $20 for Assistant professors, and $25 for Associate or Full Professors. You can even sponsor a graduate student membership for $15.

Resources:

Soria, Mar. Geographies of Urban Female Labor and Nationhood in Spanish Culture, 1880-1975. U of Nebraska P, 2020. 334 pp.

Americans in Spain (1820-1920): Traveling Women Artists and their Subjects

Typically some of my favorite things to blog about are trips to art museums and special exhibits that connect to my research and teaching interests on various topics related to Spanish history, culture, and literature. Taking in specially curated collections, checking out seasonal and temporary exhibitions, and even re-visiting canonical works that I’ve seen many times before always make me feel more enthusiastic and creative about designing my Spanish literature and culture courses. But since Covid has now cancelled my study abroad program to Spain for a second year in a row, visits to Madrid’s Prado Museum, Museo Sorolla, and Thyssen, or to Dali’s museum-homes in Catalonia, or even new (to me) local museums in places like Pontevedra, Galicia, have obviously been impossible… and thus the “generation of enthusiasm” for my teaching and course content development has been, to be honest, at a complete standstill this past year and a half. Given this stagnation or malaise or “languishing” (I’m not sure exactly what to call it), I was really excited to see that the Milwaukee Museum of Art was hosting a special traveling exhibit — “Americans in Spain, Painting and Travel (1820-1920)“ — that would coincide with my weekend trip to the city for a friend’s wedding celebration. This traveling exhibit was previously on display at the Chrysler Museum of Art in Norfolk, Virginia, and it will remain in in Milwaukee through October 3 of this year (2021).

American artists’ copies/studies of Diego Velázquez’s celebrated portrait of Queen Mariana de Austria (1652-53). Images mine, from visit to the Milwaukee Museum of Art.

The main goals of the exhibit are to showcase American art from the late 19th- and early 20th-centuries that was inspired by Spanish art, architecture, history, or culture. Many of the artists had visited, traveled through, or lived in Spain, often carefully studying and copying the works of great Spanish masters like Diego Velázquez and Bartolomé Esteban Murillo. Others were simply inspired by photographs of Spanish art and architecture, or by romantic narratives centered on the Iberian peninsula, like those of Washington Irving. According to the Director’s Foreword of the exhibition volume I purchased, “Although Spain is often overlooked as a creative European destination when compared to London or Paris, the firsthand experience of Spanish art and culture shaped – and even launched – careers, serving as continued inspiration for works created by in the United States” (9). Curiously, some of the main sources of inspiration were often the lower- or working-classes. Brandon Ruud’s chapter cites travelogues that celebrated “the most picturesque scenes” in these poorer or working class areas. Like Walter Gay’s painting of the women working in the cigarette factory (below), foreign artists and writers viewed labor performed by the “charming and colorful” Spanish working classes “in the most picturesque terms, as preindustrial and romantic, the antithesis of factories and mass production in the rest of western Europe and the US” (75).

“Las cigarreras de Sevilla” / “Cigarette Girls, Seville” by Walter Gay (1895). Image mine from visit to Milwaukee Museum of Art.

Amidst the impressive original works by Murillo, Sorolla, and Zuloaga, and some familiar pieces I’d seen before, but didn’t necessarily realize were by American artists like Walter Gay or John Singer Sargent, something else caught my attention relatively soon within the exhibit: several paintings by women artists who had traveled to Spain during this century (1820-1920). Women’s art stood out to me right away because, in general (and this is no secret!), women are vastly underrepresented in today’s museums. On a trip to the Kansas City’s Nelson Atkins Museum of art a few years ago, I remember waiting to post a piece of art for a #WomensHistoryMonth art thread on my twitter feed, and it took much, much longer than I had anticipated to find a painting by a woman — I ended up documenting two on that visit (but I admittedly did not spend much time in the contemporary rooms). And just this year, in fact, Madrid’s Prado has taken steps to increase the number of works created by women on display in its 19th-century rooms — from only ONE to 13 — on the heels of its successful and much discussed special exhibit “Invitadas,” or “Uninvited Guests,” which ran from October 2020-March 2021. So in the spirit of recognizing women’s artistic contributions, I thought I’d center this post on my Milwaukee visit to “Americans in Spain” on a few of the American women artists whom I “met” or learned more about as a result of this exhibit.

Mary Cassatt (1844-1926), Allegheny City, Pennsylvania

Mary Cassatt is actually one of the more well-known and celebrated of late 19th-century female painters, especially as a result of her friendship with Edgar Degas and the fact that her work was exhibited alongside famed French Impressionists of the late 1800s. Many of her paintings center on the private lives of women, or on mothers and their children, like the recognizable “Young Mother Sewing” (1900) and “Little Girl in a Blue Armchair” (1878). But it was her experience in Spain in the 1870s that marked a turning point in her young career, according to the “Americans in Spain” exhibit information. In the paintings she created in Spain, “she synthesized a modern approach to her subjects: she used straightforward and realist depictions of her figures, together with the bold and textured brushwork she had studied from old masters such as Velázquez. She achieved a breakthrough in style, which she developed back in Paris alongside the Impressionists” (from the description of “Offering the Panal to the Bullfighter“, 1873, which was part of the traveling exhibit). The painting below, “After the Bullfight,” is one of many produced from her studio in Seville, where local city residents modeled for her and she visited the bullfights to capture well-established Spanish archetypes, like matadors and flirtatious young women, “in moments of repose, far removed from the violence and spectacle of the ring”. A quick Google Image search of Cassatt and “Spain” or “Spanish” will bring up numerous examples of these beautiful portraits.

Mary Cassatt’s “After the Bullfight”, 1873. Image mine from visit to Milwaukee Museum of Art.

Elizabeth Boott (1846-88), Boston, Massachusetts

I had never heard of Elizabeth “Lizzie” Boott prior to this exhibit, and I was saddened to read about her life having been cut so short by pneumonia, only two years after the birth of her first child and just as she had been encouraging her husband (and former art teacher) to establish art classes for women in Florence. Fascinatingly/Disturbingly(?), it seems that Boott’s name is now most associated with the elaborate Gothic-Renaissance style funeral effigy commissioned by her husband, Frank Duveneck, upon her unexpected early death. I’m sure this falls within prime 19th-century romanticism, but today I find it a bit creepy when it’s one of the first things to come up when searching for information about this woman’s life! In any case, the below 1881 watercolor of the Alhambra is an example of Boott’s talents – painted when she was about 35 years old. According to the museum description, Boott traveled to Spain in 1881 with friends and fellow artists. In Granada she visited the Alhambra, and in her painting of the palace she “focused her attention on the details of the Nasrid architecture, the distinctive coffered ceilings, mocárabes (ornamented vaulting), and stucco carvings” as opposed to the more popular tourist sites of the courtyard and pools.

Image mine from visit to Milwaukee Museum of Art.

Mary Bradish Titcomb (1858-1927), Windham, New Hampshire

Mary Bradish Titcomb, who also displayed work as “M. Bradish Titcomb” to hide her female gender, was an American painter and art teacher who worked and resided predominantly in the Boston/New England region. Like Elizabeth Boott, she also traveled to Granada to visit the Alhambra palace… but about 25 years later, in 1906. The painting below captures an exterior view of the fortress, focusing on the parts of the structure dating to the 14th-century. In perusing other paintings by Bradish Titcomb, it seems she had a preference for impressionist-style landscapes and portraits of women, and she is often groups with American Impressionists. Her portraits of women share similarities to those of Mary Cassatt, in both the representation of women in relatively private spaces, and in their sketched, impressionist style… though it seems Bradish Titcomb has a bit more of a realist style and employs somewhat darker tones and shades of color. Two of my favorite portraits of women are “Lady in Lavender” and “Afternoon Tea“, and her 1927 landscape of “Marblehead Harbor” in Massachusetts is reminiscent of the lines and brush strokes typical of Van Gogh or Cezanne.

Mary Bradish Titcomb, “The Alhambra”, 1906. Image mine from visit to Milwaukee Museum of Art.

Carrie Lillian Hill (1875-1957), Birmingham, Alabama

This below painting of Segovia was the first one in the exhibit that I noticed had been painted by a woman. This landscape by Carrie Lillian Hill then prompted me to focus my attention on the inclusion or appearance of female artists for the remainder of the exhibit (I think I documented 6 in total, but I’m not 100% certain). According to the accompanying caption, Carrie Hill was an “intrepid tourist” who frequently traveled to Europe in the company of art instructors and students. Her first trip to Europe was in 1922, with her teacher and American Impressionist George Elmer Brown (see the timeline of her life here). She often “ventured to locations off the beaten path such as the Pyrenees and Balearic Islands.” She used her experience in Spain as a step towards learning to navigate and explore more unfamiliar cultures and locations, like North Africa, which she visited in 1927 on what would be her final trip to Europe. The colorful “Tunis Market” is certainly a product of this visit, and her other European landscapes can be viewed here. Back in the US, she was one of four Alabama artists and the only woman to receive assignments from the Public Works of Art Projects Division, and she completed two murals in Birmingham. Her 1937 “Mother Goose Mural” or “Storybook Mural” has been restored and is a celebrated feature of the East Lake Branch of the Birmingham Public Library.

Carrie Hill, “View of Segovia”, 1925. Image mine from visit to Milwaukee Museum of Art.

While I visited the “Americans in Spain” exhibit hoping for inspiration for my new Fall 2021 courses — two of which I have decided to center on art and/or the interplay of art and literature (more on those soon!) — I was pleasantly surprised to come away having learned more about these talented American women. I was particularly struck by their independent travels, or tourist trips with friends or an artist community, as opposed to travels with husbands or families (although some did travel in this traditional company). In terms of inspiration and ideas for my courses, I managed to get plenty of those too. First, the Milwaukee Museum offers a FREE APP for iPhone, designed by Marquette University (Dr. Eugenia Afinoguénova and Shiyu Tian) and funded by the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Henry Luce Foundation, and the Milwaukee Art Museum’s American Arts Society. This is a fantastic resource and I am planning to incorporate it into my Transatlantic Art course; I’ll likely have my students use it as a model for how to showcase a piece of art through the lens of a very specific theme, and for a general audience. Here is a screenshot featuring one of Mary Cassatt’s paintings:

The “Americans in Spain” app contains 36 paintings from the exhibit. Each includes a short English audio, Spanish audio, and an English blurb with relevant information, similar to what accompanies the paintings in the museum (under “more”). The work’s permanent location (museum or collection) is also included and mapped.

Second, the 220+ page volume that accompanies the exhibit contains well-researched original essays on topics ranging from “copying the masters”, the Spanish working classes in art, learning and teaching about Spain in the 1880s, and 19th-century travel books. Finally, the Museum offered short dual-language English/Spanish booklets — “Family Guide” / “La Guía para Familias” — at the entrance to the “Americans in Spain” exhibit. While these are designed for families and especially for younger children, the bilingual activities represent what I think might constitute a creative project for my Transatlantic Art course. I’m still toying with this idea, especially in light of increasing concerns over Covid and the Delta variant that might once again throw our academic semester into chaos… but I’m optimistic that it might work. Below are a few pictures I took of the dual-language booklet and its activities; as you can see, though directed towards younger children, the creation of these types of activities would lend itself nicely to improving and refining students’ L2 language skills. Activity design requires the selection of very specific, descriptive vocabulary (colors, family, cultural content), the use of commands, and the organization of mini-narratives based on common artistic, cultural, or historical themes. If you follow my blog, you know I love non-traditional assessments that incorporate visuals like maps or social media… so as I design this class and as the semester progresses, I’ll make sure to post about any experiments.

Images from the Milwaukee Art Museum’s dual-language “Family Guide” to “Americans in Spain”.

RESOURCES

FREE App: “Americans in Spain”, via the Apple App Store. Milwaukee Art Museum.

Portus, Javier, et al. The Spanish Portrait: From El Greco to Picasso. Scala Arts Publishers, Museo del Prado, 2006.

Ruud, Brandon. “‘The Most Picturesque Scenes Abound in the Lower Quarters.’ American Art and Spanish Labor”. In Americans in Spain. Painting and Travel, 1820-1920. Yale U P, 2021. pp. 75-97.

Ruud, Brandon and Corey Piper, eds. Americans in Spain. Painting and Travel, 1820-1920. Yale U P, 2021.

An American NOT in Spain #Covid