Science, Politics, and Aesthetics: Privileged Discourses in the Americas, 1840-1880

FAIN: FA-55043-10

Nina Gerassi-Navarro
Tufts University (Somerville, MA 02144-2401)

This book examines the political and cultural relations between the United States and Latin America, from 1840 to 1880. Focusing on three travel narratives written by women, I analyze the scientific, political, and aesthetic discourses that circulated in the Americas, specifically among the United States and Mexico, Brazil and Argentina. I read the travel narratives by Frances Calderon de la Barca, Elizabeth Cary Agassiz, and Eduarda Mansilla for their multilayered perspectives that reflect how ideas and debates, imported from the United States, were reformulated within each national context. Each writer is linked to a public intellectual with whom she had a personal relationship and an intellectual affinity. Through this relationship I flesh out and analyze the politics and cultural values in their narratives, generally overlooked, that insert their work within broader intellectual dialogues of the public sphere.