Work Publications
Governadoras: Women Administrators, Gender, and Colonization in Sixteenth-Century Portuguese America
Jessica O'Leary
2024
In sixteenth-century Brazil, several European women governed the captaincies of their late or absent husbands during the first century of Portuguese colonization. A contextual and lexical analysis of the male-authored sources reveals that these women acted decisively to protect and expand familial patrimonies and, in doing so, were part of the colonizing movement. Although extensive written evidence survives that attests to their authority and agency over colonial affairs, their importance has been overlooked in the scholarship. Therefore, this essay argues that a small group of elite European women became imperial agents who wielded power against colonial subjects in select circumstances.
Making Women Sinners: Guilt and Repentance of Converted Japanese Women in the Application of Alagona’s Compendium Manualis Navarri in Japan (16th Century)
Luisa Stella Coutinho
2024
According to Christianity, all men and women commit sins. Therefore, guilt and repentance form a fundamental question for this religion. However, women are believed to be much more inclined to sin than men, with some sins intrinsically connected to their gender. This chapter analyses the instructions for sinful women in Pietro Alagona’s Compendium of Martín de Azpilcueta’s Manual, printed in 1597 in Japan by the Jesuit Mission Press. It focuses on the model of confession and the pragmatic application of penances influenced by such a book for the converted Japanese women, who had existing religious beliefs before converting to Christianity. In order to understand how missionaries introduced, made sense of, and culturally translated the idea of sin and guilt, this chapter compares those concepts with the ideas and normativities about women in Buddhism using cases of women who were adepts of the True Pure Land Buddhism (or the Jōdo Shinshū sect) before converting to Christianity. In doing so, it focuses on a global perspective concerning how the knowledge of this pragmatic book travelled throughout the world and influenced normative practices, laying the foundation for a methodological approach I have named Women’s Global Legal History.
Tracking colonial women in the Latin-American archives: challenges, lawsuits, and flavors
Vanessa Massuchetto
2023
Why are people so sure that women are not in the archives?
This question serves as a starting point for a reflection on archival institutions and the challenges of uncovering women’s traces and voices within their collections. Drawing from my experience, the archival research provided me different flavors and at least one undeniable truth: women are always present in the sources, even in periods when efforts were made to silence them.
The Uprooting of Indigenous Women’s Horticultural Practices in Brazil, 1500–1650
Jessica O'Leary
2023
In the land now known as Brazil, Indigenous women were responsible for cultivating and preparing a tuberous root called mandioca (cassava). Following the arrival of Europeans in 1500, mandioca replaced wheat bread to become the staple carbohydrate in settlers’ diets. Travellers’ accounts between 1500 and 1550 describe how Indigenous women taught settlers to prepare the tubers for consumption through the use of special tools and processes of soaking, drying and pulverizing. However, with the arrival of the Jesuits, European sources began to elide or problematize knowledge among Indigenous women that did not cohere with Christian normative values. By the mid seventeenth century, naturalists were no longer acknowledging the original female informants who had taught Europeans how to identify and cultivate the plant. In line with recent scholarship on the history of science and medicine in colonial contexts, a close reading of the sources reflects the importance of Indigenous knowledges to imperial expansion, on the one hand, and the interactive nature of cross-cultural knowledge sharing that became hidden by early modern European epistemological practices. Drawing on a broad body of colonial documentation, this article examines how European representations of the cultivation of mandioca identified, exploited, assimilated, suppressed and, finally, alienated Indigenous women’s knowledges from their original holders between 1500 and 1650.
Women, Normativities, and Scandal: The Crime of Concubinage through Conviviality Lenses in Southern Portuguese America in the Late 18th Century
Vanessa Massuchetto
2023
This paper seeks to understand colonial women’s agencies, experiences, and convivialities through the crime of concubinage, bearing conflicts against the moral order taken to the ecclesiastical jurisdiction for trial in the late 18th century. The aim is to use the concept of convivialities to discover the normativities that permeated the cases, paying special attention to the social impacts expressed (and not expressed) in the narratives, and the institutional treatment given by the judicial administration apparatus. This paper draws on archival research to analyse several cases from 18th-century Brazil in light of the royal justice system, ecclesiastical constitutions, and canon law regarding the relation between legal and social norms and violations of them. I argue that scandal turns out to be a vital social-legal category for Portuguese America in the modern period for understanding convivialities in terms of social, legal, and moral notions about honesty.
“Como se de legítimo matrimónio nascida fora”: A Construção da filiação no Império português a partir da legitimação de uma filha sacrílega na capitania da Paraíba
Luisa Stella Coutinho
2022
No império português, a filiação era classificada em legítima e ilegítima. Para sanar os defeitos de nascença dos filhos ilegítimos, para que pudessem tornar-se herdeiros, os pais podiam solicitar ao rei a legitimação desses filhos. No Brasil colonial, tal procedimento envolvia diversas instituições na colônia e em Portugal: era iniciado através de uma escritura feita em tabelião; continuava no Conselho Ultramarino, de onde seguia para Portugal; até chegar às mãos do rei através do Desembargo do Paço, onde, por fim, a graça da legitimação era concedida ou não. Esse procedimento permite levantar questionamentos sobre a interpretação de institutos jurídicos específicos, como o casamento, o concubinato, o exercício da paternidade e da maternidade. Ele também possibilita análises sobre como as famílias eram constituídas e, especificamente, como a filiação e seus estados podem ser compreendidos num império de repercussões globais. Neste artigo, analisaremos essas peculiaridades utilizando fontes do direito de várias jurisdições e um caso prático, o pedido de legitimação da filha do padre Manuel de Oliveira Garrido, iniciado na capitania da Paraíba em 1778. A partir desse caso, defenderemos que a história do direito no contexto da expansão ultramarina deve ser compreendida a partir da análise conjunta de normas e prática.
Nem teúdas, nem manteúdas: História das Mulheres e Direito na capitania da Paraíba (Brasil, 1661−1822)
Luisa Stella Coutinho
2020
This book develops a legal history of colonial women as a methodological approach to studying the women of Paraíba, a captaincy on the northeast coast of Brazil, from the end of the Dutch occupation (1661) to Brazilian independence in 1822. It uses the concept of multiple normativities to analyse dozens of daily life cases from Portuguese and Brazilian archives.
“O levar da “honra e virgindade”: relações de gênero e cultura jurídica criminal setecentista a partir de casos de estupro (Curitiba, 1771-1783)
Vanessa Massuchetto
2021
Este artigo trata de dois casos de estupro ocorridos na vila de Curitiba, processados pelo juízo ordinário e pela ouvidoria de Paranaguá na segunda metade do século XVIII. O objetivo principal é lançar luzes sobre as trajetórias femininas, as estratégias sociais e a cultura jurídica criminal local.
