Description:
An interdisciplinary exploration of white appropriations of black African voices in Spanish theater from the 1500s through the 1700s.
Brief description: Nicholas R. Jones is Assistant Professor of Spanish at Bucknell University.
Review Quotes:
"A crucial intervention in discussions about black Africans in Renaissance Europe. Focusing specifically on early modern Spain, Jones offers insightful and nuanced readings of the ways in which (mostly) white Spanish writers appropriated black speech in staged performances and poetry, arguing that such appropriations actually encode black African agency. Importantly, he decenters the author and asks readers to approach these literary forms from the margin to understand how forces beyond the author influence text formation. Jones's careful, against-the-grain readings open up to readers new archives (and re-present familiar ones from fresh, intriguing perspectives) for the study of black cultural experiences in the Renaissance era."
--Cassander L. Smith, author of Black Africans in the British Imagination: English Narratives of the Early Atlantic World