La Monja Alférez: sexual transgression and social icon
R. Ibáñez Martínl

SUMMARY

This article discusses the case of Catalina de Erauso/la Monja Alférez Erauso, a Spanish born woman from the sixteenth century, who decided to take men´s garb and travel as a lietunant to the New World. The article will discuss the roles, expectations and articulations of the concepts of gender, desire, and sexuality through the accounts that Erauso left us in his/her biography, as well as through the power institutions that eventually dealt with his/her gender transgression. In addition, the article will engage not only in a discussion of the production of knowledge about sex, gender, and sexuality in sixteenth century Spain, but also on the technologies and cientific discourses that played a fundamental role in the construction and identification of gender/ sexual difference on the body.

KEY WORDS

Sexuality, Early Modern History, gender identity.