Zeb Tortorici, "Sins Against Nature: Sex and Archives in Colonial New Spain" (Duke UP, 2018)
b'In Sins Against Nature: Sex and Archives in Colonial New Spain (Duke University Press, 2018), Zeb Tortorici analyzes a vast corpus of documents in order to understand how sex acts that were considered out of the norm were understood for over three centuries of Spanish control. Men and women often engaged in \\u2018unnatural\\u2019 sexual acts that not only revealed the relations of power in colonial society, but also the close interaction that archivists and historians have had with their stories. Sodomy, bestiality, priests soliciting during confession, as well as masturbation induced by erotic fantasies with saints and other religious characters, all disclose the role that religious and ecclesiastical institutions, archives, and historical analysis have had in erasing subjects, misclassifying them, or openly discounting their importance. Tortorici\\u2019s analysis proves that in order to reconstruct the past it is central to understand how documents were kept and categorized.\\nPamela Fuentes is Assistant Professor in the Women\\u2019s and Gender Studies Department-NYC campus.\\nLearn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices\\nSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/law'