From Virile to Sterile - (Sci & Culture in the Nineteenth Century) by Adriana Novoa (Hardcover)

About the Book

Explores the Complex Gendering of Science, Modernity, and Civilization in Nineteenth-Century Argentina

Book Synopsis

As rigorous scientific and philosophical discourse circulated during the Enlightenment, aided by the Republic of Letters, a revolutionary understanding of gender emerged that would impact nation building in Europe and the Americas. In From Virile to Sterile, Adriana Novoa analyzes the cosmopolitan citizens of this metaphysical republic--an international community of scholars and literary figures--and the first universal modern male identity it established. By the end of the eighteenth century, she reveals, man's role in society had fundamentally changed. This "man of letters" possessed a masculinity that was learned and shared―different from the warrior model of the past. The modern man represented a new notion of patriotism linked to knowledge and institutions that promoted intellectual dynamism, change, and self-transformation. For a conservativism that despised radical liberalism and its science, this new masculinity was degenerate and villainous, a sign of extinction and sterility. The virile man was stable and unchanging, his authority rooted in continuity and stability. Novoa explores this complex gendering of science, modernity, and civilization in Argentina during the nineteenth century, and how a universal characterization of masculinity shaped the politics of the River Plate Viceroyalty and later the creation of the Argentine Republic.

About the Author

Adriana Novoa received her BA in History from the University of Buenos Aires, Argentina. She completed her MA and PhD in Latin American History at the University of California, San Diego. She is a cultural historian whose specialty is science in Latin America, and with Alex Levine she has written two books about Darwinism in Argentina: From Man to Ape: Darwinism in Argentina, 1870 1920 (University of Chicago Press) and ¡Darwinistas! The Construction of Evolutionary Thought in Nineteenth-Century Argentina (Brill). Her focus of her research is in politics of evolutionism and its relationship to gender and raceDr. Novoa's articles have been published in Journal of Latin American Studies, Science in Context, The Latinoamericanist, Cuban Studies, and Revista Hispánica Moderna, among others.