Former Kellogg Doctoral Affiliate Paola Uparela (PhD 2019) recently authored the book Invaginociones coloniales, Mirada, genitalidad y (de)generación en la Modernidad temprana based on her dissertation.
The book examines cases in which the anatomical and medical exploration of female genitals was articulated with colonial debates and projects of exploitation, wealth production, population multiplication, and regulation of difference. To do so it looks at the imagining and subordination of bodily and geographical territories through the study of representations and inspections of female bodies during the 15th and 17th century, specifically focused on the American colonial period and the dawn of Spanish Modernity. The book ultimately uses the presented research to propose a genealogy of the discursive and visual production of sexual organs in ethnographic, legal, political, and inquisitorial contexts.
Uparela holds a PhD and MA in Latin American and Iberian Studies from the University of Notre Dame and a BA in literature from the Universidad de los Andes, Columbia. Her work is focused on the intersection of colonial and gender studies and biopolitics in Early-Modern and Modern Latin America and Spain.