Catalina de Erauso - The Lesbian Historic Motif Podcast Episode 12

Catalina de Erauso

The Lesbian Historic Motif Podcast - Episode 12 with Heather Rose Jones

This is a brief tour through the life of an early 17th century Basque woman (or possibly trans man--though it’s tricky to use any sort of modern category label) who escaped from a convent at age 15, began living as a man, and went off to the Spanish colonies in the New World to seek fortune and adventure. She found plenty of adventure.

In this episode we talk about:

• The basic facts of Catalina’s life
• Why it’s difficult to try to apply modern categories of gender and sexuality to historic individuals
• The literary and pop culture context of early 17th century Spain that may have shaped how Catalina’s story was told--and even perhaps inspired her actions
• Catalina’s romantic and erotic encounters with women, and why they’re a bit less satisfying to a modern audience than we might wish
• Some exciting new changes to the Lesbian Historic Motif Podcast

Books mentioned

• The full text of Catalina de Erauso’s autobiography can be found in translation in:
  • Stepto, Michele & Gabriel Stepto (translators). 1996. Catalina de Erauso. Lieutenant Nun -- Memoir of a Basque Transvestite in the New World. Boston: Beacon Press. ISBN 0-8070-7073-4
• The other major sources used for this podcast are:
  • Velasco, Sherry. 2000. The Lieutenant Nun: Transgenderism, Lesbian Desire and Catalina de Erauso. University of Texas Press. ISBN 0-292-78746-4
  • Velasco, Sherry. 2011. Lesbians in Early Modern Spain. Vanderbilt University Press, Nashville. ISBN 978-0-8265-1750-0

This topic is discussed in one or more entries of the Lesbian Historic Motif Project here:

• Catalina de Erauso

A transcript of this podcast is available here.

Links to the Lesbian Historic Motif Project Online

• Website: http://alpennia.com/lhmp
• Blog: http://alpennia.com/blog
• RSS: http://alpennia.com/blog/feed/
• Twitter: @LesbianMotif
• Discord: Contact Heather for an invitation to the Alpennia/LHMP Discord server
• The Lesbian Historic Motif Project Patreon

Links to Heather Online

• Website: http://alpennia.com
• Email: Heather Rose Jones
• Twitter: @heatherosejones
• Facebook: Heather Rose Jones (author page)