Alejandra B Osorio - Wellesley College
About
Press
Papers
We're Hiring!
Alejandra B Osorio
Wellesley College
History
Faculty Member
Followers
259,451
Following
228
Co-authors
Public Views
Alejandra B. Osorio is working on a manuscript tentatively titled "The First Modern: Baroque Modernity in the Spanish Hapsburg World, ca. 1519-ca.1700." It examines the role played by the king's figure and body in the establishment and consolidation of a political culture in various cities in Europe, America and Asia that made ruling and imagining this vast empire possible. She teaches courses in Spanish American history, gender and feminist theory, urban history, and comparative empires. She is the author of Inventing Lima. Baroque Modernity in Peru's South Sea Metropolis (2008).
Phone:
781-283-2914
History Department
Wellesley College
106 Central Street
Wellesley, MA 02481
less
Related Authors
Verònica Zaragoza Gómez
Universitat de València
Valeria Manfrè
Universidad Complutense de Madrid
ESTHER ALEGRE CARVAJAL
Emma Luisa Cahill Marrón
Universidad de Murcia
Noelia Lorenta Monzón
Universidad Complutense de Madrid
Ángel Peña Martín
Felipe Vidales
Universidad Complutense de Madrid
Miguel García-Bermejo Giner
University of Salamanca
Cesar Javier Benito Conde
University of the Basque Country EHU/UPV
Jose Chaurri
Interests
View All (17)
Uploads
all
Books
25
Chapters and Articles
Book Reviews
More
Conference Presentations
Talks
16
Papers
Teaching Documents
Books by Alejandra B Osorio
Inventing Lima: Baroque Modernity in Peru's South Sea Metropolis
Chapters and Articles by Alejandra B Osorio
«De Casas de Pizarro a Casas Reales. Transformación de un palacio de conquista en la casa del Rey de las Españas en la Ciudad de los Reyes, Lima».
l Palazzo Reale di Napoli nel contesto globale. Le residenze dei viceré e dei governatori nel sistema della monarchia ispanica, ed. Bianca de Divitiis (Quaderni di Palazzo Reale, 4). Naples, Editori Paparo, pp. 22-26.
, 2024
Le residenze dei viceré e dei governatori nel sistema della monarchia ispanica a cura di Bianca d...
more
Le residenze dei viceré e dei governatori nel sistema della monarchia ispanica a cura di Bianca de Divitiis
Ser Noble O Vivir A La Manera Noble. Las distintas noblezas del virreinato del Perú
Las noblezas de la monarquía de España (1556-1725)
, 2024
VIRREINAS Y MUJERES NOBLES / VICEREINES AND NOBLE WOMEN IN THE POLITICAL CULTURE OF THE SPANISH HABSBURG. AN INFORMAL AND ANCILLARY POWER?
Espacio, tiempo y forma
, 2023
Generalmente se acepta que las cortes virreinales funcionaban como extensiones o «espejos» de la ...
more
Generalmente se acepta que las cortes virreinales funcionaban como extensiones o «espejos» de la corte real de Madrid, y que, en teoría, aunque no siempre en la práctica, el virrey era el alter ego del rey. También se ha sugerido que la virreina se entendía como un reflejo de la reina, constituyendo el centro de un sistema cultural y religioso autónomo con poderes auxiliares o secundarios a los del virrey. Las cortes virreinales, por lo tanto, se estudian principalmente como espacios de poder político masculino. El análisis de la participación de las virreinas y de las mujeres nobles en la cultural política de los Austrias españoles desafía nociones de su poder cómo informal y secundario 2 .
Cities, Saints, Rome, and Religious Authority in the New World Spanish Empire
Archiv für Religionsgeschichte 25
, 2023
From their very foundations religion was intrinsic to the shape and composition of Spanish Americ...
more
From their very foundations religion was intrinsic to the shape and composition of Spanish American cities. These urban spaces were politically constituted through new governing techniques and exercise of monarchical rule articulated in elaborate ceremonial regimes organized around the figure of the Spanish king and Catholic religious rituals. In the sixteenth century the piety of the monarch constituted the foundation of good government, and piety and Christian virtues were the foundations of sovereign rule (Coreth 2004, 1). The defeat by the Trastámaran dynasty of the Caliphate of Granada in 1492, and the election of Charles I king of Spain as Holy Roman Emperor in 1519, made imagining a universal Christian empire possible. Seen as the direct successor of the Roman emperors of antiquity, the Holy Roman Emperor, as the counterpart of the pope in Rome, held an authority superior to all other monarchs, akin to a king of kings. As king of Spain, in 1516 Charles I inherited the New World kingdoms, and with his election in 1519 as Holy Roman Emperor Charles V became the first Habsburg to rule the world, allowing not only to envision a truly unified world by Catholicism, but also his dynasty as true Lords of All the World (Rady 2020, 63-74; Pagden 1995, 11-62; Yates 1975, 25-27).¹ The Royal Patronage of the New World Church, which in 1501 Pope Alexander VI granted to the Spanish monarchy, with rights to the Church tithes from the Indies to finance their evangelization, further reinforced the idea of a unified world in Catholicism under the dominion of the Spanish Habsburg monarch.² With the discovery of the New World (ca. 1492) and the conquest of the Aztec empire (ca. 1519), the conversion to Catholicism of the inhabitants of the new continent became a paramount objective of the Spanish Habsburg monarchy. Through most of the sixteenth century, the organization of the New World Church and the conversion of its indigenous populations was carried out by mendicant orders (Melvin 2012). These conversions were achieved through education of Catholic principles and dogma imparted in the missions and Indian towns (reducciones) where indigenous peoples were relocated to facilitate their Christian faith instruction. Catholic teachings also included music, in some cases Latin, and other arts, as well as continuous participation 1 See Tanner 2018 and 1993. 2 In 1508, Pope Julius II in the bull Universalis ecclesiae, granted Ferdinand and Isabella and their successors the right to propose to Rome candidates from archbishops downward for churches in the Indies. This also gave rights to the monarchy to oversee the building and endowment of cathedrals, churches, monasteries, and hospitals, which were all financed by the tithes collected in the American possessions. In 1538 with the Bull Sublime Deus, the crown further claimed the rights to inspection, with veto power, over all papal dispatches to the Indies. After the creation in 1524 of the Royal Council of the Indies, the running of the Royal Patronage fell under its jurisdiction.
No) "solo Madrid es Corte?": the head that governs an empire of Courts
Culture and History
, 2022
In his Libro Histórico Político, Solo Madrid es Corte (1658), the royal chronicler Alonso Núñez d...
more
In his Libro Histórico Político, Solo Madrid es Corte (1658), the royal chronicler Alonso Núñez de Castro, de ned Court as the head that governs; where reason and the king (as head of his kingdoms) his councilors, vassals, and other important men reside. Núñez, emphasized Madrid's population, listed its councils and described their functions, in detail explained the etiquette observed around the King' body, and included the hierarchy of all his kingdoms and provinces in the Spanish Habsburg empire, offering detailed accounts of their nances and contributions to the royal treasure. The work, in fact, established the imperial space (and geography) of the larger Spanish Habsburg political body, with Madrid as its courtly and political-cultural head. In its structure and arguments, Núñez's work followed principles established at the end of the 16 th century by Giovanni Botero as characteristic of a great city and in works describing the greatness of Lima and of the city of Mexico. A comparison of Madrid with other courtly cities of the Spanish Habsburg Empire helps elucidate reasons for its low pro le as referent in the documentation of the New World, despite its place after 1561, as the political-administrative head of the empire.
format_quote
Balbuena's poem portrays Mexico as the 'noblest and richest city of new America,' serving as a major commercial hub and cultural connector.
format_quote
Del género como categoría de análisis a la historia de las mujeres: una consideración historiográfica desde el feminismo
El mundo cultural y artístico de las mujeres en la Edad Moderna (s. XVI), Esther Alegre Carvajal (editor)
, 2021
Del género como categoría de análisis a la historia de las mujeres: una consideración historiográfica desde el feminismo
El mundo cultural y artistico de las mujeres en la edad moderna (s. XVI), Esther Alegre Carvajal (ed.)
, 2021
CEREMONIAL Y PROYECCIÓN DEL PODER MONÁRQUICO EN EL IMPERIO DE LOS AUSTRIAS ESPAÑOLES EN TIEMPOS DE FELIPE III
Apariencia y razón. Las artes y la arquitectura en el reinado de Felipe III
, 2020
The copy as original: the presence of the absent Spanish Habsburg king and colonial hybridity
Renaissance Studies
, 2019
The political culture that defined the Spanish empire was made up of elements that, borrowing fro...
more
The political culture that defined the Spanish empire was made up of elements that, borrowing from their different points of contact, travelled the world‐around being transformed in the process into a mixed style that defied a clear origin (or original). This political culture was based on sixteenth‐ and seventeenth‐century understandings of the copy as an original that not only made possible the dissemination in the empire of the figure and powers of the absent king by making him ‘present’, but also produced common understandings of his figure, powers, and genesis of the empire. By examining ceremonial deployments of royal simulacra in various cities of the vast Spanish monarchy, and coeval understandings of the copy, this article, argues that the cultural production of this empire cannot be best understood within ahistorical centre‐periphery frameworks of cultural production and/or as derivative colonial phenomena, as do notions of cultural hybridity and of ‘colonial’ art.
Of National Boundaries and Imperial Geographies. A New Radical History of the Spanish Habsburg Empire
Radical History Review
, Jan 2018
National geographies (and narratives) have characterized the boundaries of the his- toriographies...
more
National geographies (and narratives) have characterized the boundaries of the his- toriographies of the sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Spanish Empire, producing works that are too often limited to case studies of nation-states (Spain, Italy, Peru, Mexico, etc.). Atlantic studies proposed an alternative to national frameworks for the writing of history that created new (anachronistic) frontiers for the study of empire. The notion of colonial and understandings of the geopolitics of modernity as one of centers and peripheries further obscured the wider workings of the Spanish Empire. Through an analysis of the political culture in various locales of the Spanish Habsburg world, this article proposes new approaches for thinking and writing such histories of empire while reflecting on the limits that the analytical and conceptual frameworks of colonial Latin American and Atlantic history pose for the study of a vast empire with possessions well beyond these geographical locations that was yet to become colonial.
Courtly Ceremonies and a Cultural Urban Geography of Power in the Habsburg Spanish Empire
, 2017
The public celebrations that are devoted to the prince resemble political sacrifices of the Majes...
more
The public celebrations that are devoted to the prince resemble political sacrifices of the Majesty whose temples are plazas and theaters. They are celebratory manifestos when the people authenticate their fidelity through joy, and to the prince is given the praise of sovereignty . . . Beloved [is] what pleases; printed [is] what is repeated; and, thus, the name of the monarch [is] pleasantly repeated, and his triumph harmoniously celebrated, in a wonderful feast of theater. 1
"El imperio de los Austrias españoles y el Atlántico: Propuesta para una nueva historia"
Fronteras. Procesos y prácticas de integración y conflictos entre Europa y América (Siglos XVI-XX) Favarò, Valentina, Manfredi Merluzzi y Gaetano Sabatini 9788437507361 FONDO DE CULTURA ECONÓMICA (FCE)
, 2017
The Ceremonial King: Kingly rituals and Imperial power in seventeenth-century New World cities.
Festival Culture in the World of the Spanish Habsburg. Edited by Fernando Checa and Laura Fernández-González. Forward by Teófilo F. Ruiz.
La entrada del Virrey y el ejercicio del poder en Lima del siglo XVII.
De todas las solemnidades observadas en América, la entrada pública del virrey es la más espléndi...
more
De todas las solemnidades observadas en América, la entrada pública del virrey es la más espléndida y aquella en la que más se exhibe la impresionante pompa de Lima. No se ven sino ricos carruajes y calesas, encajes, joyas y equipajes espléndidos, con los que la nobleza eleva su emulación hasta perfiles asombrosos. Esta ceremonia es tan extraordinaria que me complace pensar que el lector disfrutará su descripción. 2 E l 30 de noviembre, día de san Andrés, de 1569, el virrey Francisco de Toledo hizo su entrada oficial en Lima. El quinto virrey del Perú había llegado al puerto 770 ALEJANDRA OSORIO 8 BNM, Yndias de Birreyes, "Capitulo undecimo de la entrada del Virrey en esta çibdad de los Reies".
The King in Lima: Simulacra, Ritual, and Rule in Seventeenth-Century Peru.
Wilson for their comments and suggestions. I also thank Stuart B. Schwartz, Barbara Weinstein, an...
more
Wilson for their comments and suggestions. I also thank Stuart B. Schwartz, Barbara Weinstein, and the anonymous reviewers at HAHR.
El Rey en Lima: Simulacro y ejercicio del poder en la Lima del diecisiete.
Serie Minima.
, 2004
El rey en Lima, simulacro real y el ejercicio del poder en la Lima del diecisiete.
Las representaciones del poder en las sociedades hispánicas. Edited by Óscar Mazín.
, 2012
La presencia del rey ausente: Simulacro real y gobierno imperial en la Lima de los Austrias.
Tradición y Modernidad en la historia de la cultura política: España e Hispanoamérica, siglos XVI-XX. Edited by Ricardo Forte and Natalia Silva Prada.
, 2009
El rey ausente: Poder imperial y simulacro real en la Ciudad de los Reyes, Lima.
La sociedad monárquica en la América hispánica. Edited by Magali Carrillo and Isidoro Venegas.
, 2009
or
or
reset password
Need an account?
Click here to sign up
About
Press
Papers
Topics
Academia.edu Journals
work
We're Hiring!
help
Find new research papers in:
Physics
Chemistry
Biology
Health Sciences
Ecology
Earth Sciences
Cognitive Science
Mathematics
Computer Science
Content Policy
Academia ©2026