A01=Adriana Novoa
Author_Adriana Novoa
Category=JBSF2
Category=NHK
Category=PDX
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eq_history
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eq_isMigrated=2
eq_nobargain
eq_non-fiction
eq_science
eq_society-politics
History of Argentina
History of Latin America
History of Medicine
History of Science
LASA
Latin American History
masculinity in Argentina
Modernity in Argentina
Pitt Latin American Series
South American history
sterility
University of Pittsburgh Press
Product details
- ISBN 9780822967774
- Dimensions: 152 x 229mm
- Publication Date: 02 Dec 2025
- Publisher: University of Pittsburgh Press
- Publication City/Country: US
- Product Form: Paperback
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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.
Adriana Novoa is a cultural historian who specializes in science in Latin America. She is coauthor, with Alex Levine, of two books about Darwinism in Argentina: From Man to Ape: Darwinism in Argentina, 1870–1920 and ¡Darwinistas! The Construction of Evolutionary Thought in Nineteenth-Century Argentina.
