Culture
Bhakti Poets: Poem, Bahinabai
Bhakti poets—who were in some cases lower-caste Hindu women—and their audiences drew emotional sustenance from these verses, which expressed a pure devotion to Hindu deities.
The Scouts' War Dance: Sir Robert Baden Powell's adaptation of a Zulu chant
Like much of the public in turn-of-the-century Britain, Baden Powell was fascinated by "primitive" cultures. Although he claimed an expert knowledge of Africa from his service in colonial wars, Baden Powell was hardly an authority on Zulu customs.
Mapping Margery Kempe: A Guide to Late Medieval Material and Spiritual Life
This website is a collection of resources, particularly strong in visual content, that examines the social context in which Kempe produced her narrative.
Imperialism in North Africa: Autobiography, Leila Abouzeid
In Morocco, after 1912, the colonial regime eschewed, for the most part, introducing overt changes into Islamic personal status law.
Imperialism in North Africa: Personal Account, Captain Carette
To the east of Algiers is a rugged mountainous region, the Kabylia, whose loftiest peak is named after a holy woman, Lalla Khadija.
Dona Marina, Cortes’ Translator: Poem, La Malinche
A well-known Chicana poem about Malinche. Tafolla took inspiration from the famous 1967 poem of the Chicano movement, “Yo Soy Joaquín,” but rewrites from an explicitly feminist perspective.
Dona Marina, Cortes’ Translator: Poem, Como Duele, 1993, Women in World History
One of the earliest meditations on Malinche and her meaning published by a Chicana in the United States. This narrative explores Malinche’s fate and her abilities to negotiate difficult and competing cultural demands.
Imperialism in North Africa: Interview, Djamila Bouhired
By the eve of the revolution, Algerian demands for even limited political and civil rights had been repeatedly rebuffed by the French colonial regime and the nearly one million European settlers in the country.
Dona Marina, Cortes’ Translator: Nonfiction, Octavio Paz
This essay, which seeks to explain modern Mexican sensibilities by examining the phrases “hijos de la chingada” and “malinchista,” presents La Malinche as violated woman—part victim, part traitor to her nation.
Imperialism in North Africa: Law, Code of Personal Status
In 1956 one of the most revolutionary family law codes in the Arab or Islamic world was proclaimed in the newly independent Tunisian state which, paradoxically, had not suffered a political revolution in the way that colonial Algeria would.