
Constance Janiga-Perkins
Associate Professor of Spanish | Spanish Literature Graduate Advisor
- 227 BB Comer Hall
- (205) 348-9909
- cjaniga@ua.edu
Office Hours
Spring 2020: W 2:30-4, R 1-2:30 and by appointment
Education
PhD, Hispanic Literature, Indiana University, Bloomington, 1988
MA Hispanic Literature, Indiana University, Bloomington
Research Interests
Dr. Janiga-Perkins’s research interests include Spanish American Colonial texts, Female Spiritual Autobiography, semiotics, the materiality of manuscripts, and Digital Humanities. Her current projects include:
- Digital Critical edition of The Life Story of Jerónima Nava y Saavedra. In progress with UA Digital Humanities Center.
- The Madre Maria de San Jose Project: collaboration with UA Digital Humanities Center and the Graduate students of the Department of Modern Languages and Classics.
- Women’s Spiritual Autobiography: language, materiality and meaning in Colonial Spanish America.
Her teaching interests include the following:
- The Madre Maria de San Jose Project – digital edition of Volume II, in collaboration with Alabama Digital Humanities Center and the Graduate Students of SP 515 – Spanish American Colonial Texts.
- Spanish Conversation
- Advanced Grammar
Selected Publications
Books:
In progress: Editing Colonial Women: the late twentieth-century editing subject (Routledge).
José Juan Arrom, Discoverer of the Taíno People: The Case of the Relación acerca de las antigüedades de los indios (c1498) by Fray Ramón Pané. Lewiston, NY: Edwin Mellen Press, 2007.
Immaterial Transcendences: The Process of the Colonial Writing Subject in Brazil’s Letter of Discovery (1500). NY: Peter Lang, 2001.
Selected Articles:
“Teaching Text Encoding in The Madre María de San José (México 1656-1719) Digital Project.” Quick Hits: Teaching With Digital Humanities. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, Forthcoming.
“The Materiality of Agency in the Writings of María de San José.” Women and Ideology. ed. Summers, Anastasia. NY: Routledge. 2019.
“The Materiality of Meaning: identity and multiple authorship in Maria Manuela de Santana’s Esquelas originales de correspondencia spiritual y poesías místicas.” Textual Cultures: Texts, Contexts, Interpretation. 2019.
“Making meaning in Women’s Spiritual Autobiography: Language, materiality and agency in Colonial New Granada”. Semiotica, 2015.207 (2016): pp 31-64.
“Editing the Spiritual Autobiography of Jerónima Nava y Saavedra: the female search for wholeness at the end of the XXth Century.” Letras Femeninas, 37.2 (2011): pp 117-38.
“Translation and Healing in José Juan Arrom’s Relación acerca de las antigüedades de los indios (c 1498) by Ramón Pané. The Translator. Manchester, England: St. Jerome Press, Volume 12. Number 1. 2006.
“What Does It Matter Who Is Speaking?: Possessions of Self and Other in Knivet’s Admirable Adventures and Strange Fortunes.” South Atlantic Review. Athens, GA: SAMLA, May 1995.
“Un acercamiento a ‘Sentido y contrasentido en la aplicación de conceptos y criterios europeos al estudio de la literatura hispanoamericana’ de Paul Verdevoye.” Centro de Información y Referencia sobre Centroamérica y el Caribe, Universidad de Costa Rica, 1991.
“Escritura y transculturación: El cautiverio de Hans Staden y el ‘otro’ brasileño.” Crítica y descolonización: El sujeto colonial en la cultura latinoamericana. Eds. Beatriz González Stephan and Lúcia Helena Costigan. Caracas, Venezuela: Columbian Quincentenary Committee of the Ohio State University, Academia Nacional de la Historia, 1992.
“Writing and/the Colonization: The Conquest of the Portuguese New World.” Proceedings of the Colloquium “Cultural Readings of Latin American Texts and Literature.” Colloquium at the Center for Literary and Cultural Studies/NEH, Harvard University, June 8, 1990. Brown University, Providence, RI, 1991.
“Pero de Magalhães Gândavo’s História da Província Santa Cruz: Paradise, Providence, and How Best To Turn A Profit.” South Atlantic Review. Tuscaloosa, AL: SAMLA, May 1992.
“Pero Lopes de Sousa’s Diário da Navegação: The Hero and Historiography.” Luso-Brazilian Review. Madison, WI, Summer 1990.
“Sebastião da Rocha Pita’s História da América Portuguesa: Literariness and the Imaginative Reconstruction of the Past.” South Atlantic Review. Chapel Hill, NC: January 1990.
“Towards an Alternative Reading of Historical and Descriptive Prose in Brazil from 1500-1730.” Ediciones Discurso Literario. Stillwater, OK, 1988.
“Pero Vaz de Caminha’s Carta as Early Literary Expression in Brazil.” Festschrift. Bloomington, IN: Indiana UP, 1987/90.
“Los infortunios de Alonso Ramírez: ¿La primera novela moderna en Hispanoamérica?” Proceedings of the Hispanic Literature Seventh Annual Conference. Indiana, PA: Indiana University Press, 1981.
“Uma chamada lírica de Luandino Vieira por uma literatura angolana.” Lisbon. Africa: 3.11:28-34 (1981).
Diálogo Entre o Deus Momo e o Censor, Critical Edition. With Heitor Martins. VII Anuário do Museo da Inconfidencia e do Grupo de Museos e Casas Históricas de Minas Gerais. Brasilia: Ministerio da Educação e Cultura/SC/SPHAN/Pró-Memória, 1984, 9-85.