by Pedro Calderón de la Barca

Season 3, Episode 6: Invisible Mistress and Mythologizing Womanhood

Hosted by Austen Bell and Cory Drozdowski

Points of Interest:

Let’s talk gender presentation/representation!
- Gender Swapping Cupid and Psyche
Excavating the “invisible mistress” convention
- History and context of the convention
- The convention at play in Phantom Lady
Mythologizing womanhood
- “Invisible mistresses” in Spanish Golden Age Drama
- Mythological basis
Introducing the duende
- Non-humanness and the idea of the second sex
- Women weaponizing their own mystery… and a Barbie moment!
- Taking agency through gender swapping
Envisioning production

Episode Transcript and Bibliography available here.

Season 3, Episode 7: Widow Panic at the Patriarchal Disco

Hosted by Kyle Showalter and Katie Mestres

Points of Interest:

Women in the Spanish Golden Age
- Real-life contexts Melveena McKendrick on early modern Spanish women
- Widows in Golden Age Spain
- The significance of chickens!!
Staging misogynistic language and anxiety about the agency of widows
- Review of misogynistic language
- Performance of the language
Patriarchal Pamphlets
- Querelles de Femme, or Querellas de las Mujeres
- Grisel and Mirabella, The Slander against Women and The Defense of Ladies against Slanderers
Meet that jerk Joseph Swetnam (boooo!)
- Intersections between misogynistic pamphlet language, widow panic, and the dramaturgy of The Phantom Lady

Episode Transcript and Bibliography available here.