The nationalism, the educational practices and the potatoes, by Rebecca Earle

Abstract

Professor Rebecca Earle, cultural historian of Spanish America at the University of Warwick, UK, talks in this interview about her trajectory as researcher, the role of national identities and food as educative practices in America, as much as the body as subject to history studies. Professor Earle is author of significant work – as “The return of the Native. Indians and Mythmaking in Spanish America, 1810-1930,” and “The Body of the Conquistador. Food, race and the colonial experience in Spanish America, 1492-1700” –, and known for conducting instigating researches, also for her ability to deal with several sources. Here, she also comment on her ongoing research on the distinctive Spanish American pictorial genre known as casta painting, and the challenges of the Anglophone researcher, in particular, to talk about the lands found by Columbus.