Geography of Hard Times

Ángela Pérez-Mejía is an Associate Professor in the Romance and Comparative Literature Department at Brandeis University. The Spanish version of this book won honorable mention in the literary essay category, International Literary Prize, Casa de las Américas, Cuba, 2000.

• Acknowledgments List of Illustrations Introduction PART I: THE SCHOLAR AND THE BARON: VOYAGE OF THE EXACT SCIENCES Introduction to Part I 1. Mutis, or the Trap of Mutisia Clematis 2. Humboldt: The Silences and Complicities of Cartography PART II: THE DAUGHTER OF THE EAST AND THE PARIAH: VOYAGE OF THE SOCIAL SCIENCES Introduction to Part II 3. Graham: The White Daughter of the East, or a Foreigner in Indomitable Lands 4. Tristán, or the Incendiary Geography of a Pilgrim Pariah Epilogue Notes References Index

"Pérez-Mejía successfully analyzes the multiethnic Latin American society of this period, with all the social tensions that existed during the creation of the new republics emerging from Spanish control. The four European voyagers she presents are a good mirror for understanding the sometimes subtle realities that normally escape the rigid rhetoric of official historical discourse." — Biography"A Geography of Hard Times will serve a range of intellectual needs, and look different from the differing disciplinary perspectives we bring to it. In its novel involvements in both the natural and social sciences, in both male and female writing, in writers from four different European societies, Pérez-Mejía's book is especially rich in provocative juxtapositions and propositions. It argues above all, and in valuable detail, the centrality of the still-too-often underrecognized fact that relations of influence between colonialist societies and the societies of their colonies go both ways." — Mary Baine Campbell, author of Wonder and Science: Imagining Worlds in Early Modern Europe