Women and Early Modern Mines with Dr Gabriele Marcon

Minisode 1

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Surprise — it’s a minisode! In our very first interview, historian of early modern mining Dr Gabriele Marcon (I Tatti / Harvard University) shows Emma and Christy a painting from early modern Spanish America. Join us as we learn about the erotics of mining, the power of menstrual blood, early modern medicine, female alchemists, the long history of women’s invisible labour, elixirs of life, midwifery, and (somehow) Mount Rushmore.

You can find Gabriele on Twitter @GbbaMrc, and read his work at https://itatti.academia.edu/GabrieleMarcon

MEDIA DISCUSSED
The Virgin of the Cerro Rico of Potosí (c. 1680)
Mount Rushmore (completed 1941)

FURTHER READING
The Virgin of the Mountain of Potosí, Vistas: Visual Culture in Spanish America, 1520-1820, Fordham University
Gabriele Marcon, ‘Women’s Lost Labour in Early Modern Mines‘, Forms of Labour Blog Series
Kris Lane, Potosí: The Silver City that Changed the World (University of California Press, 2021)
Dana Velasco Murillo, ‘Laboring Above Ground: Indigenous Women in New Spain’s Silver Mining District, Zacatecas, Mexico, 1620–1770’, Hispanic American Historical Review 93.1 (2013): 3–32
Tara Nummedal, Anna Zieglerin and the Lion’s Blood: Alchemy and End Times in Reformation Germany (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2019)
Carolyn Merchant, The Death of Nature: Women, Ecology, and the Scientific Revolution (HarperOne, 1980)

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‘Drawing Blood’ cover art © Emma Merkling
All audio and content © Emma Merkling and Christy Slobogin
Intro music: ‘There Will Be Blood’ by Kim Petras, © BunHead Records 2019. We’re still trying to get hold of permissions for this song – Kim Petras text us back!!