Chapter 7 examines the construction of a stereotype of a different nature from those studied in the book. The discovery of a portrait of Bernardo de Monteagudo allowed a reflection on the theoretical impossibility of a descendant of enslaved Africans to be part of the pantheon of national heroes. It is a different image from that which was and continues to be widely disseminated, in which the face of the Tucumán hero was represented with undeniably “White” features. Comparing both portraits demonstrates an extreme case of whitening that enabled deploying a reverse stereotype.

The introduction sets out the approaches, sources, and scope of the book. It acquaints the reader with the main features of classical education and places the book within the modern historiography.

Chapter 2 analyzes two works related to the Juan Manuel de Rosas era, one actually produced during this time and the other from the late nineteenth or early twentieth century. In both, Afro-Porteños are present in large numbers, and their representation conflicts with literary discourses. While the writings are filled with defamatory adjectives that seek to create a chaotic and barbaric image of Afro-Porteños, the paintings present a pleasing and orderly image. After Rosas’s defeat in 1852, his opponents worked tirelessly to associate the group with Rosas and his barbaric era. This conception of Afro-Argentines has become a stereotype. They are thus confined to an abominable past that must not be repeated. This strategy constitutes one more way of rendering invisible a population whose extinction was prophesied as inevitable since the mid-nineteenth century. These ideas persist to this day, despite the actual presence of Afro-descendants in our territory, and they, in turn, clearly influence the racial classifications that operate in Argentine society.

This chapter explores how the Declaration of Independence was drafted and ratified. Congress created and assigned the task of drafting a declaration of independence to a committee of lawyers. When the draft went to the Congress, lawyers like Edward Rutledge had their chance to weigh in. The draft document and the final version was a legal document designed to place rebellion on a legal foundation. Jefferson later recalled that his draft of the Declaration of Independence merely recombined ideas that had long been discussed, and terminology long adopted, by Congress. The Declaration assumed independence, otherwise it would have had no foundation. Following this logic, as the members did, surely Jefferson among them, the Declaration was simply stating the reasons – a justification like the Declaratory Act of 1766, by which Parliament explained its authority over the colonies – for an event already transpired. The ringing elaboration of the rights of mankind, various borrowings from John Locke, echoes of natural law, and the language of prior resolves and declarations were not really pertinent to a declaration for the independence of a continent, but make sense in the more limited framework of Virginia constitutional change.

This chapter situates the Declaration of Independence in relation to another founding document of the United States, the federal Constitution. It assesses the Declaration’s role in debates over the Constitution, first during the latter’s framing in 1787, then in the struggle for ratification, and then later as political actors sought to interpret each document in light of the other. From the outset, debate over the Constitution highlighted the Declaration’s multivalence as well as its rhetorical power. Both defenders and opponents of the Constitution have sought to show how their cause best aligned with the ideals and aspirations expressed in the Declaration. Anti-federalists and their successors constructed a powerful narrative which juxtaposed the Declaration’s call to liberty with the Constitution’s blueprint for authority. Yet there was from the beginning an equally strong tradition that saw the Constitution as a consummation of the Declaration’s promise. Either way, this chapter argues, the Declaration continues to help shape the meaning of the Constitution – and to have its own meaning remolded in turn.

This chapter argues for the Italian Renaissance as a pivotal moment in women’s history. This was the first Western age in which secular women emerged in significant numbers as producers, as well as consumers, of high culture. It also witnessed the development of new ways of thinking about sex and gender, framed to counter traditional arguments for women’s inferiority to men. Like many Renaissance cultural innovations, the emergence of culturally active women was initially an elite phenomenon mainly limited to the princely courts, but practices like women’s writing later migrated down to lower strata of urban society. By the late sixteenth century, women writers were being joined by other species of virtuose such as singers, composers, actresses, painters, and other visual artists. The chapter argues that traditional periodizations of the Renaissance, which see the movement as ending in the mid sixteenth century, have led to a major underestimation of the degree to which women may be considered stakeholders in the movement alongside men.

This chapter traces the history of Renaissance Italy’s long and passionate love affair with the textual and material remnants of classical antiquity, exploring classical influences within literary and intellectual history, art history, and material culture. The classicizing movement known as humanism is charted here from its origins in the early 1300s to the moment sometimes called the High Renaissance in early sixteenth-century Rome. The chapter argues that past paradigms have often over-emphasized the secular leaning of Renaissance humanism or posited a sharp transition from a medieval, other-worldly to an earthly, human-focused world-view. Countering this, the chapter examines the ways in which a society and culture still deeply invested in Christianity responded to the philosophical challenges posed by pagan antiquity and the strategies it developed to reconcile the two.