Elizabeth González Jiménez, Ruth and Lincoln Ekstrom Fellow

Elizabeth González Jiménez, a fifth-year History PhD student at the University of Miami, spent her short-term Ruth and Lincoln Ekstrom Fellowship researching the relationship between gender, law, and justice. She also spent time writing her dissertation project “Unruly Women: Power, Politics, and Punishment in Eighteenth Century New Spain.” González Jiménez consulted the JCB collections to research crimes perpetrated by women as a window onto day-to-day gender relations and racial and ethnic conflicts in public and private spaces. In particular, she sought records of laws written by men that circumscribed female behavior. Texts like the Vida, y virtudes heroycas de la madre Maria de Jesus… (Life and Heroic Virtues of Mother Maria de Jesus), which describes ideal female behavior, were also useful.