What was a lesbian who wanted to enjoy the company of women to do in the 1600s? Join a convent!
 

From cock-teasing nuns that toy with the emotions of the convent’s male visitors to cross-dressing nuns who become swash-buckling Spanish conquistadors while seducing women in South America, the stories Dr. Horacio Sierra shares in this presentation will change the way you think about nuns, feminism, and lesbianism in the seventeenth century.
 

This presentation uses movie clips, written excerpts, and humorous GIFs to demonstrate how the Catholic Church provided a safe haven for same-sex loving women in Renaissance England, Spain, and Mexico. Come learn how the convent was queered by real-life women such as Catalina de Erauso and Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz as well the literary creations of William Shakespeare and Margaret Cavendish.
 

 
Dr. Horacio Sierra is an Assistant Professor of English at Bowie State University. His book Sanctified Subversives: Nuns in Early Modern English and Spanish Literature details the ways in which authors from both Protestant and Catholic nation-states used nuns and convents to explore ideas about womanhood, feminism, and queer sexuality.