Peter Sigal, Professor

The relationships between gender, sexuality, and colonialism have intrigued me since I began my first book on Maya sexuality. I recently completed a study on the interaction of writing and sexual representation in sixteenth and seventeenth-century Nahua societies--The Flower and the Scorpion: Sexuality and Ritual in Early Nahua Culture (Durham: Duke University Press, 2011); I am currently co-editing with Neil Whitehead a volume on “ethnopornography,” the relationship between the colonial and ethnographic gaze and sexuality throughout the world; and engaging in research on the position of the hyper-masculinized Aztec warrior in early modern literature from Europe and the Americas. I have moved from studying sexual desires in indigenous communities to examining the early modern cultural processes that created global concepts of modern sexuality, gender, masculinity, and femininity.

Contact Info:

Office Location:	234 Classroom Building, Durham, NC 27708
Office Phone:	(919) 684-3014
Email Address:

Teaching (Fall 2023):

• HOUSECS 59.23, HOUSE COURSE (SP TOP) Synopsis

  Perkins 065, W 07:30 PM-08:45 PM

• HISTORY 89S.02, FIRST-YEAR SEMINAR (TOP) Synopsis

  Class Bldg 229, W 01:40 PM-04:10 PM

  (also cross-listed as ETHICS 89S.07, GSF 89S.04, SXL 89S.02)

• HISTORY 370.01, AZTECS AND MAYANS Synopsis

  Class Bldg 103, TuTh 11:45 AM-01:00 PM

  (also cross-listed as MEDREN 270.01)

Education:

Ph.D.	University of California - Los Angeles	1995
M.A.	University of California - Los Angeles	1992
B.A.	Bucknell University	1986

Specialties:

Comparative Colonial Studies
Gender
Military History
Medieval and Early Modern History
Global Transnational History
Cultural History
Global and Comparative
Latin America and the Caribbean

Research Interests:

The relationships between gender, sexuality, and colonialism have intrigued me since I began my first book on Maya sexuality. I recently completed a study on the interaction of writing and sexual representation in sixteenth and seventeenth-century Nahua societies--The Flower and the Scorpion: Sexuality and Ritual in Early Nahua Culture (Durham: Duke University Press, 2011); I am currently co-editing with Neil Whitehead a volume on “ethnopornography,” the relationship between the colonial and ethnographic gaze and sexuality throughout the world; and engaging in research on the position of the hyper-masculinized Aztec warrior in early modern literature from Europe and the Americas. I have moved from studying sexual desires in indigenous communities to examining the early modern cultural processes that created global concepts of modern sexuality, gender, masculinity, and femininity.

Areas of Interest:

Colonial Latin America
Indigenous Peoples of Latin America
The History of Sexuality

Keywords:

Anthropology • Cross-Cultural Comparison • Gender • Historiography • History, 16th Century • History, 17th Century • History, 18th Century • History, 19th Century • History, 20th Century • Internationality • Language • Latin America • Men's Health • queer theory • Queer Theory • Religion • Sexual Behavior • Sexuality • Social Change • Women's Health

Current Ph.D. Students  

• Farren Yero  
• Priya D. Shah  
• Caroline Garriott  

Representative Publications   (More Publications)

1. Sigal, P, The flower and the scorpion: Sexuality and ritual in early nahua culture, Latin America Otherwise (December, 2011), pp. 1-361, Duke University Press, ISBN 9780822351511 [ViewProduct.php]  [abs]
2. Sigal, P, Imagining Cihuacoatl: Mexica Masculinity and Spanish Colonization, Gender & History, vol. 22 no. 3 (November, 2010), pp. 538-563, WILEY (Republished in Historicising Gender and Sexuality. Kevin P. Murphy and Jennifer M. Spear, eds. West Sussex: Wiley-Blackwell, 2011.) [doi]  [abs]
3. Sigal, P, Latin America and the challenge of globalizing the history of sexuality., American Historical Review, vol. 114 no. 5 (December, 2009), pp. 1340-1353, Oxford University Press (OUP), ISSN 0002-8762 [20425925], [doi]
4. Sigal, P, Queer Nahuatl: Sahagún's faggots and sodomites, lesbians and hermaphrodites, Ethnohistory, vol. 54 no. 1 (December, 2007), pp. 9-34, Duke University Press, ISSN 0014-1801 (Republished in Indigenous Religions. Steven Hunt, ed. London: Ashgate, 2010.) [Gateway.cgi], [doi]  [abs]
5. Sigal, P, Sexual Encounters/Sexual Collisions: Alternative Sexualities in Colonial Mesoamerica, edited by Sigal, P; Chuchiak, J, Ethnohistory, vol. 54 no. 1 (January, 2007)
6. Sigal, P, The Cuiloni, the Patlache, and the Abominable Sin: Homosexualities in Early Colonial Nahua Society, The Hispanic American Historical Review, vol. 85 no. 4 (November, 2005), pp. 555-593, Duke University Press, ISSN 0018-2168 [Gateway.cgi], [doi]
7. Sigal, P, Infamous Desire: Male Homosexuality in Colonial Latin America (2003), University of Chicago Press [html]
8. Sigal, P, To Cross the Sexual Borderlands: The History of Sexuality in the Americas, Radical History Review, vol. 82 (2002), pp. 171-185 [repository]
9. Sigal, P, Gender, male homosexuality, and power in colonial Yucatán, Latin American Perspectives, vol. 29 no. 2 (January, 2002), pp. 24-40, SAGE Publications, ISSN 0094-582X [Gateway.cgi], [doi]  [abs]
10. Sigal, P, From Moon Goddesses to Virgins: The Colonization of Yucatecan Maya Sexual Desire (2000), University of Texas Press [sigfro]