CLAS Acts September 2022
Monthly newsletter of the TT faculty of CLAS
A Note from Dean Drake
The other day the temperature dropped during a rain squall and I felt the bittersweet crisp of fall in the air. Then the maelstrom we call Start Up Week assured me that the new academic year was in fact upon us. Maybe you had mixed emotions, too—joy at seeing colleagues and students again, combined with that feeling of “if only I had one more summer week”? I’m not letting summer’s freedoms go yet, though. September weekends still hold some perfect days.
I welcome you to academic year 2022-2023 whether you are new to GVSU, returning from sabbaticals and summer research, or transitioning from your on-campus summer teaching, advising, and administering. No matter your entry point, this fall is special because we are all finally back together. It was wonderful to see so many of you at the CLAS start-up meeting and lunch!
This September there is much to see and do. Science on Tap is back on September 8, and our first Faculty Research Colloquium of the year takes place on September 16. Homerathon gets rolling September 28 at 8 a.m., and the Carey Lecture that same evening will be of interest to our scientists as well as those interested in communication. On September 22, join us at the opening reception for the show As Is: Beauty and the Body in Contemporary Art which kicks off this year’s GVSU Arts Celebration. Finally, be sure to check out the Fall 2022 issue of Fishladder, the Department of Writing student journal. Please tell us about your upcoming events so that we can enjoy connecting in multidisciplinary ways and share our CLAS stories widely.
“Brews with the Dean” will be returning this year, and I’ll be visiting units, so I hope to see you soon. I am grateful for each and every one of you, and I wish you a very successful term.
Best,
Jen
First Contact with a Pineapple—Rethinking Gonzalo Fernández de Oviedo
Associate Professor Elizabeth Gansen (MLL) recalls reading for her PhD exams an account by 16th Century Spanish historian Gonzalo Fernández de Oviedo that made her laugh out loud.
“Oviedo had just landed on an island in the Caribbean and was sampling some of the fruit. His companions had not told him what would happen if he ate the red-fleshed, seeded prickly pears that grew there,” Elizabeth explained. When he later discovered his urine was red, he thought all the veins in his body had burst and he was about to die. His companions played along for a while before finally revealing that the red tinge he observed was not blood but rather a consequence of having eaten the fruit.
Elizabeth notes that with many plants unfamiliar to the early explorers of the “new” world, it was very much a matter of life and death to consume them.
“In class, I distribute fruit typical to the Caribbean among the students and ask that one student describe the fruit that they have received to another in Spanish. The partner then tries to draw it based on the description,” Elizabeth explains. The exercise gives the students some appreciation for what Oviedo and others of his time were experiencing, as they struggled to convey the features of these overseas lands to people in Europe.
How do you capture the essence of a fruit? How do you choose to draw, for instance, a pineapple? What aspects of it do you choose to emphasize? What is the ideology behind that choice?
“It’s what Oviedo did,” Elizabeth points out. “He was an historian and a natural historian—the first to produce a natural history of the Americas.” Oviedo was also the first to draw the plants and animals that he encountered for later publication in the Sumario (1526) and the multi-volume Historia general y natural de las Indias.
The 16th Century saw great investment in foodstuffs, such as spices, so these were important drivers of exploration. At the same time, the sciences were only slowing beginning to define themselves, acquiring the characteristics that would later distinguish them as separate disciplines. Oviedo’s natural history was informed by his experiences in Spain and Italy, where he resided for the first 35 years of his life. He was part of the European intellectual scene and even claimed to have met Leonardo da Vinci.
Oviedo originally thought his life would play out in the Spanish court of the Catholic Monarchs Ferdinand and Isabel, but his role as valet to Prince don Juan was cut short when the prince died in 1498. A financial misadventure (pro tip, don’t back doomed military campaigns) left him looking for a way to (re-)seek his fortune. In 1514, he landed in the Caribbean, bringing his wife and children in 1520. He returned to Spain intermittently for personal and professional reasons until his death in 1557, but the island of Hispaniola (i.e., the Dominican Republic) remained his home for the rest of his life.
“Oviedo as a historical figure is often understood exclusively through the writings of Bartolomé de las Casas, his contemporary and inveterate enemy. Yet such a perspective does not do justice to the vast and diverse corpus of Oviedo’s writings on the Indies and overlooks the commonalities between the two historians’ treatment of the natural and human histories of the Americas.”
Elizabeth’s book, Natural Designs: The Invention of New World Nature in the Writings of Gonzalo Fernández de Oviedo (1478-1557) (U of Pennsylvania Press), will explore how Oviedo’s approach to New World nature developed over the course of the nearly twenty-five years he worked with this subject, giving rise to the literary genre of American natural history.