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Louis Zukofsky

Louis Zukofsky (January 23, 1904 – May 12, 1978) was an American poet. He was the primary instigator and theorist of the so-called "Objectivist" poets, a short lived collective of poets who after several decades of obscurity would reemerge around 1960 and become a significant influence on subsequent generations of poets in America and abroad.

Life
Louis Zukofsky was born in New York City's Lower East Side to Yiddish speaking immigrants from Lithuania, then part of the Russian Empire. His father Pinchos (ca. 1860–1950) immigrated to the United States in 1898, and was followed in 1903 by his wife, Chana (1862–1927), and their three children. Pinchos worked as a pants-presser and night watchman for many decades in New York's garment district.

The only one of his siblings born in the United States, Louis Zukofsky was a precocious student in the local public school system. As a boy he frequented the nearby Yiddish theatres on the Bowery, where he saw classic works by Shakespeare, Ibsen, Strindberg, and Tolstoy performed in Yiddish. Zukofsky began writing poetry at an early age, and his earliest known publications were in the student literary journal of Stuyvesant High School, from which he graduated at age 15. While when young he translated from the modern Yiddish poetry of Yehoash (Solomon Blumgarten), there is no indication he ever considered writing in Yiddish himself.

Beginning shortly before his 16th birthday in January 1920, Zukofsky attended Columbia University's undergraduate men's college and Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, where he studied English. Some of his teachers and classmates subsequently emerged as important lodestars of midcentury literature and culture, namely Mark Van Doren (who maintained a lifelong acquaintance with Zukofsky despite lambasting him as a "painfully inarticulate soul" in a 1927 article ), John Dewey, John Erskine, Lionel Trilling and Mortimer Adler (who may have enjoined Zukofsky to study the humanities instead of engineering). He joined the Boar's Head Society and published in the Morningside, a student literary journal. Although he was elected to Phi Beta Kappa upon completing nearly all of the undergraduate curriculum in three and a half years, much like Adler, Zukofsky did not receive a Columbia College degree after dropping out of the required physical education course. Nevertheless, he was admitted to the Graduate School, receiving an M.A. in 1924 with a thesis on Henry Adams. He would publish a revised version of this thesis as "Henry Adams: A Criticism in Autobiography" in the journal Pagany, and Adams would remain a significant intellectual influence on Zukofsky's work. One of Zukofsky's closest friends during the 1920s was his Columbia classmate, Whittaker Chambers, and throughout the 1930s he aligned himself with Marxism, although he never joined the Communist Party. Despite his academic success, Zukofsky was not offered an instructorship that may have facilitated the completion of a Ph.D. or an eventual tenure-track academic appointment; according to a retrospective 2002 analysis by Mark Scroggins, "Then as now, writing one's thesis on a recently dead and as yet uncanonized figure (Adams had died only six years before) was not the path to academic preferment [...] [Zukofsky's inability to secure an instructorship] might have been a matter of personality: quiet and withdrawn, Zukofsky no doubt seemed less than promising teaching material. And the unwritten code of anti-Semitism that reigned in the English department--and that would not be broken until Lionel Trilling was hired in 1939--almost certainly told against him. At any rate, Zukofsky's formal schooling ended in 1924, and he would make no attempt to continue to the doctorate."

During the 1930-31 academic year, Zukofsky taught English at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, the only time he lived outside the New York City metropolitan area. In 1934, Zukofsky began work as a researcher with the Works Projects Administration (WPA), and over the course of the rest of the decade he worked on various WPA projects, most notably the Index of American Design, a history of American material culture. In the same year, he met Celia Thaew (1913–1980) and they married in 1939; their only child, Paul Zukofsky (1943–2017), was a child prodigy violinist and went on to become a prominent avant-garde violinist and conductor. During World War II, Zukofsky edited technical manuals at a number of electronics companies working in support of the war effort. In 1947, he took a job as an instructor in the English Department of the Polytechnic Institute of Brooklyn, where he would remain until his retirement at the rank of associate professor in 1965. He subsequently was a visiting professor at the University of Connecticut.

Throughout most of the 1940s and 1950s, the Zukofskys lived in Brooklyn Heights, then from 1964 to 1973 in Manhattan, and finally they retired to the Suffolk County outer suburb of Port Jefferson, New York, where he completed his magnum opus "A" and his last major work, the highly compressed poetic sequence 80 Flowers. Just a few months after completing the latter work and proof-reading the complete "A", Zukofsky died on May 12, 1978. He had been awarded National Endowment for the Arts Grants in 1967 and 1968, the National Institute of Arts and Letters "award for creative work in literature" in 1976, and an honorary doctorate from Bard College in 1977.

Early career
As a student Zukofsky wrote prolifically in imitation of many styles, both traditional and free verse. However, his first distinctive work was the long poem, "Poem beginning 'The,'" composed in 1926 and published by Ezra Pound in his journal The Exile in 1928. Demonstrating a precocious assimilation of modernist styles, this is an autobiographical portrait of the young poet. The poem satirizes the older modernists for their pessimism, particularly T.S. Eliot's The Waste Land, examines his cultural identity and the question of assimilation as the son of immigrant Jews, and concludes by asserting his poetic independence from the claims of family and his Jewish heritage, opting instead for a more cosmopolitan poetic identity. Pound remained an important supporter of Zukofsky in the following years, famously dedicating Guide to Kulchur (1938) "To Louis Zukofsky and Basil Bunting strugglers in the desert." Their relationship over the course of the 1930s became severely strained because of Pound's increasingly strident fascism and anti-semitism, yet Zukofsky always maintained the highest regard for Pound's poetic abilities.

"Objectivist" Poets
Pound put Zukofsky in contact with William Carlos Williams, who would remain a major supporter of and influence on the younger poet. Williams found Zukofsky to be a valuable critic and editor of his own work, which he acknowledge by dedicating The Wedge (1944) to L.Z.. Pound persuaded the editor of Poetry magazine, Harriet Monroe, to allow Zukofsky to edit an issue showcasing younger poets, resulting in the famous "Objectivists" issue (Feb. 1931), which included Zukofsky's statement "Sincerity and Objectification." Although all the poets, including Zukofsky, denied any intention of forming a distinct poetic movement, a core group became identified as the Objectivist poets, which included besides Zukofsky, Charles Reznikoff, George Oppen and Carl Rakosi, as well as Zukofsky's friends, Basil Bunting and Lorine Niedecker. Zukofsky edited An "Objectivists" Anthology (1932), published by George Oppen's To, Publishers, and for a brief spell there was the collective The Objectivist Press, but the group attracted only limited attention at the time.

"A"
Zukofsky's major work was the very long poem "A"—he never referred to it without the quotation marks—which he began in 1928 and would work on intermittently for most of the rest of his life, finally completing the poem in 1974. He predetermined that the work would have 24 sections, which he called movements, but both formally and thematically he allowed the poem to develop as the occasion dictated. "A"-1 opens at a performance of Bach's St. Matthew Passion, whose fugal intricacies became one of the formal models for the poem. The first six movements are predominately autobiographical but all directly or indirectly considering the question of the proper form for the poem at hand—"A"-6 ends by posing the question: "With all this material / To what distinction—." The preliminary answer is "A"-7, often taken to be Zukofsky's first distinctly individual poem that looks forward to much that will follow. This movement is a set of seven sonnets which focus on sawhorses marking off an area of a street under repair, which are imaginatively animated, a dynamic image of the poem itself as a construction site simultaneously constructed and deconstructed. In a number of later movements, Zukofsky would similarly adopt strict traditional forms combined with unconventional materials to create highly compacted poems: "A"-9 takes the intricate form of Guido Cavalcanti's canzone, "Donna me prega," using content mostly adapted from Karl Marx's Capital. A related major poem, although outside of "A", is "'Mantis'" which adopts the form of a sestina by Dante to create a political lyric, to which Zukofsky added "An Interpretation" reflecting on the question of poetic form relevant to contemporary concerns. In counterpoint to these highly formal and compacted movements, there are sprawling free-verse movements, notably "A"-8, whose depiction of contemporary world interviews vignettes of the Great Depression with the writings of Marx, Lenin and Henry Adams on American history. Much of Zukofsky's work of the 1930s attempted to bring together modernist formalism with a Leftist political perspective. "A"-10 is a cry of despair in response to the fall of France in June 1940 structured on Bach's Mass in B minor, after which Zukofsky paused work on "A" for some years.

Other early writings
In tandem with "A", Zukofsky continued writing shorter poems throughout his life, although he had difficulties publishing outside of journals during the Depression era. His first collection of shorter poems, 55 Poems, did not appear until 1941, although it represented work completed by the mid-1930, including "Poem beginning 'The'" and "'Mantis.'" Another collection, Anew, came out in 1946. In the mid-1930s he also wrote his only play, Arise, Arise, a political dream play, which however remained unperformed and unpublished until the 1960s. During the same period he wrote a work of experimental prose, Thanks to the Dictionary, improvising with the vocabulary and definitions found in the dictionary. In the early 1940s he attempted more conventional short stories, of which the novella length Ferdinand is the most significant. One of Zukofsky's most eccentric works was Le Style Apollinaire/The Writing of Guillaume Apollinaire (1934), which was ghost written for his friend René Taupin, presenting three approaches to the body of Apollinaire's work in large part through the presentation and arrangement of quotations. Throughout much of the 1930s Zukofsky worked on a poetry textbook, A Test of Poetry, after the manner of Pound's ABC of Reading, primarily juxtaposing sample poems or excerpts with little commentary and asking to student to draw their own conclusions. Although initially this text only saw the light of day when self-published in 1948, it has since been reprinted three times.

Later career
In 1948, Zukofsky returned to "A" after a hiatus of eight years with the second half of "A"-9, which again copies the complex form of Cavalcanti's canzone, but now using content primarily derived from Spinoza's Ethics. The distinct concerns of the two-halves of "A"-9 mark a decisive shift of emphasis from the political and social to the more personal and philosophical, but without repudiating the earlier focus. Avoiding pre-determined narratives or themes, Zukofsky always intended that "A"'s development would be determined by historical and personal changes over the time of the poem's composition. This was affirmed with "A"-11, which mimics the form of a ballata by Cavalcanti but directly addresses his wife and son on the topic of mortality. From this point the poet's immediate family will usually play a major role while the poem becomes more expansive in its concerns. This movement was shortly followed up with "A"-12, a sprawling 135-page collage interweaving the personal, current events and philosophy, primarily represented by Aristotle, Paracelsus and Spinoza. However, at the time there was little chance that he could publish a work on this scale, and "A"-12 did not appear complete until the first book publication of "A" 1–12 in 1959. Much of the 1950s was preoccupied with another very large-scale work, Bottom: on Shakespeare, which began as an essay growing out of a summer course on Renaissance literature he taught at Hamilton College in 1947 but grew into a massive critical meditation on Shakespeare, arguing for the priority of the sensuous eye over the abstract mind. This work was as much a statement on poetics as a exegesis of Shakespeare presented in the unorthodox critical manner Zukofsky preferred, marshalling and collaging large numbers of quotations from numerous texts. When finally published in 1964, Bottom was accompanied by a companion volume consisting of Celia Zukofsky's musical setting of Shakespeare's play Pericles, Prince of Tyre.

Since the 1930s, Zukofsky worked in obscurity and found it difficult to publish, but gradually from the mid-1950s younger poets, most notably Robert Duncan and Robert Creeley, began to seek him out because of their desire to reconnect with the more innovative strands of poetic modernism developing from Pound and Williams. The poets and editors Cid Corman and Jonathan Williams published major works in the late 1950s, especially the first book publication of "A" by Corman's Origin Press. Along with the other "Objectivists", from around 1960 Zukofsky was in considerable demand among these younger poets, and consequently was able to publish numerous volumes over the last decade and half of his life, a period when he wrote prolifically and inventively.

With the completion of Bottom, Zukofsky returned to "A" with "A"-13, a "partita" in five sub-sections using a range of different forms. The late, mostly long, movements of "A" are characterized by the adoption of a diversity of flexible forms capable of absorbing great variation of materials, from the conversational, to newspapers and media, to book reading, and the treatment of these materials ranges from quotation to radical reduction to creative transmutation, including homophonic transcription. A sense of the everyday is interwoven with contemporary events, with "A"-15 responding to the assassination of President Kennedy and "A"-18 darkened by the trauma of the Vietnam War. In contrast to the usually long movements, "A"-16 is just four words scattered across a single page, while "A"-17 is a homage to William Carlos Williams on his death in 1963 in the form of a catalogue of quotations recording the two poets' friendship. "A"-21 is a complete and quirky translation of Plautus' play Rudens (The Rope) interspersed with additional "Voice offs" of Zukofsky's invention. In 1968, Celia Zukofsky presented her husband with an elaborate musical assemblage: against the musical score of Handel's "Hapsichord Pieces" she arranged four voices consisting entirely of quotations from across Zukofsky's writings, suggesting one possible version of a single total work. Zukofsky promptly decided this would be the final movement of "A", although he still had two further movement to write. "A"-22 & -23 were conceived on an epic scale: each 1000 lines, with an 800-line main body framed by 100-line segments, the main bodies each compressed radically reworked materials from history and literature respectively spanning 6000 years in chronological order. In this late work the soundscape tends to predominate over thematic or narrative orders, or as he once put it, "not to fathom time but literally to sound it as on an instrument."

Another major work that preoccupied Zukofsky for much of the 1960s was the controversial Catullus, a homophonic translation from Latin done in collaboration with his wife of the entire existent works of Catullus. Although it outraged many when first published, this has been one of the most discussed and debated of Zukofsky's works. He also finished a novel begun in the early 1950s, Little, an autobiographical account centered on a child violin prodigy, based on his son Paul. Aside from "A", several collections of mostly short poems were published in the late 1950s and early 1960s, and particularly notable is the long poem "4 Other Countries" included in Barely and widely (1958), a travelogue of the Zukofskys' 1957 trip to Europe, written in a more relaxed and accessible manner than is typical of his poetry. As his reputation rose, Zukofsky collected short poetry in two volumes (1965, 1966) was published by Norton, his first books with a commercial publisher. Soon after his collected critical essay were gathered into Prepositions (1968). On finally completing "A" in 1974, Zukofsky promptly started on his last major work, 80 Flowers, a sequence of eighty-one short poems (8 lines of five words each), highly compressed reworkings of botanical and literary materials. Although planned for completion for his 80th birthday, he as usual worked ahead of schedule and finished the sequence in January 1978, already planning a follow-up sequence on trees to be entitled Gamut: 90 trees. However, he only composed the epigraph to this latter work when he died in May 1978.

Legacy
Although Zukofsky and the "Objectivists" would have little impact in the 1930s, their later rediscovery around 1960 would have a major influence on a broad range of younger poets known as the New American Poets. This was particularly the case because most of the Objectivists produced their most mature and innovative work during the 1960s and 1970s, which in many respects represented a salutatory formal emphasis that contrasted with the looseness of most Beat and projectivist verse. Aside from Duncan and Creeley, among the many American poets who have acknowledged the influence of Zukofsky in their work include Theodore Enslin, Ronald Johnson, John Taggart and Michael Palmer. In the 1970s, Zukofsky's formalism was a major model for many of the Language poets, and the prominent Language writer, Charles Bernstein, edited a volume of selected poems for the Library of America (2006).

During his lifetime, Zukofsky had some contact and interaction with Augusto de Campos and the Brazilian Concrete poetry movement. French poets in particular have been attracted to Zukofsky's example. Anne-Marie Albiach composed an intricate and much admired translation of "A"-9 in 1970, which helped bring Zukofsky to French attention. Other French poets engaged in translating Zukofsky include Jacques Roubaud and Pierre Alféri. A complete French translation of "A" (except for "A"-24) by François Dominique and Serge Gavronsky came out to considerable acclaim in 2020.

Poetry, prose, drama

 * An "Objectivists" Anthology, ed. Louis Zukofsky (To, Publishers, 1932)
 * Le Style Apollinaire, with René Taupin (Les Presses Modernes, 1934), criticism
 * First Half of "A" 9 (privately printed, 1940)
 * 55 Poems (Decker Press, 1941)
 * Anew (Decker Press,1946)
 * A Test of Poetry (Objectivist Press, 1948), textbook
 * Some Time (Jargon, 1956)
 * 5 Statements for Poetry (San Francisco State College, 1958), essays
 * Barely and widely (Celia Zukofsky, 1958)
 * "A" 1–12 (Origin Press, 1959)
 * It Was (Origin Press, 1961), short fiction
 * Bottom: on Shakespeare, 2 volumes (Volume 2 is Celia Zukofsky's musical setting of Shakespeare's play Pericles) (1963)
 * I's (pronounced eyes) (Trobar Press, 1963)
 * After I's (Boxwood/Mother Press, 1964)
 * All: The Collected Short Poems, 1923–1958 (Norton, 1965)
 * All: The Collected Short Poems, 1956–1964 (Norton, 1966)
 * Prepositions: The Collected Critical Essays of Louis Zukofsky (Rapp & Whitting/Horizon, 1968)
 * "A" 13–21 (Jonathan Cape/Doubleday, 1969)
 * Catullus, with Celia Zukofsky (Cape Goliard/Grossman, 1969)
 * Autobiography (Grossman, 1970), selection of poems set to music by Celia Zukofsky
 * Little: for Careenagers (Grossman, 1970), novel
 * "A" 24 (Grossman, 1972)
 * Arise, Arise (Grossman, 1973), play (composed mid-1930s)
 * "A" 22 & 23 (Grossman, 1975)
 * 80 Flowers (Celia Zukofsky, 1978)
 * "A" (University of California Press, 1978), complete edition

Letters and Collected editions

 * "A" (University of California Press, 1978; reprinted Johns Hopkins University Press, 1993; New Directions, 2011)
 * Pound/Zukofsky: Selected Letters of Ezra Pound and Louis Zukofsky, ed. Barry Ahearn (Faber & Faber, 1987)
 * Collected Fiction (Dalkey Archive, 1990)
 * Complete Short Poetry (Johns Hopkins University Press, 1991; reprinted as Anew: Complete Short Poetry, New Directions, 2011)
 * Niedecker and the Correspondence with Zukofsky 1931–1970, ed. Jenny Penberthy (Cambridge University Press, 1993), does not include Zukofsky's side of the correspondence
 * The Correspondence of William Carlos Williams & Louis Zukofsky, ed. Barry Ahearn (Wesleyan University Press, 2003
 * The Selected Letters of Louis Zukofsky, ed. Barry Ahearn (2013).

Centennial Edition of the Complete Critical Writings

 * A Test of Poetry. Foreword by Robert Creeley (Wesleyan University Press, 2000)
 * Prepositions+: The Collected Critical Essays. Foreword by Charles Bernstein; Additional Prose edited & introduced by Mark Scroggins (Wesleyan University Press, 2001)
 * Bottom: on Shakespeare, with Celia Thaew Zukofsky. Foreword by Bob Perelman (Wesleyan University Press, 2003)
 * A Useful Art: Essays and Radio Scripts on American Design. Edited with an introduction by Kenneth Sherwood; afterword by John Taggart (Wesleyan University Press, 2003)
 * The Writing of Guillaume Apollinaire/Le Style Apollinaire. Bilingual edition edited with introduction by Serge Gavronsky; foreword by Jean Daive (Wesleyan University Press, 2004)

The primary repository of Louis Zukofsky's manuscripts, notebooks and papers is the Harry Ransom Research Center at the University of Texas at Austin

title: Louis Zukofsky


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Lamaze technique

The Lamaze technique, also known as the psychoprophylactic method or simply Lamaze, began as a prepared childbirth technique. As an alternative to medical intervention during childbirth, it was popularized in the 1950s by French obstetrician Fernand Lamaze and based on his observations in the Soviet Union. The goal of Lamaze is to build a mother's confidence in her ability to give birth, through classes that help pregnant women understand how to cope with pain in ways that both facilitate labor and promote comfort, including relaxation techniques, movement, and massage.

There is a training and certification program available to practitioners, leading to the Lamaze Certified Childbirth Educator (LCCE) designation.

History
Lamaze visited the Soviet Union in the 1950s, and was influenced by birthing techniques which involved breathing and relaxation methods. The Lamaze method gained popularity in the United States after Marjorie Karmel wrote about her experiences in her 1959 book Thank You, Dr. Lamaze, as well as Elisabeth Bing's book Six Practical Lessons for an Easier Childbirth (1960). Both Karmel and Bing would later found the American Society for Psychoprophylaxis in Obstetrics in 1960, later renamed to Lamaze International.

Criticism
Lamaze himself has been criticized for being over-disciplinary and anti-feminist. Natural childbirth activist Sheila Kitzinger's description of the methods he deployed while working in a Paris clinic during the 1950s expresses concern regarding "the disciplinary nature" of Lamaze's approach to childbirth. According to Kitzinger, Lamaze consistently ranked the women's performance in childbirth from "excellent" to "complete failure" on the basis of their "restlessness and screams". Those who "failed" were, he thought, "themselves responsible because they harbored doubts or had not practiced sufficiently", and "intellectual" women who "asked too many questions" were considered by Lamaze to be the most "certain to fail".

The Lamaze technique has also been criticized for being ineffective.

license: Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/

title: Lamaze technique


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Kierspe

Kierspe is a town in the district Märkischer Kreis, in North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany. It is located at the western edge of the Sauerland on Volme River.

History
The first mention of Kierspe was in 1003, when the castle 'Haus Rhade' was first mentioned in a manuscript. On this basis Kierspe celebrated its 1000th anniversary in 2003. Around 1490 Kierspe became the seat of the Heilige Feme, an independent jury of commoners with the right to mete out the death penalty. Such Feme juries were common in Westphalia at the time.

In 1968, as part of the reorganization of the former district Altena, the city of Kierspe was formed by merging the Amt of Kierspe with the municipality of Rönsahl. On 1 January 1969 Kierspe officially obtained city rights.

Coat of arms
The city's coat of arms was derived from the former coat of arms of the Amt. It combines symbols for both of the member municipalities - Kierspe and Rönsahl - separated by the red-white checkered bar of the counts of the Mark. On the bottom of the coat of arms is a red lion with blue claws and tongue, the symbol of the counts of Berg and taken from the coat of arms of Rönsahl. On the top is a Rauk, a raven. It refers to the nickname given to young recruits, who imitated the sound of the raven when first wearing their blue uniform during mustering. The coat of arms was granted to the Amt on 20 August 1936, and to the city on 29 July 1969. It was designed by Otto Hupp.

The coat of arms of the municipality Kierspe was similar to the one of the Amt, except the bottom was a blank yellow field. It was granted on 17 October 1935. The coat of arms of the municipality Rönsahl had Saint Servatius in the top, the patron saint of the church in Rönsahl.

International relations
Kierspe has been twinned with the French town Montigny-le-Bretonneux since 1988. The partnership developed from a long-lasting student exchange of the Gesamtschule Kierspe with a high school in Montigny-le-Bretonneux.

The town is twinned with Denton, Greater Manchester, which is also twinned with Montigny-le-Bretonneux. A delegation from Denton arrived in April 2012 to discuss the twinning, which eventually took place in a ceremony in Denton on 22 September 2012. There was a large town festival including the planting of a German Linden tree in the town's park.

Connections with Britain
For a number of years the Gesamtschule Kierspe had an English Partnerschule in the form of St. Aidan's C of E High School in Harrogate, and exchanges would take place between British Year 10 pupils studying German and pupils at the Gesamtschule of a similar age. This came to an end in the last few years as St. Aidan's changed its system for teaching modern languages and eschewed the exchange link for a trip to the Rhineland for the Year 9 pupils. However, Year 12s from the school still go to Kierspe for two-week-long work experiences.

Notable people

 * Wilhelm Kattwinkel (1866-1935), neurologist and paleontologist
 * Roger Schmidt (born 1967), football coach

title: Kierspe


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Characteristic class

In mathematics, a characteristic class is a way of associating to each principal bundle of X a cohomology class of X. The cohomology class measures the extent to which the bundle is "twisted" and whether it possesses sections. Characteristic classes are global invariants that measure the deviation of a local product structure from a global product structure. They are one of the unifying geometric concepts in algebraic topology, differential geometry, and algebraic geometry.

The notion of characteristic class arose in 1935 in the work of Eduard Stiefel and Hassler Whitney about vector fields on manifolds.

Definition
Let G be a topological group, and for a topological space $$X$$, write $$b_G(X)$$ for the set of isomorphism classes of principal G-bundles over $$X$$. This $$b_G$$ is a contravariant functor from Top (the category of topological spaces and continuous functions) to Set (the category of sets and functions), sending a map $$f\colon X\to Y$$ to the pullback operation $$f^*\colon b_G(Y)\to b_G(X)$$.

A characteristic class c of principal G-bundles is then a natural transformation from $$b_G$$ to a cohomology functor $$H^*$$, regarded also as a functor to Set.

In other words, a characteristic class associates to each principal G-bundle $$P\to X$$ in $$b_G(X)$$ an element c(P) in H*(X) such that, if f : Y → X is a continuous map, then c(f*P) = f*c(P). On the left is the class of the pullback of P to Y; on the right is the image of the class of P under the induced map in cohomology.

Characteristic numbers
Characteristic classes are elements of cohomology groups; one can obtain integers from characteristic classes, called characteristic numbers. Some important examples of characteristic numbers are Stiefel–Whitney numbers, Chern numbers, Pontryagin numbers, and the Euler characteristic.

Given an oriented manifold M of dimension n with fundamental class $$[M] \in H_n(M)$$, and a G-bundle with characteristic classes $$c_1,\dots,c_k$$, one can pair a product of characteristic classes of total degree n with the fundamental class. The number of distinct characteristic numbers is the number of monomials of degree n in the characteristic classes, or equivalently the partitions of n into $$\mbox{deg}\,c_i$$.

Formally, given $$i_1,\dots,i_l$$ such that $$\sum \mbox{deg}\,c_{i_j} = n$$, the corresponding characteristic number is:
 * $$c_{i_1}\smile c_{i_2}\smile \dots \smile c_{i_l}([M])$$

where $$\smile$$ denotes the cup product of cohomology classes. These are notated variously as either the product of characteristic classes, such as $$c_1^2$$, or by some alternative notation, such as $$P_{1,1}$$ for the Pontryagin number corresponding to $$p_1^2$$, or $$\chi$$ for the Euler characteristic.

From the point of view of de Rham cohomology, one can take differential forms representing the characteristic classes, take a wedge product so that one obtains a top dimensional form, then integrate over the manifold; this is analogous to taking the product in cohomology and pairing with the fundamental class.

This also works for non-orientable manifolds, which have a $$\mathbf{Z}/2\mathbf{Z}$$-orientation, in which case one obtains $$\mathbf{Z}/2\mathbf{Z}$$-valued characteristic numbers, such as the Stiefel-Whitney numbers.

Characteristic numbers solve the oriented and unoriented bordism questions: two manifolds are (respectively oriented or unoriented) cobordant if and only if their characteristic numbers are equal.

Motivation
Characteristic classes are phenomena of cohomology theory in an essential way — they are contravariant constructions, in the way that a section is a kind of function on a space, and to lead to a contradiction from the existence of a section we do need that variance. In fact cohomology theory grew up after homology and homotopy theory, which are both covariant theories based on mapping into a space; and characteristic class theory in its infancy in the 1930s (as part of obstruction theory) was one major reason why a 'dual' theory to homology was sought. The characteristic class approach to curvature invariants was a particular reason to make a theory, to prove a general Gauss–Bonnet theorem.

When the theory was put on an organised basis around 1950 (with the definitions reduced to homotopy theory) it became clear that the most fundamental characteristic classes known at that time (the Stiefel–Whitney class, the Chern class, and the Pontryagin classes) were reflections of the classical linear groups and their maximal torus structure. What is more, the Chern class itself was not so new, having been reflected in the Schubert calculus on Grassmannians, and the work of the Italian school of algebraic geometry. On the other hand there was now a framework which produced families of classes, whenever there was a vector bundle involved.

The prime mechanism then appeared to be this: Given a space X carrying a vector bundle, that implied in the homotopy category a mapping from X to a classifying space BG, for the relevant linear group G. For the homotopy theory the relevant information is carried by compact subgroups such as the orthogonal groups and unitary groups of G. Once the cohomology $$H^*(BG)$$ was calculated, once and for all, the contravariance property of cohomology meant that characteristic classes for the bundle would be defined in $$H^*(X)$$ in the same dimensions. For example the Chern class is really one class with graded components in each even dimension.

This is still the classic explanation, though in a given geometric theory it is profitable to take extra structure into account. When cohomology became 'extraordinary' with the arrival of K-theory and cobordism theory from 1955 onwards, it was really only necessary to change the letter H everywhere to say what the characteristic classes were.

Characteristic classes were later found for foliations of manifolds; they have (in a modified sense, for foliations with some allowed singularities) a classifying space theory in homotopy theory.

In later work after the rapprochement of mathematics and physics, new characteristic classes were found by Simon Donaldson and Dieter Kotschick in the instanton theory. The work and point of view of Chern have also proved important: see Chern–Simons theory.

Stability
In the language of stable homotopy theory, the Chern class, Stiefel–Whitney class, and Pontryagin class are stable, while the Euler class is unstable.

Concretely, a stable class is one that does not change when one adds a trivial bundle: $$c(V \oplus 1) = c(V)$$. More abstractly, it means that the cohomology class in the classifying space for $$BG(n)$$ pulls back from the cohomology class in $$BG(n+1)$$ under the inclusion $$BG(n) \to BG(n+1)$$ (which corresponds to the inclusion $$\mathbf{R}^n \to \mathbf{R}^{n+1}$$ and similar). Equivalently, all finite characteristic classes pull back from a stable class in $$BG$$.

This is not the case for the Euler class, as detailed there, not least because the Euler class of a k-dimensional bundle lives in $$H^k(X)$$ (hence pulls back from $$H^k(BO(k))$$, so it can't pull back from a class in $$H^{k+1}$$, as the dimensions differ.

title: Characteristic class


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Kanpur

Kanpur, formerly anglicized as Cawnpore, is a large industrial city located in the central-western part of the state of Uttar Pradesh, India. Founded in year 1207, Kanpur became one of the most important commercial and military stations of British India. Kanpur is also the financial capital of Uttar Pradesh and part of upcoming Bundelkhand Industrial Development Authority i.e. BIDA Nestled on the banks of Ganges River, Kanpur has been the major financial and industrial centre of North India and also the ninth-largest urban economy in India. Today it is famous for its colonial architecture, gardens, sweets, dialect, IT parks and fine quality leather, plastic and textile products which are exported mainly to the West.

The city is home to historical monuments such as the Jajmau Ghat which dates back to 17th century AD. Kanpur is also home to several historical sites such as the Bithoor Museum, Bhitargaon Temple, European Cemetery and Nanarao Park.

It is the 12th most populous city and the 11th most populous urban agglomeration in India (Census of India, 2011). Kanpur was an important British garrison town until 1947, when India gained independence. The urban district of Kanpur Nagar serves as the headquarters of the Kanpur Division, Kanpur Range and Kanpur Zone.

Some of the more popular places in Kanpur include J. K. Temple, Kanpur Central, ZSquare Mall, Atal Ghat, Green Park Stadium and Ganga Barrage.

According to 2011 Indian census, it is the most populous urban city and the largest urban agglomeration in Uttar Pradesh while the population of city and its suburb were around 5 million making it the eighth-most populous metropolitan area in India.

History
In 1207, Raja Kanha-deo of the Kanhpuriya clan of Rajputs established the city of Kanhpur and made it his capital, which later came to be known as Kanpur.

The area was ruled by several rulers of Kannauj, such as Harsha Vardhan, Jai Chand and Mihir Bhoja. It was also ruled by Muslim rulers of the Sur dynasty. In May 1765, Shuja-ud-daula, the Nawab of Awadh, was defeated by the British near Jajmau. From 1773 to 1801, Kanpur was part of the Oudh Kingdom, followed by the treaty of 1801 between Nawab Saadat Ali Khan of Awadh and the British, who realized the strategic importance. Several European businessmen established themselves in Kanpur, during this time.

With the first woollen mill of India, commonly known as the Lal Imli (lit. 'Red Tamarind', for a brand produced by the mill) by the British India Corporation established here in 1876 by Alexander MacRobert. The eastern and northern façades of the mill are reminiscent of the Palace of Westminster, due to their architecture, proximity to the Ganges river and with the north-east corner of the mill being topped by a clock tower similar to Big Ben in London. This similarity underscores the city's importance and prestige during the British times, which extends till date; making the Lal Imli — a great highlight of the city. The city is also widely regarded as the "Leather City of the World" and is predominantly nicknamed as the "Manchester of the East", for its chemical, textile and leather industries. Alexander MacRobert has an area named after him in the city, McRobertganj.

1857 Uprising
In the 19th century, Cawnpore was an important British garrison with barracks for 7000 soldiers. During the Indian Rebellion of 1857, 900 British men, women and children were besieged in the fortifications for 22 days by rebels under Nana Sahib. They surrendered on the agreement that they would get safe passage to the nearby Sati Chaura Ghat whereupon they would board barges and be allowed to go by river to Allahabad.

Though controversy surrounds what exactly happened at the Sati Chaura Ghat, and who fired the first shot, it is known that, soon afterwards, the departing British were shot at by the sepoys and were either killed or captured. Some of the British officers later claimed that the sepoys had, on purpose, placed the boats as high in the mud as possible, to cause delay. They also claimed that Nana Sahib's camp had previously arranged for the sepoys to fire upon and to kill all of the English. Although the East India Company later accused Nana Sahib of betrayal and murder of innocent people, no evidence has ever been found to prove that Nana Sahib had planned or ordered the massacre. Some historians believe that the Sati Chaura Ghat massacre was the result of confusion and not of any plan implemented by Nana Sahib or of his associates. Lieutenant Mowbray Thomson, one of the four male survivors of the massacre, believed that the rank-and-file sepoys who spoke to him did not know of the killing to come.

Many were killed and the remaining 200 British women and children were brought back to shore and sent to a building called the Bibighar (House of the Ladies). After some time, the commanders of the rebels decided to kill their hostages. The rebel soldiers refused to carry out orders and butchers from the nearby town were brought in to kill the hostages three days before the British entered the city on 18 July. The dismembered bodies were thrown into a deep well nearby. The British, under General Neill, retook the city and committed a series of retaliations against the rebel sepoys and those civilians caught in the area, including women, children and old men. The Cawnpore massacre, as well as similar events elsewhere, were seen by the British as justification for unrestrained vengeance. "Remember Cawnpore" became a British war cry for the rest of the war.

Geography
Kanpur is located at 26.44992°N, 80.33187°W in the central-western part of the state of Uttar Pradesh. The city lies at a distance of approx 475 km from national-capital New Delhi and approx 90 km from the state-capital Lucknow. It is a part of the historical region of Awadh.

Situated in the flat Indo-Gangetic Plains, Kanpur has an average elevation of 318 m above sea level. The Ganges flows by the city and several ghats are located on its banks, notably the Sati Chaura Ghat and Sarsaiya Ghat. The Brahmavart Ghat located at Bithoor (25 km northwards) is another ghat of religious importance.

Several parks and recreational areas are located in Kanpur. Nana Rao Park and Phool Bagh are among the prominent parks in city that exist from the time of British Raj. The Moti Jheel, a rectangular lake, was originally developed as a drinking water reservoir. The lake has now been developed as a recreational area with a landscaped garden and a children's park. Nawabganj Bird Sanctuary is also located near Kanpur.

Climate
Like most of lowland northern India, Kanpur has a monsoon-influenced humid subtropical climate (Cwa) bordering on a hot semi-arid climate (BSh) under the Köppen climate classification.

Demographics
As per the provisional results of 2011 census, Kanpur Nagar district has a population of 4,581,000. The literacy rate was 79.65 per cent and sex ratio was 862. There are 35 Parsis in Kanpur with their Fire temple at The Mall. Hinduism is a majority in Kanpur with a sizeable minority of Muslims. Sikhs, Christians and Buddhists are below 2 percent.

Although final data of census 2023 is yet to be declared, population of Kanpur Nagar District is projected as 63,67,963 in year 2023 (estimation as per aadhar ‘UIDAI’ data).

As per 2011 Census, population of Kanpur City and its suburbs was 30,15,645 making it the largest urban agglomeration of Uttar Pradesh. Thereafter, urban area of Kanpur City has expanded to a large extent. However, limits of its urban area are still pending for approval by the Government. Tentatively population of Kanpur City and Kanpur metropolitan area in 2024 is projected as 39,26,000 and 51,00,000 respectively as per the data available so far.

Awadhi is the native dialect. Hindi and Urdu are the predominant languages in the city. Punjabi is spoken by 1.25%, while Bengali is spoken by over 11,000 people in the city.

Urban infrastructure
The metropolitan region defined under JNNURM by Kanpur Nagar Nigam, includes the Kanpur Nagar Nigam area, 8 kilometres around KNN boundary and newly included 47 villages of Unnao district on the north-eastern side, it extends to Murtaza Nagar, in the west its limit is up to Akbarpur, Kanpur Dehat Nagar Panchayat limit, on the eastern side the limit has been expanded on the road leading to Fatehpur and in extended up to. The metropolitan region area includes the area of Shuklaganj Municipal Committee (Nagar Palika), Unnao Municipal Committee (Nagar Palika), Akbarpur Village Authority (Nagar Panchayat) and Bithoor Village Authority (Nagar Panchayat) area. In 1997–98, total metropolitan region area has increased to 89131.15 hectare out of which 4,743.9 hectare (5.31%) was non-defined (prohibited area) and rest 29,683 hectare and 54,704 hectare (61.39%) was urban and rural area respectively.

General administration
Kanpur division which consists of six districts, and is headed by the divisional commissioner of Kanpur, who is an Indian Administrative Service (IAS) officer of high seniority, the commissioner is the head of local government institutions (including municipal corporations) in the division, is in charge of infrastructure development in his division, and is also responsible for maintaining law and order in the division. The district magistrate of Kanpur reports to the divisional commissioner. The current commissioner is Shri Amit Gupta.

Kanpur district administration is headed by the district magistrate of Kanpur, who is an IAS officer. The DM is in charge of property records and revenue collection for the central government and oversees the elections held in the city. The DM is also responsible for maintaining law and order in the city. The DM is assisted by a chief development officer; four additional district magistrates for finance/revenue, city, land acquisition, and civil supply; one city magistrat; and seven additional city magistrates. The district has four tehsils viz. Sadar, Bilhaur, Ghatampur and Narwal, each headed by a sub-divisional magistrate. The current DM is Mr. Rakesh Kumar Singh.

Civic Administration
Kanpur municipality was established on 22 November 1861, and was upgraded to a municipal corporation in 1959. The local government of Kanpur is governed under the Municipal act for the state, Uttar Pradesh Municipal Corporation Act, 1959.

The area under the municipal limits of Kanpur city, or Kanpur Municipal Corporation, is spread over an area of 403 square km. It oversees civic activities in the city. The head of the corporation is the mayor, but the executive and administration of the corporation are the responsibility of the municipal commissioner, who is an IAS officer. The executive wing is headed by municipal commissioner, Shri Shivasharanappa G N and has the following departments: Revenue, City Cleansing, Engineering, Marg Prakash, Health, Accounts, Personnel/HRD, Swasthya Vibhag, Education, Mukya Nagar Lekha Vibhag, Pariyojna, Udyan Vibhag, Chikitsa Vibhag, Encroachment & Cattle Catching Department. There is also an executive committee present in the city.

The development of infrastructure in the city is overseen by Kanpur Development Authority (KDA), which comes under the Housing Department of Uttar Pradesh government. The divisional commissioner of Kanpur acts as the ex-officio Chairman of KDA, whereas a vice chairperson, a government-appointed IAS officer, looks after the daily matters of the authority. The current vice-chairman of Kanpur Development Authority is Shri Vishakh G Iyer in additional charge.

The municipality receives revenue from general tax, advertisement tax, income from municipal properties, grants from state government etc.

Law and order
The Kanpur District Court is headed by the district judge of Kanpur, who is assisted by numerous additional district judges, civil judges (senior division) and additional civil judges. Kanpur is a notified metropolitan area by UP Government under Code of Criminal Procedure, 1973, and therefore has a chief metropolitan magistrate, who is assisted by several metropolitan magistrates. The district judge is Shri Pradeep Kumar Singh, and the chief metropolitan magistrate was Shri Sushil Kumar Singh.

Police administration
Kanpur Nagar police administration is headed by a Commissioner of Police which is an IPS officer of the rank of Additional Director General of Uttar Pradesh Police. Present Police Commissioner of Kanpur Nagar is Shri Ram Krishna Swarnkar, who is assisted by an Addl. Commissioner, a Joint Commissioner and several Dy. Commissioners, Addl. Dy. Commissioners, Assistant Commissioners of police who are either IPS officers or Provincial Police Service (PPS) officers. Each of the several police circles is headed by an Assistant Commissioner of Police in the rank of deputy superintendent of police.

Local politics
The city is divided into 6 zones and 110 wards with a ward population range of 19,000 to 26,000 and 110 corporators directly elected from each ward. As mandated by the 74th constitutional amendment, there were 11 ward committees in Kanpur municipal corporation in 1991. Local elections were last held in 2022, when the mayor, Pramila Pandey from the BJP, was re-elected. The previous mayor had been Captain (retired) Jagatvir Singh Drona. As of 2006, Kanpur Municipal Council has an elected mayor-in-council system.

State politics
Kanpur Nagar district encompasses one Lok Sabha constituency and ten Uttar Pradesh Vidhan Sabha constituencies. The city of Kanpur has one representative member of parliament in Lok Sabha for Kanpur, Satyadev Pachauri.

Civic Utilities
The first development plan of the city was created by the Kanpur Development Board in 1943. This was followed by the masterplan being designed by the Town and Country Planning Department from 1962 to 1991, which was adopted after the establishment of the Kanpur Development Authority in 1974. The most recent masterplan is the Draft Master Plan of 2021.

Electricity is supplied to the city by Kanpur Electricity Supply Company (KESCO), which is under the Uttar Pradesh Power Corporation Ltd (UPPCL). Fire services are under the state, Uttar Pradesh Fire Service.

Water supply, sewerage is done by the Jal Kal vibhag of KMC. Infrastructure development and maintenance is done by the state's body, UP Jal Nigam. The piped water supply of Kanpur City was started in 1892. After construction of Ganga Barrage on the river, a permanent and reliable source for the water supply got available to provide 1600 mld raw water. The city also receives water from the catchment areas of rivers Ganga and Pandu. However, while the total water supply requirement is 600 mld only 385 mld of potable water is being supplied. The city loses water due to leaky pipes and contamination of natural water sources. There is a severe water crisis in Kanpur.

In 2015, Ganga Pollution Control Unit in Kanpur got about Rs 200 crores to make 4 STPs functional. The city then reported having 3 STPs for domestic waste. In 2017, there was only one sewage treatment plant for waste from tanneries, biggest source of industrial pollution to the Ganga, was to be replaced by a newer one costing 400 cr as the old one could only treat 9 MLD at the most. 823.1 MLD of untreated sewage and 212.42 MLD of industrial effluent flow into the river. In 2019, another STP costing worth Rs 816.25 was to be set up. As of 2020, While the government has stopped pollution from Kanpur's biggest drain, Sishamau, of Kanpur's 48 drains, eight still have no devices to stop effluents.

Solid waste management is handled by the KMC. As of 2015, Kanpur generates 1,500 tonnes of solid wastes from domestic and industrial sources, 64,000 tonnes of hazardous waste annually which includes metals and waste generated by tanneries, dye industries and chemical industries; while coal ash produced in Kanpur amounts to 71,000 tonnes per annum.

Air
Kanpur Airport is a domestic airport and has direct scheduled commercial non-stop flights to New Delhi, Mumbai, and Bangalore. The nearest international airport to the city is the Chaudhary Charan Singh International Airport in Lucknow, which is around 77.1 km away.

Rail
Indian Railways: Kanpur Central is a major railhead and is among the busiest railway stations in the country. Rail routes connect it to all major cities in the state and the country. It is an A-1 category railway station that comes under the Prayagraj railway division of North Central Railway zone of Indian Railways. Around 300 trains pass through it daily. The city of Kanpur has eleven railway stations in addition to the main Kanpur Central:

Metro: The Kanpur Metro is a mass rapid transit (MRT) system in Kanpur. The metro is owned and operated by the Uttar Pradesh Metro Rail Corporation (UPMRC). It consists of two lines- Orange Line and Blue Line. The priority corridor of the Orange Line, which connects IIT Kanpur to Motijheel, was inaugurated by Prime Minister Narendra Modi on 28 December 2021.

Road
The city has had chronic problems with maintaining local roads. There are several important national highways that pass through Kanpur.

The UPSRTC inter state bus station (ISBT) of Kanpur is officially named as the "Shaheed Major Salman Khan bus station", and is locally known as the "Jhakarkati Bus Station". It provides buses to many important cities of India. Other important bus stations are the Chunniganj bus stand for Farrukhabad, Bareilly and Uttarakhand routes, and the Naubasta bus stand for Hamirpur route. Fazalganj is another hub for private carriers.

Ring road: In 2011, it was reported by The Indian Express that the National Highways Authority of India (NHAI) planned to develop a four-lane outer ring road along the periphery of Kanpur with an aim to prevent traffic congestion in the city caused by long-distance heavy vehicles. The new road, which would help heavy vehicles to bypass the city, would be developed on Built, Operate and Transfer (BOT) basis under the phase-VII of National Highways Development Programme (NHDP).

Economy
Kanpur is an important economic and industrial center in India.

Kanpur is one of the important economic centers in India. According to GDP per capita, it ranks 9th in Uttar Pradesh. Noida and Meerut rank 1st and 2nd notably. While the state capital Lucknow ranks 7th in the state in GDP per capita.

Higher education

The Indian Institute of Technology Kanpur (IIT Kanpur) is a public technical and research university located in Kanpur, Uttar Pradesh, India. It was established in 1959 as one of the first Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs), with the assistance of a consortium of nine US research universities as part of the Kanpur Indo-American Programme (KIAP).

Other educational institutions in the city include three state universities. Chhatrapati Shahu Ji Maharaj University is one of the largest universities in northern India catering to urban and rural students offering professional and academic courses in the disciplines of Arts, Science, Commerce, Law, Engineering, Biotechnology, Computer Applications, Management and Medicine.

Chandra Shekhar Azad University of Agriculture and Technology is an agricultural university named after the Indian revolutionary Chandrashekhar Azad which caters to the needs of the farming community of 29 districts of Uttar Pradesh.

Harcourt Butler Technical University (HBTU) offers Bachelors, Masters, and Doctoral programs in engineering, as well as Masters programs in Business Administration, and Computer Applications. Dr. Ambedkar Institute of Technology for Handicapped, an institution to provide technical education to specially-abled students inaugurated by former Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee in 1997, is also situated in Kanpur.

National Sugar Institute (NSI) is involved in research, training and advisory services to the sugar and allied industry, and functions under the Department of Food and Public Distribution of the Ministry of Consumer Affairs, Food and Public Distribution.

There are also private universities in the city such as Rama University, which is part of the Rama Group. There are several private technical and management institutions in the city.

Medical education
Ganesh Shankar Vidyarthi Memorial Medical College (GSVM Medical College) is a state-run medical college in Kanpur, Uttar Pradesh. It was founded in 1956 and named after Ganesh Shankar Vidyarthi, a freedom fighter and journalist from Kanpur. Lala Lajpat Rai Hospital, which is also known as Hallet Hospital, is associated with GSVM, Kanpur.

Notable people

 * Lala Kamlapat Singhania, industrialist
 * Padampat Singhania, industrialist
 * Kuldeep Yadav, cricketer
 * Harish-Chandra, mathematician
 * Giriraj Kishore, novelist
 * Irshad Mirza, industrialist
 * Gaurav Khanna, actor

title: Kanpur


text:
Juana Inés de la Cruz

Juana Inés de Asbaje y Ramírez de Santillana, better known as Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz (12 November 1648 – 17 April 1695), was a New Spain writer, philosopher, composer and poet of the Baroque period, as well as a Hieronymite nun, nicknamed "The Tenth Muse" and "The Phoenix of America" by her contemporary critics. As a Spanish-criolla from the New Spain, she was among the main American-born contributors to the Spanish Golden Age, alongside Juan Ruiz de Alarcón and Garcilaso de la Vega "el Inca", and is presently considered one of the most important female authors in Spanish language literature and the literature of Mexico.

Throughout history Sor Juana's significance to different communities has varied significantly, having been presented as a candidate for Catholic sainthood, a symbol of Mexican nationalism, freedom of speech, women's rights, sexual diversity, and others, making her a figure of great controversy and debate to this day.

Early life
Juana was born in San Miguel Nepantla (presently Nepantla de Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz) near Mexico City as the illegitimate daughter of Don Pedro Manuel de Asuaje y Vargas-Machuca, a Spanish navy captain from the Canary Islands involved in colonial transatlantic shipping and trade, and Doña Isabel Ramírez de Santillana y Rendón, a distinguished criolla, whose father leased the Hacienda de Panoaya, near Mexico City.There are two different baptism registrations that have been attributed to her, one under the name of "Juana" in 1648, and another one under the name of "Inés" in 1651, still a matter of academic research and debate. There is, nevertheless agreement that she was one of the three children that Doña Isabel Ramírez de Santillana had out of wedlock with Don Pedro de Asuaje. Despite having had an occasional contact with her father as a child, Sor Juana's infancy occurred entirely around her mother's family in the hacienda of Panaoya, in Amecameca, leased by her maternal grandfather, and home to the ample Ramírez de Santillana family. Among her relatives, several women with the name "Inés" have been noted, included her grandmother Inés de Brenes, her maternal-aunt Inés Ramírez de Santillana, and her first-cousin Inés de Brenes y Mendoza, married to a grandson of Antonio de Saavedra Guzmán, the first ever published American-born poet.

Later described as child prodigy, Sor Juana was educated at home at the Hacienda de Papaya, becoming fluent in both Latin and Nahuatl, and learning philosophy, and mathematics. She was given free access to her grandfather's private library.

During her childhood, Inés often hid in the hacienda chapel to read her grandfather's books from the adjoining library, something forbidden to girls. By the age of three, she had learned how to read and write Latin. By the age of five, she reportedly could do accounts. At age eight, she composed a poem on the Eucharist. By adolescence, Inés had mastered Greek logic, and at age thirteen she was teaching Latin to young children. She also learned the Aztec language of Nahuatl and wrote some short poems in that language.

In 1664, at the age of 16, Inés was sent to live in Mexico City. She asked her mother's permission to disguise herself as a male student so that she could enter the university there, without success. Without the ability to obtain a formal education, Juana continued her studies privately. Her family's influential position had gained her the position of lady-in-waiting at the colonial viceroy's court, where she came under the tutelage of the Vicereine Donna Eleonora del Carretto, a member of one of Italy's most prominent families, and wife of the Viceroy of New Spain Don Antonio Sebastián de Toledo, Marquis of Mancera. The viceroy Marquis de Mancera, wishing to test the learning and intelligence of the 17-year-old, invited several theologians, jurists, philosophers, and poets to a meeting, during which she had to answer many questions unprepared and explain several difficult points on various scientific and literary subjects. The manner in which she acquitted herself astonished all present and greatly increased her reputation. Her literary accomplishments garnered her fame throughout New Spain. She was much admired in the viceregal court, and she received several proposals of marriage, which she declined.

After joining a nunnery in 1667, Sor Juana began writing poetry and prose dealing with such topics as love, environmentalism, feminism, and religion. She turned her nun's quarters into a salon, visited by New Spain's female intellectual elite, including Doña Eleonora del Carreto, Marchioness of Mancera, and Doña Maria Luisa Gonzaga, Countess of Paredes de Nava, both Vicereines of the New Spain, among others. Her criticism of misogyny and the hypocrisy of men led to her condemnation by the Bishop of Puebla, and in 1694 she was forced to sell her collection of books and focus on charity towards the poor. She died the next year, having caught the plague while treating her sisters.

Religious life and name change
In 1667, she entered the Monastery of St. Joseph, a community of the Discalced Carmelite nuns, as a postulant, where she remained but a few months. Later, in 1669, she entered the monastery of the Hieronymite nuns, which had more relaxed rules, where she changed her name to Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz, probably in reference to Sor Juana de la Cruz Vázquez Gutiérrez who was a Spanish nun whose intellectual accomplishments earned her one of the few dispensations for women to preach the gospel. Another potential namesake was Saint Juan de la Cruz, one of the most accomplished authors of the Spanish Baroque. She chose to become a nun so that she could study as she wished since she wanted "to have no fixed occupation which might curtail my freedom to study."

In the convent and perhaps earlier, Sor Juana became intimate friends with Don Carlos de Sigüenza y Góngora, who visited her in the convent's locutorio. She stayed cloistered in the Convent of Santa Paula of the Hieronymite in Mexico City from 1669 until her death in 1695, and there she studied, wrote, and collected a large library of books. The Viceroy and Vicereine of New Spain became her patrons; they supported her and had her writings published in Spain. She addressed some of her poems to paintings of her friend and patron María Luisa Manrique de Lara y Gonzaga, daughter of Vespasiano Gonzaga, Duca di Guastala, Luzara e Rechiolo and Inés María Manrique, 9th Countess de Paredes, which she also addressed as Lísida.

In November 1690, the bishop of Puebla, Manuel Fernández de Santa Cruz published, under the pseudonym of Sor Filotea, and without her permission, Sor Juana's critique of a 40-year-old sermon by Father António Vieira, a Portuguese Jesuit preacher. Although Sor Juana's intentions for the work, called Carta Atenagórica are left to interpretation, many scholars have opted to interpret the work as a challenge to the hierarchical structure of the Catholic Church. Along with Carta Atenagórica, the bishop also published his own letter in which he said she should focus on religious instead of secular studies. He published his criticisms to use them to his advantage against the priest, and while he agreed with her criticisms, he believed that as a woman, she should devote herself to prayer and give up her writings.

In response to her critics, Sor Juana wrote a letter, Respuesta a Sor Filotea de la Cruz (Reply to Sister Philotea), in which she defended women's right to formal education. She also advocated for women's right to serve as intellectual authorities, not only through the act of writing, but also through the publication of their writing. By putting women, specifically older women, in positions of authority, Sor Juana argued, women could educate other women. Resultingly, Sor Juana argued, this practice could also avoid potentially dangerous situations involving male teachers in intimate settings with young female students. In 1691, she was reprimanded and ordered to stop writing after the exposure of a private letter in which she wrote of the right of women to education.

In addition to her status as a woman in a self-prescribed position of authority, Sor Juana's radical position made her an increasingly controversial figure. She famously remarked by quoting an Aragonese poet and echoing St. Teresa of Ávila: "One can perfectly well philosophize while cooking supper." In response, Francisco de Aguiar y Seijas, Archbishop of Mexico joined other high-ranking officials in condemning Sor Juana's "waywardness." In addition to opposition she received for challenging the patriarchal structure of the Catholic Church, Sor Juana was repeatedly criticized for believing that her writing could achieve the same philanthropic goals as community work.

By 1693, she seemingly ceased writing to avoid risking official censure. Although there is no undisputed evidence of her renouncing her writing, there are documents showing her agreeing to undergo penance. Her name is affixed to such a document in 1694, but the tone of the supposed handwritten penitentials is in rhetorical and autocratic, in contrast to her normally lyrical style. One is signed "Yo, la Peor de Todas" ("I, the worst of all women"). She is said to have sold all her books, then an extensive library of more than 4,000 volumes, as well as her musical and scientific instruments. Other sources report that her defiance toward the Church led to the confiscation of all of her books and instruments, although the bishop himself agreed with the contents of her letters.

Of more than one hundred unpublished works, only a few of her writings have survived, which are known as the Complete Works. According to Octavio Paz, her writings were saved by the vicereine.

She died after ministering to other nuns stricken during a plague, on 17 April 1695. Sigüenza y Góngora delivered the eulogy at her funeral.

First Dream
First Dream, a long philosophical and descriptive silva (a poetic form combining verses of 7 and 11 syllables), deals with the shadow of night beneath which a person falls asleep in the midst of quietness and silence. There night and day animals participate, either dozing or sleeping, all urged to silence and rest by Harpocrates. The person's body ceases its ordinary operations, which are described in physiological and symbolical terms, ending with the activity of the imagination as an image-reflecting apparatus: the Pharos. From this moment, her soul, in a dream, sees itself free at the summit of her own intellect; in other words, at the apex of a pyramid-like mount, which aims at God and is luminous.

There, perched like an eagle, she contemplates the whole creation, but fails to comprehend such a sight in a single concept. Dazzled, the soul's intellect faces its own shipwreck, caused mainly by trying to understand the overwhelming abundance of the universe, until reason undertakes that enterprise, beginning with each individual creation, and processing them one by one, helped by the ten categories of Aristotle.

The soul cannot get beyond questioning herself about the traits and causes of a fountain and a flower, intimating perhaps that his method constitutes a useless effort, since it must take into account all the details, accidents, and mysteries of each being. By that time, the body has consumed all its nourishment, and it starts to move and wake up, soul and body are reunited. The poem ends with the Sun overcoming Night in battle between luminous and dark armies, and with the poet's awakening.

Love poetry
Sor Juana's first volume of poetry, Inundación castálida, was published in Spain by the Vicereine Maria Luisa Manrique de Lara y Gonzága, Countess of Paredes, Marquise de la Laguna. Many of her poems dealt with the subject of love and sensuality. Colombian-American translator Jaime Manrique described her poetry thus: "her love poems are expressions of a complex and ambivalent modern psyche, and because they are so passionate and ferocious that when we read them we feel consumed by the naked intensity she achieves." One of Sor Juana's sonnets:

Hombres Necios (Sátira Filosófica) or You foolish men (Philosophical satire)
Sor Juana's Hombres Necios (Foolish men), written in the 1680s, is among the first proto-feminist literary works in the Americas that explores the double standards of men while also accusing men of trying to diminish a woman's honor. During seventeenth-century Mexico the society was heavily patriarchal, but Sor Juana managed to publish this work, which added to the backlash she would eventually face from the Church. Yet Sor Juana was driven by a conviction for women's education and was determined to apply her writing to challenge those who believed a woman's intellectual abilities were irrelevant.

Erin Elizabeth details how Sor Juana structured the poem to be centered on accusations onto men that elevate the meaning behind the poem. Sor Juana emphasizes the male irrationality with a man's ability and behavior to harm a woman by deeming her as "impure" by ruining her honor and reputation. Sor Juana does this by casting the blame on men arguing that they are the root cause of their mistakes and create problems for women to avoid their own mistakes. Elizabeth argues that by utilizing impurity and the concept of "fall from grace", Hombres Necios implores the double standards men use on women that creates a path for women leaving them in situations they cannot win. While also including the names of Thais and Lucretia along with the concept of prostitution to add on how men use women and leave them helpless with nothing but the blame and hatred.

Hombres necios explored the idea of why women were frequently held guilty for the sins that men incited onto them. Sor Juana expresses her voice through the use of the Baroque literary style, which was prevalent at her time, in a manner that can be understood. Today it is often seen as a pro-feminist love letter, and even in a "machista" Latin American society it has been popular among the population.

Dramas
In addition to the two comedies outlined here (House of Desires [ Los empeños de una casa]) and Love is but a Labyrinth ([Amor es mas laberinto]), Sor Juana is attributed as the author of a possible ending to the comedy by Agustin de Salazar: The Second Celestina (La Segunda Celestina). In the 1990s, Guillermo Schmidhuber found a release of the comedy that contained a different ending than the otherwise known ending. He proposed that those one thousand words were written by Sor Juana. Some literary critics, such as Octavio Paz, Georgina Sabat-Rivers, and Luis Leal ) have accepted Sor Juana as the co-author, but others, such as Antonio Alatorre and José Pascual Buxó, have refuted it.

Comedies
Scholars have debated the meaning of Juana's comedies. Julie Greer Johnson describes how Juana protested against the rigorously defined relationship between genders through her full-length comedies and humor. She argues that Juana recognized the negative view of women in comedy which was designed to uphold male superiority at the expense of women. By recognizing the power of laughter, Juana appropriated the purpose of humor, and used it as a socially acceptable medium with which to question notions of men and women.

Pawns of a House

The work was first performed on October 4, 1683, during the celebration of the Viceroy Count of Paredes’ first son's birth. Some critics maintain that it could have been set up for the Archbishop Francisco de Aguiar y Seijas’ entrance to the capital, but this theory is not considered reliable.

The story revolves around two couples who are in love but, by chance of fate, cannot yet be together. This comedy of errors is considered one of the most prominent works of late baroque Spanish-American literature. One of its most peculiar characteristics is that the driving force in the story is a woman with a strong, decided personality who expresses her desires to a nun. The protagonist of the story, Dona Leonor, fits the archetype perfectly.

It is often considered the peak of Sor Juana's work and even the peak of all New-Hispanic literature. Pawns of a House is considered a rare work in colonial Spanish-American theater due to the management of intrigue, representation of the complicated system of marital relationships, and the changes in urban life.

Love is but a Labyrinth

The work premiered on February 11, 1689, during the celebration of the inauguration of the viceroyalty Gaspar de la Cerda y Mendoza. However, in his Essay on Psychology, Ezequiel A. Chavez mentions Fernandez del Castillo as a coauthor of this comedy.

The plot takes on the well-known theme in Greek mythology of Theseus: a hero from Crete Island. He fights against the Minotaur and awakens the love of Ariadne and Phaedra. Sor Juana conceived Theseus as the archetype of the baroque hero, a model also used by her fellow countryman Juan Ruiz de Alarcón. Theseus's triumph over the Minotaur does not make Theseus proud, but instead allows him to be humble.

Music
Besides poetry and philosophy, Sor Juana was interested in science, mathematics and music. The latter represents an important aspect, not only because musicality was an intrinsic part of the poetry of the time but also for the fact that she devoted a significant portion of her studies to the theory of instrumental tuning that, especially in the Baroque period, had reached a point of critical importance. So involved was Sor Juana in the study of music, that she wrote a treatise called El Caracol (which is lost now) that sought to simplify musical notation and solve the problems that Pythagorean tuning suffered.

In the writings of Juana Inés, it is possible to detect the importance of sound. We can observe this in two ways. First of all, the analysis of music and the study of musical temperament appears in several of her poems. For instance, in the following poem, Sor Juana delves into the natural notes and the accidentals of musical notation:

Propiedad es de natura que entre Dios y el hombre media, y del cielo el be cuadrado junto al be bemol de la tierra. (Villancico 220)

Professor Sarah Finley argues that the visual is related with patriarchal themes, while the sonorous offers an alternative to the feminine space in the work of Sor Juana. As an example of this, Finley points out that Narciso falls in love with a voice, and not with a reflection.

Other notable works
One musical work attributed to Sor Juana survives from the archive of Guatemala Cathedral. This is a 4-part villancico, Madre, la de los primores.

Other works include Hombres Necios (Foolish Men), and The Divine Narcissus.

Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz wrote a letter to her Confessor, Antonio Núñez de Miranda, titled Autodefensa Espiritual (Spiritual Self-Defense) in 1690, ten years before she severs ties after sending the Respuesta a Sor Filotea. However, unlike the Respuesta, the Autodefensa has much more biting and frank language used. In the Autodefensa, Sor Juana defends her intellectual pursuits and criticizes the restrictions placed on women's education and opportunities to pursue knowledge. She argues that women have the same rational souls as men and should be able to study and engage in intellectual pursuits. In the Autodefensa letter, Sor Juana uses this more forceful and confrontational language to reprimand and dismiss her Confessor. This has led scholars to suggest that the Autodefensa was a rehearsal for the arguments she would later make in the Respuesta. In both letters, Sor Juana defends her right to pursue knowledge and critiques the restrictions placed on women's intellectual development. Many of these themes were feminist in nature with one of the most notable being the right of women to be able to study intellectual pursuits. This theme is prevalent in the lines,

“But who has prohibited women private and individual studies? Do they not have a rational soul like men? Why should it then not enjoy within them the privilege of enlightenment in an education? Is it not as capable of earning God’s glory and grace as yours? Why should it not be capable of such news and science, a trifle? What divine revelation, what determination of the Church, what dictate of reason made for us such a severe law?” (translated from Tapia Mendez 1993).

Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz's Autodefensa Espiritual and Respuesta a Sor Filotea are considered some of the most significant feminist writings of the 17th century. Her advocacy for women's intellectual rights was particularly groundbreaking, as women in her time were often restricted from pursuing academic and intellectual pursuits. Sor Juana's writings challenged patriarchal structures and called for greater gender equality and opportunities for women to pursue their passions. Sor Juana's writings were not only feminist but also expressed her thoughts on politics and religion. She was known for her strong defense of her beliefs and refusal to be silenced, which resulted in her being criticized by the Church and other powerful figures of her time. Despite facing backlash and opposition, Sor Juana continued to write and publish her works. Her work continues to inspire feminists and scholars today, and she is celebrated as a feminist icon and a leading voice in Latin American literature and intellectual thought. Sor Juana's writing also had a significant impact on the development of Mexican literature and culture, and she is considered a national treasure in Mexico.

Translations and interpretations
Octavio Paz is credited with re-establishing the importance of the historic Sor Juana in modern times, and other scholars have been instrumental in translating Sor Juana's work to other languages. The only translations of Carta Atenagorica are found in Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz: Selected Writings by Pamela Kirk Rappaport and The Tenth Muse: Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz by Fanchon Royer. Translations of Sor Juana's La Respuesta are credited to Electa Arenal and Amanda Powell, Edith Grossman, Margaret Seyers Peden, and Alan S. Trubeblood. These translations are respectively found in The Answer/La Respuesta, Sor Juana Ines de la Cruz: Selected Works, A Woman of Genius: The Intellectual Biography of Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz and Poems, Protest, and a Dream, and A Sor Juana Anthology.

Since Sor Juana's works were rediscovered after her death, scholarly interpretations and translations are both abundant and contrasting.

Octavio Paz
Octavio Paz was a Mexican Nobel Prize laureate and scholar. In his 1982 book, Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz o las trampas de la fe (translated to English by Margaret Sayers Peden as Sor Juana: Or, The Traps of Faith), Paz examines and contemplates Sor Juana's poetry and life in the context of the history of New Spain, particularly focusing on the difficulties women then faced while trying to thrive in academic and artistic fields. Primarily, Paz aims to explain why Sor Juana chose to become a nun. In Juana Ramírez, Octavio Paz and Diane Marting find that Sor Juana's decision to become a nun stemmed from her refusal to marry; joining the convent, according to Paz and Marting, was a way for Juana to obtain authority and freedom without marrying.

In his analyses of Sor Juana's poetry, Octavio Paz traces some of her influences to the Spanish writers of the Golden Age and the Hermetic tradition, mainly derived from the works of a noted Jesuit scholar of her era, Athanasius Kircher. Paz interprets Sor Juana's most ambitious and extensive poem, "First Dream" ("Primero Sueño"), as a representation of the desire of knowledge through a number of hermetic symbols, albeit transformed in her own language and skilled image-making abilities. In conclusion, Paz makes the case that Sor Juana's works were the most important body of poetic work produced in the Americas until the arrival of 19th-century figures such as Emily Dickinson and Walt Whitman.

Tarsicio Herrera Zapién
Tarsicio Herrera Zapién, a classical scholar, has also devoted much of his career to the study of Sor Juana's works. Some of his publications (in Spanish) include Buena fe y humanismo en Sor Juana: diálogos y ensayos: las obras latinas: los sorjuanistas recientes (1984); López Velarde y sor Juana, feministas opuestos: y cuatro ensayos sobre Horacio y Virgilio en México (1984); Poemas mexicanos universales: de Sor Juana a López Velarde (1989) and Tres siglos y cien vidas de Sor Juana (1995).

Feminist analyses and translations
Scholars such as Scout Frewer argue that because Juana's advocacy for religious and intellectual authority would now be associated with feminism, she was a protofeminist. In the twenty-first century, Latin American philosophers and scholars generally interpret Sor Juana as a feminist before the time of feminism.

For instance, scholars like Rachel O’Donnell argue that Sor Juana occupied a special place in between socially acceptable and socially unacceptable roles in seventeenth century Mexico. By examining Sor Juana intersectionally, they prioritize the context of New Spain, specifically the influence of religion, race, and social norms, in understanding Sor Juana as a female theologian and poet.

According to O’Donnell, in colonial Mexico, education was an undertaking reserved for men, especially activities like writing and reading. Consequently, scholars like Octavio Paz argue, religion became a way for women to avoid marriage. Since Sor Juana was opposed to marriage, Paz argues, entering the convent was a socially acceptable way to be a single woman in seventeenth century Mexico. Entering the convent also meant that Sor Juana could read and write about religion despite the barriers to formal education for women. O’Donnell argues that Sor Juana was called a rare bird because although theology was only an acceptable pursuit for men in the Catholic Church, she actively studied religion. Sor Juana likely perceived wisdom and religion as inseparable, so she probably also believed that to follow God was to pursue wisdom. A third perspective suggests that considering the colonial context of New Spain and Sor Juana's background as a criolla, she represented colonial knowledge in a way that defied colonial religious structures.

Luis Felipe Fabre criticized 'Sorjuanista' scholarship as a whole, arguing that the discourse is binary rather than complex and multilayered.

Luis Felipe Fabre
Luis Felipe Fabre, a Mexican writer and scholar, ridicules other scholars, whom he collectively calls Sorjuanistas, who idolize Sor Juana. In his book, Sor Juana and Other Monsters, Fabre argues that the appropriation and recontextualization immanent in scholars' interpretations of Sor Juana construct Sor Juana as either a heretic or a lesbian. Fabre suggests that such representations constitute Sor Juana as a monstrosity or abnormality rather than as a complex woman. He suggests that rather than locating Sor Juana in a fixed identity, scholarship on Sor Juana should be a fluctuating and multilayered conversation.

Margaret Sayers Peden
Margaret Sayers Peden's 1982 A Woman of Genius: The Intellectual Autobiography of Sor Juana Ines de la Cruz, was the first English translation of Sor Juana's work. As well, Peden is credited for her 1989 translation of Sor Juana: Or, the Traps of Faith. Unlike other translations, Peden chose to translate the title of Sor Juana's best known work, First Dream, as "First I Dream" instead. Peden's use of first person instills authority in Sor Juana as an author, as a person with knowledge, in a male-dominated society. Peden also published her English translations of Sor Juana's work in an anthology called Poems, Protest, and a Dream. This work includes her response to authorities censuring her, La Respuesta, and First Dream.

Electa Arenal and Amanda Powell
An equally valuable feminist analysis and interpretation of Sor Juana's life and work is found in The Answer/La Respuesta by Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz by Electa Arenal, a Sor Juana scholar who is recognized among feminists who changed America, and Amanda Powell, a poet and translator. The original publication, released in 1994 by The Feminist Press, was re-released in an updated second edition in 2009, also by The Feminist Press. The bilingual publication includes poems, an annotated publication of Sor Juana's response to Church officials and her impassioned plea for education of women, analysis and a bibliography. The Answer applies a valuable gender lens to Sor Juana's writings and life. In their feminist analysis, Powell and Arenal translate the viewpoint of Sor Juana's writing as gender-ambiguous. Released in an updated second edition in 2009, also by The Feminist Press, the bilingual publication includes poems, an annotated publication of Sor Juana's response to Church officials and her impassioned plea for education of women, analysis and a bibliography.

Theresa A. Yugar
Theresa A. Yugar, a feminist theologian scholar in her own right, wrote her Master's and Doctoral theses on Sor Juana. Her book, Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz: Feminist Reconstruction of Biography and Text, discusses the life of Sor Juana through a feminist lens and analysis of her texts, La Respuesta (The Answer) and El Primero Sueño (First Dream).

Yugar aims to understand why individuals in Mexico in the twenty-first century have more knowledge of Frida Kahlo than Sor Juana. She celebrates poet Octavio Paz for crossing national borders with his internationally acclaimed work on Sor Juana: Or, The Traps of Faith. However, while Paz establishes Sor Juana's historical relevance, Yugar expands on his work to establish Sor Juana's importance in the twenty-first century.

Yugar argues that Sor Juana is the first female bibliophile in the New World. She also argues that Sor Juana's historic focus on gender and class equality in education (the public sphere) and the household (the private sphere), in addition to her advocacy for language rights, and the connection between indigenous religious traditions and ecological protection were paramount in the seventeenth century. Today's similar advocacy ignores her primal position in that work which is currently exclusively associated with ecofeminism and feminist theology.

Philanthropy
The Sor Juana Inés Services for Abused Women was established in 1993 to pay Sor Juana's dedication to helping women survivors of domestic violence forward. Renamed the Community Overcoming Relationship Abuse (CORA), the organization offers community, legal, and family support services in Spanish to Latin American women and children who have faced or are facing domestic violence.

Education
The San Jerónimo Convent, where Juana lived the last 27 years of her life and where she wrote most of her work is today the University of the Cloister of Sor Juana in the historic center of Mexico City. The Mexican government founded in the university in 1979.

Political controversy
While Sor Juana was a famous and controversial figure in the seventeenth century, she is also an important figure in modern times.

During renovations at the cloister in the 1970s, bones believed to be those of Sor Juana were discovered. A medallion similar to the one depicted in portraits of Juana was also found. Margarita López Portillo, the sister of President José López Portillo (1976–1982), kept the medallion. During the tercentennial of Sor Juana's death in 1995, a member of the Mexican congress called on Margarita López Portillo to return the medallion, which she said she had taken for safekeeping. She returned it to Congress on November 14, 1995, with the event and description of the controversy reported in The New York Times a month later. Whether or not the medallion belonged to Juana, the incident sparked discussions about Juana and abuse of official power in Mexico.

Historic feminist movements
Amanda Powell locates Sor Juana as a contributor to the Querelles des Femmes, a three-century long literary debate about women. Central to this early feminist debate were ideas about gender and sex, and, consequently, misogyny.

Powell argues that the formal and informal networks and pro-feminist ideas of the Querelles des Femmes were important influences on Sor Juana's work, La Respuesta. For women, Powell argues, engaging in conversation with other women was as significant as communicating through writing. However, while Teresa of Ávila appears in Sor Juana's La Respuesta, Sor Juana makes no mention of the person who launched the debate, Christine de Pizan. Rather than focusing on Sor Juana's engagement with other literary works, Powell prioritizes Sor Juana's position of authority in her own literary discourse. This authoritative stance not only demonstrates a direct counter to misogyny, but was also typically reserved for men. As well, Sor Juana's argument that ideas about women in religious hierarchies are culturally constructed, not divine, echoes ideas about the construction of gender and sex.

Modern feminist movements
Yugar connects Sor Juana to feminist advocacy movements in the twenty-first century, such as religious feminism, ecofeminism, and the feminist movement in general.

Although the current religious feminist movement grew out of the Liberation Theology movement of the 1970s, Yugar uses Sor Juana's criticism of religious law that permits only men to occupy leadership positions within the Church as early evidence of her religious feminism. Based on Sor Juana's critique of the oppressive and patriarchal structures of the Church of her day, Yugar argues that Sor Juana predated current movements, like Latina Feminist Theology, that privilege Latina women's views on religion. She also cites modern movements such as the Roman Catholic Women Priest Movement, the Women's Ordination Conference, and the Women's Alliance for Theology, Ethics and Ritual, all of which also speak out against the patriarchal limitations on women in religious institutions.

Yugar emphasizes that Sor Juana interpreted the Bible as expressing concern with people of all backgrounds as well as with the earth. Most significantly, Yugar argues, Sor Juana expressed concern about the consequences of capitalistic Spanish domination over the earth. These ideas, Yugar points out, are commonly associated with modern feminist movements concerned with decolonization and the protection of the planet.

Colonial and indigenous identities
As a woman in religion, Sor Juana has become associated with the Virgin of Guadalupe, a religious symbol of Mexican identity, but was also connected to Aztec goddesses. For example, parts of Sor Juana's Villancico 224 are written in Nahuatl, while others are written in Spanish. The Virgin of Guadalupe is the subject of the Villancico, but depending on the language, the poem refers to both the Virgin of Guadalupe and Cihuacoatl, an indigenous goddess. It is ambiguous whether Sor Juana prioritizes the Mexican or indigenous religious figure, or whether her focus is on harmonizing the two.

Sor Juana's connection to indigenous religious figures is also prominent in her Loa to Divine Narcissus, (Spanish "El Divino Narciso") (see Jauregui 2003, 2009). The play centers on the interaction between two Indigenous people, named Occident and America, and two Spanish people, named Religion and Zeal. The characters exchange their religious perspectives, and conclude that there are more similarities between their religious traditions than there are differences. The loa references Aztec rituals and gods, including Huitzilopochtli, who symbolized the land of Mexico.

Scholars like Nicole Gomez argue that Sor Juana's fusion of Spanish and Aztec religious traditions in her Loa to Divine Narcissus aims to raise the status of indigenous religious traditions to that of Catholicism in New Spain. Gomez argues that Sor Juana also emphasizes the violence with which Spanish religious traditions dominated indigenous ones. Ultimately, Gomez argues that Sor Juana's use of both colonial and indigenous languages, symbols, and religious traditions not only gives voice to indigenous peoples, who were marginalized, but also affirms her own indigenous identity.

Through their scholarly interpretations of Sor Juana's work, Octavio Paz and Alicia Gaspar de Alba have also incorporated Sor Juana into discourses about Mexican identity. Paz's accredited scholarship on Sor Juana elevated her to a national symbol as a Mexican woman, writer, and religious authority. On the contrary, Gaspar de Alba emphasized Sor Juana's indigenous identity by inserting her into Chicana discourses.

Connection to Frida Kahlo
Paul Allatson emphasizes that women like Sor Juana and Frida Kahlo masculinized their appearances to symbolically complicate the space marked for women in society. Sor Juana's decision to cut her hair as punishment for mistakes she made during learning signified her own autonomy, but was also a way to engage in the masculinity expected of male-dominated spaces, like universities. According to Paul Allatson, nuns were also required to cut their hair after entering the convent. These ideas, Allatson suggests, are echoed in Frida Kahlo's 1940 self-portrait titled Self-Portrait with Cropped Hair, or Autorretrato con cabellos corto.

As well, the University of the Cloister of Sor Juana honored both Frida Kahlo and Sor Juana on October 31, 2018, with a symbolic altar. The altar, called Las Dos Juanas, was specially made for the Day of the Dead.

Official recognition by the Mexican government
In present times, Sor Juana is still an important figure in Mexico.

In 1995, Sor Juana's name was inscribed in gold on the wall of honor in the Mexican Congress in April 1995. In addition, Sor Juana is pictured on the obverse of the 200 pesos bill issued by the Banco de Mexico, and the 1000 pesos coin minted by Mexico between 1988 and 1992. The town where Sor Juana grew up, San Miguel Nepantla in the municipality of Tepetlixpa, State of Mexico, was renamed in her honor as Nepantla de Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz.

Veneration
In 2022, the Episcopal Church of the United States gave final approval and added her feast to the liturgical calendar. Her feast day is April 18.

Literature

 * American poet Diane Ackerman wrote a verse drama, Reverse Thunder, about Sor Juana (1992).
 * Canadian poet and novelist Margaret Atwood's 2007 book of poems The Door includes a poem entitled "Sor Juana Works in the Garden".
 * Puerto Rican poet Giannina Braschi wrote the postmodern Spanglish novel Yo-Yo Boing! in which characters debate the greatest women poets, acknowledging both Sor Juana and Emily Dickinson.
 * Canadian novelist Paul Anderson devoted 12 years writing a 1300-page novel entitled Hunger's Brides (pub. 2004) on Sor Juana. His novel won the 2005 Alberta Book Award.
 * Sor Juana was the subject of a 2007 fictionalized novel entitled Sor Juana’s Second Dream: A Novel by Alicia Gaspar de Alba.

Music

 * American composer John Adams and director Peter Sellars used two of Sor Juana's poems, Pues mi Dios ha nacido a penar and Pues está tiritando in their libretto for the Nativity oratorio-opera El Niño (2000).
 * Composer Allison Sniffin's original composition, Óyeme con los ojos – (Hear Me with Your Eyes: Sor Juana on the Nature of Love), based on text and poetry by Sor Juana, was commissioned by Melodia Women's Choir, which premiered the work at the Kaufman Center in New York City.
 * Composer Daniel Crozier and librettist Peter M. Krask wrote With Blood, With Ink, an opera based around her life, while both were students at Baltimore's Peabody Institute in 1993. The work won first prize in the National Operatic and Dramatic Association's Chamber Opera Competition. In 2000, excerpts were included in the New York City Opera's Showcasing American Composers Series. The work in its entirety was premiered by the Fort Worth Opera on April 20, 2014, and recorded by Albany Records.
 * Puerto Rican singer iLe recites part of one of Sor Juana's sonnets in her song "Rescatarme".
 * In 2013, the Brazilian composer Jorge Antunes composed an electroacoustic musical work entitled CARTA ATHENAGÓRICA, in the studio of CMMAS (Mexican Center for Music and Sound Arts) in the city of Morelia, with the support of Ibermúsicas. The composition, which honors Sor Juana is called "Figurative Music", in which the musical structure and musical objects are based on rhetoric with figures of speech. In the work Antunes uses the chiasmus, also called retruécano, from poems of Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz.

Film, television and video

 * Mexican actress Andrea Palma played her in the 1935 biopic "Sor Juana Inės de la Cruz"
 * A telenovela about her life, Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz, was created in 1962.
 * María Luisa Bemberg wrote and directed the 1990 film Yo, la peor de todas (I, the Worst of All), based on Octavo Paz's Sor Juana: Or, the Traps of Faith based on Sor Juana's life.
 * The Spanish-language miniseries Juana Inés (2016) by Canal Once TV, starring Arantza Ruiz and Arcelia Ramírez as Sor Juana, dramatizes her life.

Theater

 * Helen Edmundson's play The Heresy of Love, based on the life of Sor Juana, was premiered by the Royal Shakespeare Company in early 2012 and revived by Shakespeare's Globe in 2015.
 * Jesusa Rodríguez has produced a number of works concerning Sor Juana, including Sor Juana en Almoloya and Striptease de Sor Juana, based on Juana's poem "Primero Sueño".
 * Playwright, director, and producer Kenneth Prestininzi wrote Impure Thoughts (Without Apology), which follows Sor Juana's experience with Bishop Francisco Aguilar y Seijas. " ".
 * Tanya Saracho's play The Tenth Muse, a fictionalized 18th-century drama about women in a convent in Colonial Mexico included seven female characters and their discovery of and relationship to Sor Juana's writings, debuted at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival.

title: Juana Inés de la Cruz