When Columbus was born in the mid-fifteenth century, Europe was largely isolated from the rest of the Old World - Africa and Asia - and ignorant of the existence of the world of the Western Hemisphere. The voyages of Christopher Columbus opened a period of European exploration and empire building that breached the boundaries of those isolated worlds and changed the course of human history. This book describes the life and times of Christopher Columbus on the 500th aniversary of his first voyage across the Atlantic Ocean in 1492. Since ancient times, Europeans had dreamed of discovering new routes to the untold riches of Asia and the Far East, what set Columbus apart from these explorers was his single-minded dedication to finding official support to make that dream a reality. More than a simple description of the man, this new book places Columbus in a very broad context of European and world history. Columbus's story is not just the story of one man's rise and fall. Seen in its broader context, his life becomes a prism reflecting the broad range of human experience for the past five hundred years. Respected historians of medieval Spain and early America, the authors examine Columbus's quest for funds, first in Portugal and then in Spain, where he finally won royal backing for his scheme. Through his successful voyage in 1492 and three subsequent journeys to the new world Columbus reached the pinnacle of fame and wealth, and yet he eventually lost royal support through his own failings. William and Carla Rahn Phillips discuss the reasons for this fall and describe the empire created by the Spaniards in the lands across the ocean, even though neither they, nor anyone else in Europe, know precisely where or what those lands were. In examining the birth of a new world, this book reveals much about the times that produced these intrepid explorers.

John Carlos Rowe, considered one of the most eminent and progressive critics of American literature, has in recent years become instrumental in shaping the path of American studies. His latest book examines literary responses to U.S. imperialism from the late eighteenth century to the 1940s. Interpreting texts by Charles Brockden Brown, Poe, Melville, John Rollin Ridge, Twain, Henry Adams, Stephen Crane, W. E. B Du Bois, John Neihardt, Nick Black Elk, and Zora Neale Hurston, Rowe argues that U.S. literature has a long tradition of responding critically or contributing to our imperialist ventures. Following in the critical footsteps of Richard Slotkin and Edward Said, Literary Culture and U.S. Imperialism is particularly innovative in taking account of the public and cultural response to imperialism. In this sense it could not be more relevant to what is happening in the scholarship, and should be vital reading for scholars and students of American literature and culture.

This book, designed and written on a grand scale, is about the quest over three centuries of Spaniards born in the New World to define their 'American' identity.

"Aníbal González's book is a rich, exquisitely erudite, highly original, brilliantly argued essay about profound ethical issues in the history of writing literature in Spanish America. . . . It is the work of a consummate and recognized critic at the height of his powers."--César A. Salgado, Associate Professor of Spanish and Portuguese, University of Texas at AustinWriting and violence have been inextricably linked in Spanish America from the Conquest onward. Spanish authorities used written edicts, laws, permits, regulations, logbooks, and account books to control indigenous peoples whose cultures were predominantly oral, giving rise to a mingled awe and mistrust of the power of the written word that persists in Spanish American culture to the present day. In this masterful study, Aníbal González traces and describes how Spanish American writers have reflected ethically in their works about writing's relation to violence and about their own relation to writing. Using an approach that owes much to the recent "turn to ethics" in deconstruction and to the works of Jacques Derrida and Emmanuel Levinas, he examines selected short stories and novels by major Spanish American authors from the late nineteenth through the twentieth centuries: Manuel Gutiérrez Nájera, Manuel Zeno Gandía, Teresa de la Parra, Jorge Luis Borges, Alejo Carpentier, Gabriel García Márquez, and Julio Cortázar. He shows how these authors frequently display an attitude he calls "graphophobia," an intense awareness of the potential dangers of the written word.

Christopher Columbus authored over a hundred documents, many of them letters giving testimony on the Discovery to Isabela and Ferdinand. In this first book in English to focus specifically on these writings, Margarita Zamora offers an original analysis of their textual problems and ideological implications. Her comprehensive study takes into account the newly discovered "Libro Copiador," which includes previously unknown letters from Columbus to the Crown. Zamora examines those aspects of the texts that have caused the most anxiety and disagreement among scholars—questions concerning Columbus's destination, the authenticity and authority of the texts attributed to him, Las Casas's editorial role, and Columbus's views on the Indians. In doing so she opens up the vast cultural context of the Discovery. Exploring the ways in which the first images of America as seen through European eyes both represented and helped shape the Discovery, she maps the inception and growth of a discourse that was to dominate the colonizing of the New World. This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press's mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1993. Christopher Columbus authored over a hundred documents, many of them letters giving testimony on the Discovery to Isabela and Ferdinand. In this first book in English to focus specifically on these writings, Margarita Zamora offers an original analysis of

Reclaiming the notion of literature as an institution essential for reflecting on the violence of culture, history, and politics, Violence and Naming exposes the tension between the irreducible, constitutive violence of language and the reducible, empirical violation of others. Focusing on an array of literary artifacts, from works by journalists such as Elena Poniatowska and Sergio González Rodríguez to the Zapatista communiqués to Roberto Bolaño's The Savage Detectives and 2666, this examination demonstrates that Mexican culture takes place as a struggle over naming—with severe implications for the rights and lives of women and indigenous persons. Through rereadings of the Conquest of Mexico, the northern Mexican feminicide, the Zapatista uprising in Chiapas, the disappearance of the forty-three students at Iguala in 2014, and the 1999 abortion-rights scandal centering on “Paulina,” which revealed the tenuousness of women’s constitutionally protected reproductive rights in Mexico, Violence and Naming asks how societies can respond to violence without violating the other. This essential question is relevant not only to contemporary Mexico but to all struggles for democracy that promise equality but instead perpetuate incessant cycles of repression.

Chronicles the life of Simón Bolívar, exploring his political career, leadership dynamics, rule over the people of Spanish America, and impact on world history.