The first comprehensive analysis of the novels of prominent contemporary Spanish writer and educator Josefina Aldecoa. Josefina Aldecoa, in her treatment of themes such as a woman's place in society under and after dictatorship, mother-daughter relationships, war, and memory, confirmed her unique role as a contemporary novelist concerned with women's identity in Spain and as a writer of the mid-century generation ('los niños de la guerra'). The first volume of her trilogy, Historia de una maestra, was one of the earliest narratives of historical memory to beproduced in Spain. In this sense, Aldecoa's work anticipated new developments in gender studies, such as the intersection of feminist concerns and cultural memory. This book offers a comprehensive examination of Aldecoa's trajectory as a novelist, from La enredadera to Hermanas, centring on her primary preoccupations of gender and memory, arguing that Aldecoa's fiction offers a new, more complex understanding of women's identity than previously understood. The work combines the two dominating theoretical components of feminism and cultural memory with close textual analysis of Aldecoa's narratives. Her novels highlight the importance of the details of women's daily experiences and struggles throughout the twentieth century, a period of significant socio-political upheaval and change in Spain's history. NUALA KENNY teaches Spanish at the National University of Maynooth, Ireland.

Memory, War, and Dictatorship in Recent Spanish Fiction by Women analyzes five novels by women writers that present women’s experiences during and after the Spanish Civil War and Franco dictatorship, highlighting the struggles of female protagonists of different ages to confront an unresolved individual and collective past. It discusses the different narrative models and strategies used in these works and the ways in which they engage with their political and historical context, particularly in the light of campaigns for the so-called recovery of historical memory in Spain (the “memory boom”) and in the broader context of memory and trauma studies. The novels that are examined in this book are Dulce Chacón’s La voz dormida (2002), Rosa Regàs’s Luna lunera (1999), Josefina Aldecoa’s La fuerza del destino (1997), Carme Riera’s La mitad del alma (2005), and Almudena Grandes’s El corazón helado (2007). These works all highlight the multiple nature of memories and histories and demonstrate the complex ways in which the past impacts on the present. This book also considers the extent to which the memories represented in these five novels are inflected by gender and informed by the gender politics of twentieth-century and contemporary Spain.

Anti-Catholicism in the Mexican Revolution, 1913–1940 examines anti-Catholic leaders and movements during the Mexican Revolution, an era that resulted in a constitution denying the Church political rights. Anti-Catholic Mexicans recognized a common enemy in a politically active Church in a predominantly Catholic nation. Many books have elucidated the popular roots and diversity of Roman Catholicism in Mexico, but the perspective of the Church’s adversaries has remained much less understood. This volume provides a fresh perspective on the violent conflict between Catholics and the revolutionary state, which was led by anti-Catholics such as Plutarco Elías Calles, who were bent on eradicating the influence of the Catholic Church in politics, in the nation’s educational system, and in the national consciousness. The zeal with which anti-Catholics pursued their goals—and the equal vigor with which Catholics defended their Church and their faith—explains why the conflict between Catholics and anti-Catholics turned violent, culminating in the devastating Cristero Rebellion (1926–1929). Collecting essays by a team of senior scholars in history and cultural studies, the book includes chapters on anti-Catholic leaders and intellectuals, movements promoting scientific education and anti-alcohol campaigns, muralism, feminist activists, and Mormons and Mennonites. A concluding afterword by Matthew Butler, a global authority on twentieth-century Mexican religion, provides a larger perspective on the themes of the book.

"Booz llegó a una colina que ascendía en el espacio. A medida que caminaba el horizonte iba descubriéndose y los valles y bosques, lagos y cascadas, ríos y desiertos, mares y peñascos, ciclos y astros; mostraron a su mirada la excelencia de la soledad del desierto, el murmullo del agua que se desborda en el abismo, la serenidad del lago, la vida frondosa del bosque, el río que como arteria alimenta a la tierra, la mar que guarda misterios y vida, los cielos que son espejismos y creación y los soles que iluminan al cosmos. Todo tenía vida, era refulgente en toda su plenitud; todo guardaba la primitividad de la bondad, el arrebato del amor y la sinceridad de la dádiva." Adalberto Garcia de Mendoza

Throughout Spain's tumultuous twentieth century, women writers produced a dazzling variety of novels, popular theater, and poetry. Their work both reflected and helped to transform women’s gender, family, and public roles, carving out new space in the literary canon. This multilingual collection of essays by both scholars and creative artists explores the diversity of Spanish women's writing, both celebrated and forgotten. Contributors: Nicole Altamirano, Marta E. Altisent, Emilie L. Bergmann, Alda Blanco, Sara Brenneis, Kathleen M. Glenn, P. Louise Johnson, Jo Labanyi, Geraldine Cleary Nichols, Pilar Nieva de la Paz, Soledad Puértolas, Clara Sánchez

The desire to see afresh, to see differently, both old and not-so-old texts underlies Visions and Revisions: Women's Narrative in Twentieth-Century Spain. The authors studied, born between 1867 and l966, evince an interest in one or more of the issues that structure and give unity to this book: the construction of the self, concepts of gender and nation, center and margin, and efforts to recover and/or reconstruct the past, both individual and collective. In addition to focusing on questions that are currently of great critical interest, the volume features both Castilian and Catalan authors: Josefina Aldecoa, Carmen de Burgos, Maria Aurèlia Capmany, Dulce Chacón, Lucía Etxebarria, Ana María Moix, Carme Riera, Montserrat Roig, and Mercedes Salisachs. The contributors are distinguished Hispanists based in the United States, Spain, Canada, England, and New Zealand: Christine Arkinstall, Silvia Bermúdez, Maryellen Bieder, José F. Colmeiro, M. Àngels Francés, David K. Herzberger, P. Louise Johnson, Shirley Mangini, Esther Raventós-Pons, and Lisa Vollendorf. Their essays, which employ a variety of critical and theoretical approaches, will be of special interest to students of twentieth-century Peninsular literature, comparative literature, women's studies, and feminist criticism.