Modern literary culture depended on the medium of the print book. Today, with the advent of digital technologies, it is far from apparent that print is, or should be, the vehicle of choice for contemporary writers. Print has been placed in relief, as the book becomes a site of experimentation with new platforms for writing. Among Latin American countries, none has been as crucial player in the world of print as Argentina. Argentine presses were the channel for many of the great modern literary experiments in Latin America. As such, it comes as no surprise that today, when those same presses have been gobbled up by transnational media conglomerates and digital technologies abound, Argentine writers would be attentive to the shifting media of literature. Late Book Culture in Argentina chronicles that shift. Epplin offers readings of some of the most innovative Argentine writers and collective projects of recent years: Osvaldo Lamborghini, C�sar Aira, the cardboard publishing house Elo�sa Cartonera, the poetry project Estaci�n Pringles, Sergio Chejfec, and Pablo Katchadjian. This corpus provides a lens through which to understand the numerous experiments with literary formats in Argentina today. These experiments take on a number of forms?digital, artisanal, and collective?and they provide the ferment for some of Argentina's most audacious contemporary literature. As such they deserve critical attention and theoretical examination.

Here, the author assesses our modern book culture by focusing on five key elements including the explosion of retail bookstores like Barnes & Noble and Borders, and the formation of the Oprah Book Club.

In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, a massive wave of immigration transformed the cultural landscape of Argentina. Alongside other immigrants to Buenos Aires, German speakers strove to carve out a place for themselves as Argentines without fully relinquishing their German language and identity. Their story sheds light on how pluralistic societies take shape and how immigrants negotiate the terms of citizenship and belonging. Focusing on social welfare, education, religion, language, and the importance of children, Benjamin Bryce examines the formation of a distinct German-Argentine identity. Through a combination of cultural adaptation and a commitment to Protestant and Catholic religious affiliations, German speakers became stalwart Argentine citizens while maintaining connections to German culture. Even as Argentine nationalism intensified and the state called for a more culturally homogeneous citizenry, the leaders of Buenos Aires's German community advocated for a new, more pluralistic vision of Argentine citizenship by insisting that it was possible both to retain one's ethnic identity and be a good Argentine. Drawing parallels to other immigrant groups while closely analyzing the experiences of Argentines of German heritage, Bryce contributes new perspectives on the history of migration to Latin America—and on the complex interconnections between cultural pluralism and the emergence of national cultures.

Latin America is experiencing a boom in graphic novels that are highly innovative in their conceptual play and their reworking of the medium. Inventive artwork and sophisticated scripts have combined to satisfy the demand of a growing readership, both at home and abroad. Posthumanism and the Graphic Novel in Latin America, which is the first book-length study of the topic, argues that the graphic novel is emerging in Latin America as a uniquely powerful force to explore the nature of twenty-first century subjectivity. The authors place particular emphasis on the ways in which humans are bound to their non-human environment, and these ideas are productively drawn out in relation to posthuman thought and experience. The book draws together a range of recent graphic novels from Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Mexico and Uruguay, many of which experiment with questions of transmediality, the representation of urban space, modes of perception and cognition, and a new form of ethics for a posthuman world. Praise for Posthumanism and the Graphic Novel in Latin America '...well-referenced and… well considered - the analyses it brings are overall well-executed and insightful...' Image and Narrative, Jan 2018, vol 18, no 4

I the Supreme imagines a dialogue between the nineteenth-century Paraguayan dictator known as Dr. Francia and Policarpo Patiño, his secretary and only companion. The opening pages present a sign that they had found nailed to the wall of a cathedral, purportedly written by Dr. Francia himself and ordering the execution of all of his servants upon his death. This sign is quickly revealed to be a forgery, which takes leader and secretary into a larger discussion about the nature of truth: “In the light of what Your Eminence says, even the truth appears to be a lie.” Their conversation broadens into an epic journey of the mind, stretching across the colonial history of their nation, filled with surrealist imagery, labyrinthine turns, and footnotes supplied by a mysterious “compiler.” A towering achievement from a foundational author of modern Latin American literature, I the Supreme is a darkly comic, deeply moving meditation on power and its abuse—and on the role of language in making and unmaking whole worlds.

Textuality is the condition in which a text is created, edited, archived, published, disseminated, and consumed. “Texts,” therefore, encompass a broad variety of artifacts: traditional printed matter such as grammar books and newspaper articles; phonographs; graphic novels; ephemera such as fashion illustrations, catalogs, and postcards; and even virtual databases and cataloging systems.\ Latin American Textualities is a wide-ranging, interdisciplinary look at textual history, textual artifacts, and digital textualities across Latin America from the colonial era to the present. Editors Heather J. Allen and Andrew R. Reynolds gather a wide range of scholars to investigate the region’s textual scholarship. Contributors offer engaging examples of not just artifacts but also the contexts in which the texts are used. Topics include Guamán Poma’s library, the effect of sound recordings on writing in Argentina, Sudamericana Publishing House’s contribution to the Latin American literary boom, and Argentine science fiction. Latin American Textualities provides new paths to reading Latin American history, culture, and literatures. Contributors: Heather J. Allen Catalina Andrango-Walker Sam Carter Sara Castro-Klarén Edward King Rebecca Kosick Silvia Kurlat Ares Walther Maradiegue Clayton McCarl José Enrique Navarro Andrew R. Reynolds George Antony Thomas Zac Zimmer

Grappling with the contemporary Latin American literary climate and its relationship to the pervasive technologies that shape global society, this book visits Latin American literature, technology, and digital culture from the post-boom era to the present day. The volume examines literature in dialogue with the newest media, including videogames, blogs, electronic literature, and social networking sites, as well as older forms of technology, such as film, photography, television, and music. Together, the essays interrogate how the global networked subject has affected local political and cultural concerns in Latin America. They show that this subject reflects an affective mode of knowledge that can transform the way scholars understand the effects of reading and spectatorship on the production of political communities. The collection thus addresses a series of issues crucial to current and future discussions of literature and culture in Latin America: how literary, visual, and digital artists make technology a formal element of their work; how technology, from photographs to blogs, is represented in text, and the ramifications of that presence; how new media alters the material circulation of culture in Latin America; how readership changes in a globalized electronic landscape; and how critical approaches to the convergences, boundaries, and protocols of new media might transform our understanding of the literature and culture produced or received in Latin America today and in the future.