This book looks at representations of the male body, sexuality and power in the arts in Mexico. It analyses literature, visual art and cinema produced from the 1870s to the present, focusing on the Porfirian regime, the Post-revolutionary era, the decadence of the revolutionary state and the emergence of the neo-liberal order in the 1980s.

In Collective Biologies, Emily A. Wentzell uses sexual health research participation as a case study for investigating the use of individual health behaviors to aid groups facing crisis and change. Wentzell analyzes couples' experiences of a longitudinal study of HPV occurrence in men in Cuernavaca, Mexico. She observes how their experiences reflected Mexican cultural understandings of group belonging through categories like family and race. For instance, partners drew on collective rather than individualistic understandings of biology to hope that men's performance of “modern” masculinities, marriage, and healthcare via HPV research would aid groups ranging from church congregations to the Mexican populace. Thus, Wentzell challenges the common regulatory view of medical research participation as an individual pursuit. Instead, she demonstrates that medical research is a daily life arena that people might use for fixing embodied societal problems. By identifying forms of group interconnectedness as “collective biologies,” Wentzell investigates how people can use their own actions to enhance collective health and well-being in ways that neoliberal emphasis on individuality obscures.

The Serpent's Plumes analyzes contemporary Nahua cultural production, principally bilingual Nahuatl-Spanish xochitlajtoli, or "poetry," written from the 1980s to the present. Adam W. Coon draws on Nahua perspectives as a decolonizing theoretical framework to argue that Nahua writers deploy unique worldviews—namely, ixtlamatilistli ("knowledge with the face," which highlights the value of personal experiences); yoltlajlamikilistli ("knowledge with the heart," which underscores the importance of affective intelligence); and tlaixpan ("that which is in front," which presents the past as lying ahead of a subject rather than behind). The views of ixtlamatilistli, yoltlajlamikilistli, and tlaixpan are key in Nahua struggles and effectively challenge those who attempt to marginalize Native knowledge production.

This book examines key moments in which collective and state violence invigorated racialized social boundaries around Mexican and African Americans in the United States, and in which they violently contested them. Bringing anti-Mexican violence into a common analytical framework with anti-black violence, A savage song examines several focal points in this oft-ignored history, including the 1915 rebellion of ethnic Mexicans in South Texas, and its brutal repression by the Texas Rangers and the 1917 mutiny of black soldiers of the 24th Infantry Regiment in Houston, Texas, in response to police brutality. Aragon considers both the continuities and stark contrasts across these different moments: how were racialized constructions of masculinity differently employed? How did African and Mexican American men, including those in uniform, respond to the violence of racism? And how was their resistance, including their claims to manhood and nation, understood by law enforcement, politicians, and the press? Building on extensive archival research, the book examines how African and Mexican American men have been constructed as ‘racial problems’, investigating, in particular, their relationship with law enforcement and ideas about black and Mexican criminality.

A collection of histories showing how women participated in Mexican revolutionary and postrevolutionary state formation by challenging conventions of sexuality, work, family life, and religious practice.

This set has an ambitious scope with the goal of offering the most up-to-date international overview of key issues in the lives of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender individuals. HIV/AIDS has been a major media focus, but this set fosters a broader understanding of the status of LGBT individuals in their society. More than 70 countries are represented. The clear, accessible prose is appropriate for high school student research on up. The material is especially needed in a cultural climate that increasingly supports and requires information about LGBT populations. The content is useful for a paper on a hot topic, health classes, discussion groups, and gay-straight alliance groups.

This collection explores the literary tradition of Caribbean Latino literature written in the U.S. beginning with José Martí and concluding with 2008 Pulitzer Prize winning novelist, Junot Díaz. The contributors consider the way that spatial migration in literature serves as a metaphor for gender, sexuality, racial, identity, linguistic, and national migrations.