Driven by such diverse advances as the Human Genome Project and the explosion of the World Wide Web, and also by the threat of human-inspired disasters such as global warming, the field of science and literature studies is currently undergoing an unprecedented expansion. The relations between science and literature have been and continue to be central to understanding Hispanic civilization and culture. In spite of this, Science, Literature, and Film in the Spanish-Speaking World is the first and only book to treat this new and dynamic field from an Hispanic perspective. This unique volume opens the door to an entirely new focus in the study of Hispanic literature and culture.

Driven by such diverse advances as the Human Genome Project and the explosion of the World Wide Web, and also by the threat of human-inspired disasters such as global warming, the field of science and literature studies is currently undergoing an unprecedented expansion. The relations between science and literature have been and continue to be central to understanding Hispanic civilization and culture. In spite of this, Science, Literature, and Film in the Spanish-Speaking World is the first and only book to treat this new and dynamic field from an Hispanic perspective. This unique volume opens the door to an entirely new focus in the study of Hispanic literature and culture.

Combining work by critics from Latin America, the USA, and Europe, Latin American Science Fiction: Theory and Practice is the first anthology of articles in English to examine science fiction in all of Latin America, from Mexico and the Caribbean to Brazil and the Southern Cone. Using a variety of sophisticated theoretical approaches, the book explores not merely the development of a science fiction tradition in the region, but more importantly, the intricate ways in which this tradition has engaged with the most important cultural and literary debates of recent year.

Challenging the common view that Latin America has lagged behind Europe and North America in the global history of science, this volume reveals that the region has long been a center for scientific innovation and imagination. It highlights the important relationship between science, politics, and culture in Latin American history.

This is the first study to examine the representation of illness, disability, and cultural pathologies in modern and contemporary Iberian and Latin American literature. Innovative and interdisciplinary, the collection situates medicine as an important and largely overlooked discourse in these literatures, while also considering the social, political, religious, symbolic, and metaphysical dimensions underpinning illness. Investigating how Hispanic and Lusophone writers have reflected on the personal and cultural effects of illness, it raises central questions about how medical discourses, cultural pathologies, and the art of healing in general are represented. Essays pay particular attention to the ways in which these interdisciplinary dialogues chart new directions in the study of Hispanic and Lusophone cultures, and emerging disciplines such as the medical humanities. Addressing a wide range of themes and subjects including bioethics, neuroscience, psychosurgery, medical technologies, Darwinian evolution, indigenous herbal medicine, the rising genre of the pathography, and the ‘illness as metaphor’ trope, the collection engages with the discourses of cultural studies, gender studies, disability studies, comparative literature, and the medical humanities. This book enriches and stimulates scholarship in these areas by showing how much we still have to gain from interdisciplinary studies working at the intersections between the humanities and the sciences.

Science in Latin America has roots that reach back to the information gathering and recording practices of the Maya, Aztec, and Inca civilizations. Spanish and Portuguese conquerors and colonists introduced European scientific practices to the continent, where they hybridized with local traditions to form the beginnings of a truly Latin American science. As countries achieved their independence in the nineteenth century, they turned to science as a vehicle for modernizing education and forwarding "progress." In the twentieth century, science and technology became as omnipresent in Latin America as in the United States and Europe. Yet despite a history that stretches across five centuries, science in Latin America has traditionally been viewed as derivative of and peripheral to Euro-American science. To correct that mistaken view, this book provides the first comprehensive overview of the history of science in Latin America from the sixteenth century to the present. Eleven leading Latin American historians assess the part that science played in Latin American society during the colonial, independence, national, and modern eras, investigating science's role in such areas as natural history, medicine and public health, the eighteenth-century Enlightenment, politics and nation-building, educational reform, and contemporary academic research. The comparative approach of the essays creates a continent-spanning picture of Latin American science that clearly establishes its autonomous history and its right to be studied within a Latin American context.

Many readers are unaware of the vast universe of Latin American science fiction, which has its roots in the 18th century and has flourished to the present day. Because science fiction is part of Latin American popular culture, it reflects cultural and social concerns and comments on contemporary society. While there is a growing body of criticism on Latin American science fiction, most studies treat only a single author or work. This reference offers a broad overview of Latin American science fiction. Included are alphabetically arranged entries on 70 Latin American science fiction writers. While some of these are canonical figures, others have been largely neglected. Since much of science fiction has been written by women, many women writers are profiled. Each entry is prepared by an expert contributor and includes a short biography, a discussion of the writer's works, and primary and secondary bibliographies. The volume closes with a general bibliography of anthologies and criticism.