Neil Foley examines the complex interplay among regional, national, and international politics that plagued the efforts of Mexican Americans and African Americans to find common ground in ending employment discrimination and school segregation.

Reflecting on humanity's shared desire for certainty, this book explores the discrepancies between religious adherence and inner belief specific to the early modern period, a time marred by forced conversions and inquisition.

The Signifying Self: Cervantine Drama as Counter-Perspective Aesthetic offers a comprehensive analysis of all eight of Cervantes's Ocho comedias (published 1615), moving beyond conventional anti-Lope approaches to Cervantine dramatic practise in order to identify what, indeed, his theatre promotes. Considered on its own aesthetic terms, but also taking into account ontological and socio-cultural concerns, this study compels a re-assessment of Cervantes's drama and conflates any monolithic interpretations which do not allow for the textual interplay of contradictory and conflicting discourses which inform it. Cervantes's complex and polyvalent representation of freedom underpins such an approach; a concept which is considered to be a leitmotif of Cervantes's work but which has received scant attention with regards to his theatre. Investigation of this topic reveals not only Cervantes's rejection of established theatrical convention, but his preoccupation with the difficult relationship between the individual and the early modern Spanish world. Cervantes's comedias emerge as a counter-perspective to dominant contemporary Spanish ideologies and more orthodox artistic imaginings. Ultimately, The Signifying Self seeks to recuperate the Ocho comedias as a significant part of the Cervantine, and Golden-Age, canon and will be of interest and benefit to those scholars who work on Cervantes and indeed on early modern Spanish theatre in general.

In this book, author Louise K. Stein analyzes early modern opera as appreciated and produced by Gaspar de Haro y Guzmán (1629-87), Marqués de Heliche and del Carpio and a distinguished patron of the arts in Madrid, Rome, and Naples. It also reveals his lasting legacy in the Americas during a crucial period for the growth and development of opera and the history of singing.

The narrative style of both Clarice Lispector and Carmen Boullosa is characterized by a postmodern tendency toward an increased reader participation. This is accomplished by a process of liberalizing a pre-established socio-cultural repertoire with respect to female identity. The female protagonists, created by Lispector and Boullosa and examined in this book, struggle to find their true voices and their real life experiences. The resulting literary style of both these authors parallels this struggle, subverting traditional narrative structure and utilizing a dialogue that is particularly suited to describe this feminine process of conscientization.