Essays by intellectuals and specialists in Latin American cultural studies that provide a comprehensive view of the specific problems, topics, and methodologies of the field vis-a-vis British and U.S. cultural studies.

"A reference work containing 54 entries defining and explaining generally accepted cultural studies terms as well as those specific to the study of Latin American culture"--

Featuring twenty-five key essays from the Journal of Latin American Cultural Studies (Traves/sia), this book surveys the most influential themes and concepts, as well as scouring some of the polemics and controversies, which have marked the field over the last quarter of a century since the Journal's foundation in 1992. Emerging at a moment of crisis of revolutionary narratives, and at the onset of neoliberal economics and emergent narcopolitics, the cultural studies impetus in Latin America was part of an attempted intellectual reconstruction of the (centre-) left in terms of civil society, and the articulation of social movements and agencies, thinking beyond the verticalist constructions from previous decades. This collection maps these developments from the now classical discussions of the ‘cultural turn’ to more recent responses to the challenges of biopolitics, affect theory, posthegemony and ecocriticism. It also addresses novel political constellations including resurgent national-popular or eco-nativist and indigenous agencies. Framed by a critical introduction from the editors, this volume is both a celebration of influential essays published over twenty five years of the Journal and a representative overview of the field in its multiple ramifications, entrenchments and exchanges.

DIVArgues for the saliency of the category of the subaltern over that of class./div

The Latin American Ecocultural Reader is a comprehensive anthology of literary and cultural texts about the natural world. The selections, drawn from throughout the Spanish-speaking countries and Brazil, span from the early colonial period to the present. Editors Jennifer French and Gisela Heffes present work by canonical figures, including José Martí, Bartolomé de las Casas, Rubén Darío, and Alfonsina Storni, in the context of our current state of environmental crisis, prompting new interpretations of their celebrated writings. They also present contemporary work that illuminates the marginalized environmental cultures of women, indigenous, and Afro-Latin American populations. Each selection is introduced with a short essay on the author and the salience of their work; the selections are arranged into eight parts, each of which begins with an introductory essay that speaks to the political, economic, and environmental history of the time and provides interpretative cues for the selections that follow. The editors also include a general introduction with a concise overview of the field of ecocriticism as it has developed since the 1990s. They argue that various strands of environmental thought—recognizable today as extractivism, eco-feminism, Amerindian ontologies, and so forth—can be traced back through the centuries to the earliest colonial period, when Europeans first described the Americas as an edenic “New World” and appropriated the bodies of enslaved Indians and Africans to exploit its natural bounty.

Academic and research fields are moved by fads, waves, revolutionaries, paradigm shifts, and turns. They all imply a certain degree of change that alters the conditions of a stable system, producing an imbalance that needs to be addressed by the field itself. New Approaches to Latin American Studies: Culture and Power offers researchers and students from different theoretical fields an essential, turn-organized overview of the radical transformation of epistemological and methodological assumptions in Latin American Studies from the end of the 1980s to the present. Sixteen chapters written by experts in their respective fields help explain the various ways in which to think about these shifts. Questions posited include: Why are turns so crucial? How did they alter the shape or direction of the field? What new questions, objects, or problems did they contribute? What were or are their limitations? What did they displace or prevent us from considering? Among the turns included are: memory, transnational, popular culture, decolonial, feminism, affect, indigenous studies, transatlantic, ethical, post/hegemony, deconstruction, cultural policy, subalternism, gender and sexuality, performance, and cultural studies.

Alejandro de la Fuente and George Reid Andrews offer the first systematic, book-length survey of humanities and social science scholarship on the exciting field of Afro-Latin American studies. Organized by topic, these essays synthesize and present the current state of knowledge on a broad variety of topics, including Afro-Latin American music, religions, literature, art history, political thought, social movements, legal history, environmental history, and ideologies of racial inclusion. This volume connects the region's long history of slavery to the major political, social, cultural, and economic developments of the last two centuries. Written by leading scholars in each of those topics, the volume provides an introduction to the field of Afro-Latin American studies that is not available from any other source and reflects the disciplinary and thematic richness of this emerging field.