A COMPANION TO LATIN AMERICAN LITERATURE AND CULTURE “The work contains a wealth of information that must surely provide the basic material for a number of study modules. It should find a place on the library shelves of all institutions where Latin American studies form part of the curriculum.” Reference Review “In short, this is a fascinating panoply that goes from a reevaluation of pre-Columbian America to an intriguing consideration of recent developments in the debate on the modem and postmodern. Summing Up: Recommended.” CHOICE A Companion to Latin American Literature and Culture reflects the changes that have taken place in cultural theory and literary criticism since the latter part of the twentieth century. Written by more than thirty experts in cultural theory, literary history, and literary criticism, this authoritative and up-to-date reference places major authors in the complex cultural and historical contexts that have compelled their distinctive fiction, essays, and poetry. This allows the reader to more accurately interpret the esteemed but demanding literature of authors such as Jorge Luis Borges, Mario Vargas Llosa, Octavio Paz, and Diamela Eltit. Key authors whose work has defined a period, or defied borders, as in the cases of Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz, César Vallejo, and Gabriel García Márquez, are also discussed in historical and theoretical context. Additional essays engage the reader with in-depth discussions of forms and genres, and discussions of architecture, music, and film This text provides the historical background to help the reader understand the people and culture that have defined Latin American literature and its reception. Each chapter also includes short selected bibliographic guides and recommendations for further reading.

A collection of 15 short stories by female, Latin American writers, including Isabel Allende and Luisa Valenzuela. Ranging across boundaries of geography and gender, the work covers such topics as incest, race, politics, sexual needs, love, old age, and child abuse.

Santos takes a keen look at the way mass culture has influenced artististic production in Latin America during the past 40 years. This ambitious book is a significant contribution to the study of Latin American literature and art, queer studies, and cultural studies.

Fernando J. Rosenberg explores Latin American artistic production concerned with the possibility of justice after the establishment, rise, and ebb of the human rights narrative around the turn of the last century. Prior to this, key literary and artistic projects articulated Latin American modernity by attempting to address and supplement the state's inability to embody and enact justice. Rosenberg argues that since the topics of emancipation, identity, and revolution no longer define social concerns, Latin American artistic production is now situated at a point where the logic and conditions of marketization intersect with the notion of rights through which subjects define themselves politically. Rosenberg grounds his study in discussions of literature, film, and visual art (novels of political re-foundations, fictions of truth and reconciliation, visual arts based on cases of disappearance, films about police violence, artistic collaborations with police forces, and judicial documentaries.) In doing so, he provides a highly original examination of the paradoxical demands on current artistic works to produce both capital value and foster human dignity.

Contemporary Latin American Literature reflects the wealth of great writers of Latin America over the last hundred years, including Jorge Luis Borges, Mario Vargas Llosa, and Noble Prize winners Gabriela Mistral, Pablo Neruda, Octavio Paz, and Gabriel Garcia Márquez. The selections--almost 100 works in their original form--include English definitions for difficult Spanish words.

This collection offer a series of new essays authored by leading scholars of Latin American and U.S. Latino theater as well as the performance script Mexterminator vs. The Global Predator, written by Guillermo Gomez-Pena. The fourteen essays focus on contemporary Latin American and U.S. Latino plays and performances and challenge the meanings of genre, gender, race, cultural identity, and performance itself in the context of globalization and shifting borders. The concept of trans/acting, a term that connotes negotiation and/or exchange, provides the framework for essays that include such topics as tansculturation, transnationalism, transgender, transgenre, translation, and adaptation. These individual studies of contemporary theater and performance arts are complimented by trans/actor Gomez-Pena's Mexterminator vs. The Global Predator, a striking transgressive script that underscores the performance nature of territorial and symbolic border crossings. Jacqueline Bixler is Alumni Distinguished Professor of Spanish at Virginia Tech. Laurietz Seda is Associate Professor of Spanish at the University of Connecticut-Storrs.