Addressing the issue of how gendered spatial relations impact the production of literary works, this book discusses gender implications of spatial categories: the notions of home and away, placement and displacement, dwelling and travel, location and dislocation, and the 'quest for place' in women's writing from Argentina from 1920 to the present.
An Open Access edition of this book is available on the Liverpool University Press website and the OAPEN library as part of the Opening the Future project with COPIM. The early twentieth century was awash in revolutionary scientific discourse, and its uptake in the public imaginary through popular scientific writings touched every area of human experience, from politics and governance to social mores and culture. Feeling Strangely argues that these shifting scientific understandings and their integration into Hispanic and Lusophone society reshaped the experience of gender. The book analyzes gender as a felt experience and explores how that experience is shaped by popular scientific discourse by examining the “strange” femininity of young protagonists in four novels written by women in Spanish and Portuguese: Rosa Chacel’s Memorias de Leticia Valle (published in Argentina in 1945); Norah Lange’s Personas en la sala (Argentina, 1950); Carmen Laforet’s Nada (Spain, 1945); and Clarice Lispector’s Perto do coração selvagem (Brazil, 1943). It pairs each novel with a broad scientific theme selected from those that captured the contemporary popular imagination to argue that the young female protagonists in these novels all put forth visions of young womanhood as an experience of strangeness. Building on Carmen Martín Gaite’s term chicas raras, Rankin proposes this strangeness as constitutive of a gendered experience inextricable from affective and material engagements with the world.
Espectros is a compilation of original scholarly studies that presents the first volume-length exploration of the spectral in literature, film, and photography of Latin America, Spain, and the Latino diaspora. In recent decades, scholarship in deconstructionist "hauntology," trauma studies, affect in image theory, and a renewed interest in the Gothic genre, has given rise to a Spectral Studies approach to the study of narrative. Haunting, the spectral, and the effects of the unseen, carry a special weight in contemporary Latin American and Spanish cultures (referred to in the book as “Transhispanic cultures”), due to the ominous legacy of authoritarian governments and civil wars, as well as the imposition of the unseen yet tangible effects of global economics and neoliberal policies. Ribas and Petersen’s detailed introductory analysis grounds haunting as a theoretical tool for literary and cultural criticism in the Transhispanic world, with an emphasis on the contemporary period from the end of the Cold War to the present. The chapters in this volume explore haunting from a diversity of perspectives, in particular engaging haunting as a manifestation of trauma, absence, and mourning. The editors carefully distinguish the collective, cultural dimension of historical trauma from the individual, psychological experience of the aftermath of a violent history, always taking into account unresolved social justice issues. The volume also addresses the association of the spectral photographic image with the concept of haunting because of the photograph’s ability to reveal a presence that is traditionally absent or has been excluded from hegemonic representations of society. The volume concludes with a series of studies that address the unseen effects and progressive deterioration of the social fabric as a result of a globalized economy and neoliberal policies, from the modernization of the nation-state to present.
The economic crisis in Argentina in 2001-2002 that spilled over into Uruguay causing fiscal and political problems is the starting point for my research on space and theater, and it demonstrates why we must look at the River Plate in both global and local ways. Connections among monetary policies, industries, and legal, social, and political movements mean that national spaces like Uruguay’s are fraught with tensions that come from both within and outside of borders. Recent economic crises like the one that is occurring in Greece, further demonstrate how nation states and trade blocks must constantly negotiate power as they toggle between national and international pressures. Nation states are being prompted to reconceive perspectives on governance that fall away from the parameters of Westphalian autonomy and reconcile their views with trends that instead require thinking about power as a network with shifting centers. The introduction launches the study by addressing these political and economic trends, the spatial turn in theater and performance studies, the rise of multiculturalism, and also examines the Uruguayan historical context of the post-dictatorship and impunity laws that pit national sovereignty against international human rights laws. These crises are enacted on the Uruguayan stage and contextualized through networks and spatial topographies, intertextualties on the page, explorations of history and memory, and ultimately notions of identity in four areas: the postdramatic and economic realm (chapter one: Peveroni), cultural geography and pyschogeography (chapter two: Morena), midrash and questions of human rights and growing fascist trends (chapter three: Sanguinetti), and finally in mapmaking on the stage through mise-en-perf/performise and “wayfinding” through sites of contested power (chapter four: Calderón). The concluding chapter (Blanco) looks at the reinterpretation of Greek tragedy as a commentary on the messy process of democratization. Here, access to the polis and power are problematized through the lens of international sex trafficking and gendered roles that exclude portions of the populace from participation in the process of self-governance.
Doubles and Hybrids in Latin American Gothic focuses on a recurrent motif that is fundamental in the Gothic—the double. This volume explores how this ancient notion acquires tremendous force in a region, Latin America, which is itself defined by duplicity (indigenous/European, autochthonous religions/Catholic). Despite this duplicity and at the same time because of it, this region has also generated "mestizaje," or forms resulting from racial mixing and hybridity. This collection, then, aims to contribute to the current discussion about the Gothic in Latin America by examining the doubles and hybrid forms that result from the violent yet culturally fertile process of colonization that took place in the area.
Perhaps the most serious challenge that the present volume offers to the latest literature on the tapie is the reflection on gender, space and literature from the perspective of masculinity, a position which has been no doubt neglected by many years of feminist debate concentrating on women's positions and circumstances. This is specifically one of the novelties that the Intemational Conference on Gendered Spaces, celebrated in May 2001 at the University of Huelva, from which this work springs, introduced. The articles collected here constitute a selection of the most relevant contributions made at this Conference.
Transnational Borderlands: The Making of Cultural Resistance in Women's Global Networks investigates the implications of transnational feminist methodologies at multiple levels: collective actions, theory, pedagogy, discursive, and visual productions. It addresses a substantial gap in the field of transnational feminisms; namely, the absence of a voice that links social and theoretical outcomes to the politics of representation in literature, visual art, discourses of rights and citizenships, and pedagogy. The book encompasses three categories of relevance to contemporary transnational methodologies: the politics of cultural representation in literature and visual art, the de-centering of human/women's rights, and pedagogies of crossing and dissent. Given current interest in the cultures of globalization and the role women and other minorities play in them, we expect this book will appeal to scholars in the fields of Women's and Gender Studies, Borderlands Studies, Transnational Studies, and to anyone interested in how transnational processes shape a culture of resistance in women's global networks.
In 2001 Argentina faced its most serious economic crisis in years. At this turbulent time in Argentina's history, the question "What is argentinidad?" is more important than ever. The symbols of Argentina's national culture that are now revered came about during another time of economic and political unrest in the second half of the nineteenth century and were captured by writers who understood authorship as a political matter. This book examines Argentine literary narratives from 1850 to 1880, including Amalia (1851) by Jose Marmol, Recuerdos de provincia (1850) by Domingo Faustino Sarmiento, Una excursion a los indios ranqueles (1870) by Lucio V. Mansilla and Martin Fierro (1872, 1879) by Jose Hernandez, and the changing relationship between ideas of citizenship, the body, and national space. The author argues that in each of the literary narratives she discusses, the ideas embodied by the emblematic citizen are articulated clearly in scenes in which the relationship between the gendered body and concepts of nation-space--the spaces, lands or territories where struggles over national identity are represented--comes into play. The work of Rosa Guerra and Eduarda Mansilla de Garcia, who do not have canonical status but were widely read in their time and dealt with the colonial-era myth of the "first" white women held captive by native Argentines, is also explored.
A comprehensive, encyclopedic guide to the authors, works, and topics crucial to the literature of Central and South America and the Caribbean, the Encyclopedia of Latin American Literature includes over 400 entries written by experts in the field of Latin American studies. Most entries are of 1500 words but the encyclopedia also includes survey articles of up to 10,000 words on the literature of individual countries, of the colonial period, and of ethnic minorities, including the Hispanic communities in the United States. Besides presenting and illuminating the traditional canon, the encyclopedia also stresses the contribution made by women authors and by contemporary writers. Outstanding Reference Source Outstanding Reference Book
The Concise Encyclopedia includes: all entries on topics and countries, cited by many reviewers as being among the best entries in the book; entries on the 50 leading writers in Latin America from colonial times to the present; and detailed articles on some 50 important works in this literature-those who read and studied in the English-speaking world.
