Recovering Hispanic Religious Thought and Practice of the United States

Recovering Hispanic Religious Thought and Practice of the United States

Author: Nicolás Kanellos

Publisher: Cambridge Scholars Publishing

Published: 2009-05-05

Total Pages: 219

ISBN-13: 144381086X

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The primary role played by religion in the development of the Spanish nation in the Iberian Peninsula and its subsequent role in the Spanish conquest and colonization of the Americas has been well studied. Similarly, Hispanics around the world and in the United States have been characterized in scholarship and popular opinion by the dimensions of their predominant Catholic faith. To date, neither their diversity of faith nor their ethnic and racial diversity have been adequately addressed, thus contributing to a widely held perception of a monolithic culture with its own Catholic world view, a world view often categorized as obscurantist, mystical and anachronistic. Most important, the role of religion, in all of its diversity and historical evolution, in building Hispanic culture in the United States has not been adequately studied or understood. Today, because a corpus of Hispanic religious thought from across the ages in the United States has been reconstituted and there are scholars dedicated to understanding this thought and the experience it reveals, publication of this present volume has been made possible. The chapters of Recovering Hispanic Religious Thought and Practice in the United States have resulted from the research underwritten by the eponymous Recovery project and initially presented at Recovery conferences in 2004 and 2005. After scholarly debate and re-working of the research papers, the articles contained in this volume were selected. They represent original work on topics rarely addressed before, in recognition that these articles are laying the groundwork on which an entire sub-discipline of Hispanic history, literature and theology will be constructed. The material addressed is so rich and the themes so numerous and promising that their presentation and elaboration here most certainly will entice scholars from other disciplines to broaden their perspectives on Hispanic life in the United States and perhaps to look to these religious and other alternative sources in conducting their own disciplinary research.


Author:

Publisher: University of Pennsylvania Press

Published:

Total Pages: 350

ISBN-13: 0871690306

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Writing/Righting History: Twenty-Five Years of Recovering the US Hispanic Literary Heritage

Writing/Righting History: Twenty-Five Years of Recovering the US Hispanic Literary Heritage

Author: Antonia Castañeda

Publisher: Arte Publico Press

Published: 2019-04-30

Total Pages: 770

ISBN-13: 1518505732

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The tenth volume in the Recovering the US Hispanic Literary Heritage Series, this collection of essays reflects on the twenty-fifth anniversary of the project’s efforts to locate, identify, preserve and disseminate the literary contributions of US Latinos from the Spanish Colonial Period to contemporary times. Essays by scholars recalling the beginnings of the project cover a wide range of topics: origins, identity, archival research, institutional politics and pedagogy. From recollections about funding to personal reminiscences, the recovery of Jewish Hispanic heritage and the intellectual project of reframing American history and literature, these articles provide a fascinating look at twenty-five years of recovering the written legacy of the Hispanic population in what has become the United States. An additional nineteen scholarly essays speak to specific efforts to recover an extremely diverse Latino literary heritage. Historians and literary critics who research Spanish, English and Sephardic texts examine a broad array of subjects, including colonialism, historical populations, exile and immigration. This far-reaching book is required reading for those studying US Latino history and literature.


The Construction of Latina/o Literary Imaginaries

The Construction of Latina/o Literary Imaginaries

Author: Blanca López de Mariscal

Publisher: Cambridge Scholars Publishing

Published: 2019-01-29

Total Pages: 143

ISBN-13: 1527527344

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This book explores the cultural and historical imaginary expressed in literary works that emphasize Latina/o world views. The essays here employ critical approaches based on discourse and cultural analyses that highlight individual and collective identity. They encompass a wide spectrum of topics that deal with border newspapers published early in the twentieth century and their function as a forum for conserving memory based on cultural values and religious beliefs; life writing and fictional rewritings of memory; autobiographical texts that emphasize the diasporic experience of immigrants; and the essay and the poetic/visual literary forms that recover border memory. The discussion of alternative life views presented here will be of interest to academics involved in the recovery of print culture and genre specialists in the area of autobiography, as well as readers who wish to become more familiar with literature from the US-Mexico border region.


The Converso's Return

The Converso's Return

Author: Dalia Kandiyoti

Publisher: Stanford University Press

Published: 2020-08-04

Total Pages: 411

ISBN-13: 1503612449

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Five centuries after the forced conversion of Spanish and Portuguese Jews to Catholicism, stories of these conversos' descendants uncovering long-hidden Jewish roots have come to light and taken hold of the literary and popular imagination. This seemingly remote history has inspired a wave of contemporary writing involving hidden artifacts, familial whispers and secrets, and clandestine Jewish ritual practices pointing to a past that had been presumed dead and buried. The Converso's Return explores the cultural politics and literary impact of this reawakened interest in converso and crypto-Jewish history, ancestry, and identity, and asks what this fascination with lost-and-found heritage can tell us about how we relate to and make use of the past. Dalia Kandiyoti offers nuanced interpretations of contemporary fictional and autobiographical texts about crypto-Jews in Cuba, Mexico, New Mexico, Spain, France, the Ottoman Empire, and Turkey. These works not only imagine what might be missing from the historical archive but also suggest an alternative historical consciousness that underscores uncommon convergences of and solidarities within Sephardi, Christian, Muslim, converso, and Sabbatean histories. Steeped in diaspora, Sephardi, transamerican, Iberian, and world literature studies, The Converso's Return illuminates how the converso narrative can enrich our understanding of history, genealogy, and collective memory.


Voices from the Ancestors

Voices from the Ancestors

Author: Lara Medina

Publisher: University of Arizona Press

Published: 2019-10-08

Total Pages: 457

ISBN-13: 0816539561

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Voices from the Ancestors brings together the reflective writings and spiritual practices of Xicanx, Latinx, and Afro-Latinx womxn and male allies in the United States who seek to heal from the historical traumas of colonization by returning to ancestral traditions and knowledge. This wisdom is based on the authors’ oral traditions, research, intuitions, and lived experiences—wisdom inspired by, and created from, personal trajectories on the path to spiritual conocimiento, or inner spiritual inquiry. This conocimiento has reemerged over the last fifty years as efforts to decolonize lives, minds, spirits, and bodies have advanced. Yet this knowledge goes back many generations to the time when the ancestors understood their interconnectedness with each other, with nature, and with the sacred cosmic forces—a time when the human body was a microcosm of the universe. Reclaiming and reconstructing spirituality based on non-Western epistemologies is central to the process of decolonization, particularly in these fraught times. The wisdom offered here appears in a variety of forms—in reflective essays, poetry, prayers, specific guidelines for healing practices, communal rituals, and visual art, all meant to address life transitions and how to live holistically and with a spiritual consciousness for the challenges of the twenty-first century.


The Greenwood Encyclopedia of Latino Literature [3 volumes]

The Greenwood Encyclopedia of Latino Literature [3 volumes]

Author: Nicolás Kanellos

Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA

Published: 2008-08-30

Total Pages: 1444

ISBN-13: 0313087008

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From East L.A. to the barrios of New York City and the Cuban neighborhoods of Miami, Latino literature, or literature written by Hispanic peoples of the United States, is the written word of North America's vibrant Latino communities. Emerging from the fusion of Spanish, North American, and African cultures, it has always been part of the American mosaic. Written for students and general readers, this encyclopedia surveys the vast landscape of Latino literature from the colonial era to the present. Aiming to be as broad and inclusive as possible, the encyclopedia covers all of native North American Latino literature as well as that created by authors originating in virtually every country of Spanish America and Spain. Included are more than 700 alphabetically arranged entries written by roughly 60 expert contributors. While most of the entries are on writers, such as Julia Alvarez, Sandra Cisneros, Lorna Dee Cervantes, Oscar Hijuelos, and Piri Thomas, others cover genres, ethnic and national literatures, movements, historical topics and events, themes, concepts, associations and organizations, and publishers and magazines. Special attention is given to the cultural, political, social, and historical contexts in which Latino literature has developed. Entries cite works for further reading, and the encyclopedia closes with a selected, general bibliography. Entries cite works for further reading, and the encyclopedia closes with a selected, general bibliography. The encyclopedia gives special attention to the social, cultural, historical, and political contexts of Latino literature, thus making it an ideal tool to help students use literature to learn about history and cultural diversity.


Rites, Rituals & Religions

Rites, Rituals & Religions

Author: Dr Debra D Andrist

Publisher: Liverpool University Press

Published: 2023-04-01

Total Pages: 274

ISBN-13: 1782847898

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Philosophers have contemplated the meaning of life, the who & the why, since nascent self-consciousness of the evolving hominid species. Yet practical efforts, i.e., control of life, have always transcended the philosophical: how to dominate what happens to the physical body itself, how to control the environment, and the interaction therefrom. Thus are born rites, rituals & religions. A rite can be a prescribed religious or other solemn ceremony or act it can be a social custom or practice, or even a mundane conventional act. A ritual can be the established form for a ceremony, the order of words used for example; a ritual observance can be either a system of ceremonial acts or actions, or an act or series of acts regularly repeated in a set precise manner. Religion generally encompasses a socio-cultural system of designated behaviors and practices, morals, beliefs, worldviews, texts, sanctified places, prophecies, ethics, or organizations, that relates humanity to supernatural, transcendental, and spiritual elements. Religion is a set of beliefs, especially when considered as the creation of a superhuman agency or agencies, usually involving devotional and ritual observances (rites and rituals). Control efforts highlighted in this volume range from prehistoric cave paintings, Amerindian ceremonies, Christian denominational (especially Roman Catholic), traditions & Afro-Caribbean syncretic rites, to crossovers, which deal with the more socio-cultural rites of passage like the quinceanera, and/or dance rites & rituals like the Southern Cone tango, African candombe, Cuban habanera and European waltzes and polkas and the corrida, from the public ritual known as tauromaquia. The premise behind this comparative volume is to discover how rites, rituals & religions are addressed in real life in these divergent societies by exploring the visual and literary representations of control. Rites, Rituals and Religions is eighth and final volume in the Hispanic Worlds series


Recovering History, Constructing Race

Recovering History, Constructing Race

Author: Martha Menchaca

Publisher: University of Texas Press

Published: 2002-01-15

Total Pages: 561

ISBN-13: 0292778481

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“An unprecedented tour de force . . . [A] sweeping historical overview and interpretation of the racial formation and racial history of Mexican Americans.” —Antonia I. Castañeda, Associate Professor of History, St. Mary’s University Winner, A Choice Outstanding Academic Book The history of Mexican Americans is a history of the intermingling of races—Indian, White, and Black. This racial history underlies a legacy of racial discrimination against Mexican Americans and their Mexican ancestors that stretches from the Spanish conquest to current battles over ending affirmative action and other assistance programs for ethnic minorities. Asserting the centrality of race in Mexican American history, Martha Menchaca here offers the first interpretive racial history of Mexican Americans, focusing on racial foundations and race relations from preHispanic times to the present. Menchaca uses the concept of racialization to describe the process through which Spanish, Mexican, and U.S. authorities constructed racial status hierarchies that marginalized Mexicans of color and restricted their rights of land ownership. She traces this process from the Spanish colonial period and the introduction of slavery through racial laws affecting Mexican Americans into the late twentieth-century. This re-viewing of familiar history through the lens of race recovers Blacks as important historical actors, links Indians and the mission system in the Southwest to the Mexican American present, and reveals the legal and illegal means by which Mexican Americans lost their land grants. “Martha Menchaca has begun an intellectual insurrection by challenging the pristine aboriginal origins of Mexican Americans as historically inaccurate . . . Menchaca revisits the process of racial formation in the northern part of Greater Mexico from the Spanish conquest to the present.” —Hispanic American Historical Review