Homenaje a Javier Coy, catedrático jubilado del Departamento de Filología Inglesa y Alemana de la Universitat de València de 1990 a 2000, y uno de los primeros investigadores en introducir los estudios norteamericanos. Se recogen 50 artículos de especialistas en este campo, que reflejan el estado de los estudios sobre la cultura y literatura de los Estados Unidos contemporáneos.
In the past four decades Native American/First Nations Literature has emerged as a literary and academic field and it is now read, taught, and theorized in many educational settings outside the United States and Canada. Native American and First Nations authors have also broadened their themes and readership by exploring transnational contexts and foreign realities, and through translation into major and minor languages, thus establishing creative networks with other literary communities around the world. However, when their texts are taught abroad, the perpetuation of Indian stereotypes, mystifications, and misconceptions is still a major issue that non-Native readers, students, and teachers continue to struggle with. To counter such distorted representations and neo/colonialist readings, this book presents a strategic selection of critical case studies that set specific texts within cross-cultural contexts wherein Native-based methodologies and key concepts are placed at the center of the reading practice. The challenging role of teachers and researchers as potential intermediaries and responsible disseminators of what Gayatri C. Spivak calls “transnational literacy” as well as the reception of Native North American works, contexts, and themes by international readers thus becomes a primary focus of attention. This volume provides a set of critical analyses and practical resources that may enable teachers outside the United States and Canada to incorporate Native American/First Nations literature and related cultural and historical texts into their teaching practices and current research interests in a creative, decolonizing, and responsible manner.
More than fifty years after its publication, Walker Percy's National Book Award Winner, The Moviegoer, still confronts, comforts, and enlightens generations of readers. This collection of twelve new essays, edited and introduced by Jennifer Levasseur and Mary A. McCay, emphasize the evolving significance of this seminal, New Orleans novel. Authors' consider the text with diverse perspectives, drawing from philosophy, theology, disability theory, contemporary music and literature, social media, and film studies. Jay Tolson opens the volume with reflections on rereading the novel on a Kindle decades after writing his important biography of Percy. H. Collin Messer, Montserrat Gins, Jessica Hooten Wilson, and Brian Jobe follow with illuminating essays analyzing Percy's influences, from St. Augustine and Cervantes to Heidegger and Dostoevsky. Jonathan Potter and Read Mercer Schuchardt, Mary A. McCay, Matthew Luter, and Dorian Speed delve into the novel's significance to cinema, including an exhaustive guide to its film references, a meditation on Binx Bolling as a director of his existence, and the semiotics of celebrity. Brent Walter Cline and Robert Bolton, Michael Kobre, and L. Lamar Nisly present a roadmap for Bolling's inward journey, exploring a variety of elements from the role of the broken body to the spiritual connection to Bruce Springsteen lyrics. Walker Percy's The Moviegoer at Fifty is the first critical work devoted solely to the author's debut novel. Coinciding with the centenary of Percy's birth, this collection invites both new and veteran readers to enjoy The Moviegoer with fresh perspectives that underscore its lasting relevance.
The Cambridge History of Latina/o American Literature emphasizes the importance of understanding Latina/o literature not simply as a US ethnic phenomenon but more broadly as an important element of a trans-American literary imagination. Engaging with the dynamics of migration, linguistic and cultural translation, and the uneven distribution of resources across the Americas that characterize Latina/o literature, the essays in this History provide a critical overview of key texts, authors, themes, and contexts as discussed by leading scholars in the field. This book demonstrates the relevance of Latina/o literature for a world defined by the migration of people, commodities, and cultural expressions.
Whitman wanted to bolster the American democratic spirit by creating a democratic literature through his Leaves of Grass, he also wanted to create something epic, so he crafted a new form, the lyric-epic. Pablo Neruda wrote Canto general as a foundational text for communism in Latin America. In both books, these poets want to politicize the reader, Whitman for democracy and Neruda for communism, both of which have become foundational poets for their countries over time.
Acclaimed by many as one of the most gifted essayists and stylists in American letters these last few decades, Richard Rodriguez has left an indelible imprint on the tradition of autobiographical writing of the nation. Rodeño’s study of the four installments of Rodriguez’s self-writing offers an insightful and perspicacious analysis of the evolution and the most controversial elements in this Chicano writer’s production so far. Delving deeply into issues of racial and ethnic identity, sexual orientation, religious background, various types of hybridity, and different forms of socio-cultural adaptation, this book presents all kinds of incisive observations about the contested space(s) that “minority” self-writers are often pushed to occupy in the American tradition of the genre.
Este volumen es un análisis fundamental para entender los lazos del escritor norteamericano con la España republicana y su posterior acogida, durante los años de postguerra, por parte del gobierno del general Franco. Los primeros tres capítulos examinan las alusiones literarias e históricas de algunas de sus obras en referencia a España, su relación política y literaria con Rafael Alberti y la recepción del escritor a la luz de su ideología. Los últimos cinco capítulos ofrecen y explican los documentos españoles, depositados en el Archivo General de la Administración en Alcalá de Henares, que testimonian cómo el gobierno franquista siempre consideró a Hemingway un escritor comunista y, por tanto, peligroso y objeto de censura.
Nephtalí De León is a USA born and raised Chicano former migrant worker that became a Poet/Painter/Author/and Playwright. He has been published in several countries with his poetry translated into twelve languages. Growing up in the cauldron of borderland conflicts between USA and Mexico, by the edge of the river that divides both countries, the Rio Grande, he is no stranger to the myths, legends, and stories that form the world view of his multicultural native people. Present day native American migrants have been labeled and treated as strangers in their ancient homelands. Those who appropriated their lands now call them illegals, undocumented invaders. They administer their presence with such legal definitions in the courts of their own invention. It is in this arena that the author presents a timeless legend of a tortured and maligned spirit that refuses to die. The legend of La Llorona begins 500 years ago when invaders first came to the American continent. Reality went beyond surreal, and the Victim became the Culprit, was punished and condemned to wander unto eternity in hopeless pain for her crime, the worst any one can be accused of – the drowning of her own children! This centuries old legend is very much alive. Everybody knows her name – La Llorona.
This book brings together twelve essays published between 1983 and 2015. They reveal the author's continuing interest in what is argued here to be the central, although subversive and recessive line of thinking in American and western society. This romantic thread is followed mainly from Ralph Waldo Emerson through Emily Dickinson to Martin Heidegger and Stanley Cavell. Este libro reúne doce ensayos publicados entre 1983 y 2015, que revelan el continuo interés del autor en lo que se argumenta aquí como la línea de pensamiento central, aunque subversiva y no dominante, de la sociedad americana y occidental. Este hilo romántico es seguido principalmente desde Ralph Waldo Emerson hasta Martin Heidegger y Stanley Cavell, pasando por Emily Dickinson.
