“Poemas en Tránsito” is a poetry book narrating my personal experiences, as I commute to work in the number 1 Train, which runs from 242nd Street in the Bronx to Battery Park, in Manhattan. In the poems, I use the kaleidoscope of sounds, visuals and people in the subway to relate some of my experiences. In its totality, the book is a compendium of poems selected from my poetic production starting in 1976, under the guidance of my illustrious and respected, Professor Jaime Montesinos. His intellectual infl uence and guidance were the midwives of this book.
This book clarifies the crucial role of periodical press in the advance of colonial print cultures and public debates in the Indian and Pacific Oceans. The Colonial Periodical Press in the Indian and Pacific Ocean Regions is a venture of the International Group for Studies of Colonial Periodical Press of the Portuguese Empire (IGSCP-PE), which also invests in comparative studies and conceptual discussions. Moving around urban shores of the Indian and Pacific Oceans, it approaches the crucial role of periodical press in the development of colonial print cultures and public debates in these regions. By being mostly focused on press from spaces and peoples under the domain of the Portuguese Empire, it addresses a bibliographical gap in international discussions moved by the field. The outcome reflects an investment in offering decentred and de-nationalized approaches to the colonial print cultures and press histories under study, working as a platform for regional dialogues and comparative perspectives. The studies presented allow a better understanding of transits and connections of both an imperial and a trans-imperial nature, contributing to the consolidation of comparative approaches in the studies of European empires and colonialisms. This volume is indispensable for scholars and students in media studies, modern history, cultural studies, literary studies and political science.
Against a backdrop of rapid urbanization and the growth of a global economy powered by carbon, Rebecca Jarman argues that in Venezuela, urban poverty has become one of the most important resources in national culture and statecraft. Attracting the attentions of writers, artists, filmmakers, and musicians from within and beyond the limits of Caracas, the barrios are fetishized in the cultural domain as sites of rampant sex, crime, revolution, disease, and violence. The appeal of the urban poor in entertainment is replicated in the policies of autocratic leaders who, operating within an extractivist matrix that prizes the acquisition of land and capital, have sought to expand their reach into these densely populated territories. Sometimes yielding to commodification, the barrios also have resisted exploitation by exceeding the terms of their representation in hegemonic culture and politics. Whether troubling the narratives that profit from poverty or undermining class-based stereotypes with experimental aesthetics, the barrio as a shifting set of coordinates consistently evades appropriations of disenfranchisement. Mapping the recurrent tensions, anxieties, conflicts, aspirations, and blind spots that characterize depictions of the barrios, Rebecca Jarman elaborates a dynamic cultural analysis of the history of poverty in the Venezuelan capital.
Latin American Women Writers: An Encyclopedia presents the lives and critical works of over 170 women writers in Latin America between the sixteenth and twentieth centuries. This features thematic entries as well as biographies of female writers whose works were originally published in Spanish or Portuguese, and who have had an impact on literary, political, and social studies. Focusing on drama, poetry, and fiction, this work includes authors who have published at least three literary texts that have had a significant impact on Latin American literature and culture. Each entry is followed by extensive bibliographic references, including primary and secondary sources. Coverage consists of critical appreciation and analysis of the writers' works. Brief biographical data is included, but the main focus is on the meanings and contexts of the works as well as their cultural and political impact. In addition to author entries, other themes are explored, such as humor in contemporary Latin American fiction, lesbian literature in Latin America, magic, realism, or mother images in Latin American literature. The aim is to provide a unique, thorough, scholarly survey of women writers and their works in Latin America. This Encyclopedia will be of interest to both to the student of literature as well as to any reader interested in understanding more about Latin American culture, literature, and how women have represented gender and national issues throughout the centuries.
This volume brings together a number of distinguished scholars in the field of Poema de mio Cid studies. It provides an informed introduction to key literary aspects of the poem, and thoroughly examines many of the complex issues that are crucial for a comprehensive understanding of the work (historical context, ideological motivations, prosification in medieval chronicles, the poem’s place in the canon of Spanish literature). Equally important are the new findings that have been put forward since the 1970s, when scholars started to challenge Ramón Menéndez Pidal’s theories that had dominated the philological discourse since the beginning of the twentieth century. Contributors are Matthew Bailey, Simon Barton, Francisco Bautista, Juan Carlos Bayo Julve, Federico Corriente, Leonardo Funes, Luis Galván, Fernando Gómez Redondo, Eukene Lacarra Lanz, Salvatore Luongo, Georges Martin, Alberto Montaner, Javier Rodríguez Molina, Mercedes Vaquero, Roger Wright, and Irene Zaderenko.
In the last couple of decades there has been a surge of interest in Octavio Paz's life and work, and a number of important books have been published on Paz. However, most of these books are of a biographical nature, or they examine Paz's role in the various intellectual initiatives he headed in Mexico, specifically the journals he founded. Reality in Movement looks at a wide range of topics of interest in Paz's career, including his engagement with the subversive, adversary strain in Western culture; his meditations on questions of cultural identity and intercultural contact; his dialogue with both leftist and conservative ideological traditions; his interest in feminism and psychoanalysis, and his theory of poetry. It concludes with a chapter on Octavio Paz as a literary character—a kind of reception study. Offering a complex and nuanced portrait of Paz as a writer and thinker—as well as an understanding of the era in which he lived—Reality in Movement will appeal to students of Octavio Paz and of Mexican literature more generally, and to readers with an interest in the many significant literary, cultural, political, and historical topics Paz wrote about over the course of his long career.
