Americanized Spanish Culture


Book Description

Americanized Spanish Culture explores the intricate transcultural dialogue between Spain and the United States since the late 19th century. The term "Americanized" reflects the influence of American cultural traits, ideas, and tendencies on individuals, institutions, and creative works that have moved back and forth between Spain and the United States. Although it is often defined narrowly as the result of a process of cultural imperialism, colonization, assimilation, and erasure, this book uses the term more expansively to explore representations of the transcultural mixing of Spanish and American culture in which the American influence might seem dominant but may also be the one that is shaped. The chapters in this volume highlight the lives of fascinating individuals, ideologies, and artistry that represent important themes in this transnational relationship of dislocated empires. The contributors represent a wide array of perspectives and life experiences, giving breadth, depth, and realism to their observations and analysis. Organized in two parts of five chapters each, this volume offers a unique perspective on the intermixing and intermingling of Spanish and American social, cultural, and literary traits and characteristics. This book will be of interest to students of United States and Spanish history, Iberian and Hispanic American studies, and cultural studies.




Nineteenth-Century Spanish America


Book Description

Nineteenth-Century Spanish America: A Cultural History provides a panoramic and accessible introduction to the era in which Latin America took its first steps into the Modern Age. Including colorful characters like circus clowns, prostitutes, bullfighters, street puppeteers, and bestselling authors, this book maps vivid and often surprising combinations of the new and the old, the high and the low, and the political and the cultural. Christopher Conway shows that beneath the diversity of the New World there was a deeper structure of shared patterns of cultural creation and meaning. Whether it be the ways that people of refinement from different countries used the same rules of etiquette, or how commoners shared their stories through the same types of songs, Conway creates a multidisciplinary framework for understanding the culture of an entire hemisphere. The book opens with key themes that will help students and scholars understand the century, such as the civilization and barbarism binary, urbanism, the divide between conservatives and liberals, and transculturation. In the chapters that follow, Conway weaves transnational trends together with brief case studies and compelling snapshots that help us understand the period. How much did books and photographs cost in the nineteenth century? What was the dominant style in painting? What kinds of ballroom dancing were popular? Richly illustrated with striking photographs and lithographs, this is a book that invites the reader to rediscover a past age that is not quite past, still resonating into the present.




Geographies of Urban Female Labor and Nationhood in Spanish Culture, 1880-1975


Book Description

Mar Soria presents an innovative cultural analysis of female workers in Spanish literature and films. Drawing from nation-building theories, the work of feminist geographers, and ideas about the construction of the marginal subject in society, Soria examines how working women were perceived as Other in Spain from 1880 to 1975. By studying the representation of these marginalized individuals in a diverse array of cultural artifacts, Soria contends that urban women workers symbolized the desires and anxieties of a nation caught between traditional values and rapidly shifting socioeconomic forces. Specifically, the representation of urban female work became a mode of reinforcing and contesting dominant discourses of gender, class, space, and nationhood in critical moments after 1880, when social and economic upheavals resulted in fears of impending national instability. Through these cultural artifacts Spaniards wrestled with the unresolved contradictions in the gender and class ideologies used to construct and maintain the national imaginary. ? Whether for reasons of inattention or disregard of issues surrounding class dynamics, nineteenth- and twentieth-century Spanish literary and cultural critics have assumed that working women played only a minimal role in the development of Spain as a modern nation. As a result, relatively few critics have investigated cultural narratives of female labor during this period. Soria demonstrates that without considering the role working women played in the construction and modernization of Spain, our understanding of Spanish culture and life at that time remains incomplete.




Latina Histories and Cultures


Book Description

This collection of academic essays introduces new research on Latina histories and cultures from the mid-nineteenth century to 1980. Examining a wide range of source materials, including personal and institutional archives, literature and oral history, the authors of the fifteen articles use transnational approaches and Latina feminist theory to remind us of a principle that is still too often forgotten: that sex and gender should be centered as crucial problematics in the study of the long history of Latina/o/x literature and culture. Applying an intersectional methodology that analyzes gender in relation to numerous identities—race, class, sexuality, language and nationality—the scholars explore diverse subjects such as the literary work of historical Latina authors Maria Amparo Ruiz de Burton and Maria Cristina Mena; the travails of Basque women in the United States in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries; and Chicana activism in Wyoming in the 1970s and 1980s. The book is divided into four sections: Feminist Readings of Latina Authors; Gender, Politics and Power in the Spanish-Language Press; Radical Latinas’ Politics; and Reclaiming Community, Reclaiming Knowledge. In their introduction, editors Montse Feu and Yolanda Padilla map significant elements in the practice of Latina feminist recovery and suggest the importance of using queer studies frameworks and speculative approaches to archives in order to amplify queer, Afro-Latina/o and indigenous voices. Published as part of the Recovering the US Hispanic Literary Heritage Series, Latina Histories and Cultures continues the efforts to rescue the written legacy of the Hispanic population in what has become the United States and will be required reading for academics and students in a variety of disciplines.




American Nations


Book Description

• A New Republic Best Book of the Year • The Globalist Top Books of the Year • Winner of the Maine Literary Award for Non-fiction Particularly relevant in understanding who voted for who during presidential elections, this is an endlessly fascinating look at American regionalism and the eleven “nations” that continue to shape North America According to award-winning journalist and historian Colin Woodard, North America is made up of eleven distinct nations, each with its own unique historical roots. In American Nations he takes readers on a journey through the history of our fractured continent, offering a revolutionary and revelatory take on American identity, and how the conflicts between them have shaped our past and continue to mold our future. From the Deep South to the Far West, to Yankeedom to El Norte, Woodard (author of American Character: A History of the Epic Struggle Between Individual Liberty and the Common Good) reveals how each region continues to uphold its distinguishing ideals and identities today, with results that can be seen in the composition of the U.S. Congress or on the county-by-county election maps of any hotly contested election in our history.




The Routledge Handbook of Nostalgia


Book Description

The Routledge Handbook of Nostalgia serves as a guide to the complex and often contradictory concept of nostalgia, as well as the field of “nostalgia studies” more broadly. Nostalgia is an area of intense interest across several disciplines as well as within society and culture more generally. This handbook brings together an international, interdisciplinary team of researchers to survey the current landscape and identify common trends, achievements, and gaps in existing literature. Comprising 45 chapters, the volume covers the following topics: Disciplinary perspectives of nostalgias including philosophy, history, literature, and psychology. Conceptual aspects of nostalgia including homesickness, temporality, affectivity, and memory. Historical and political dimensions such as afro-nostalgia, populism, feminism, and queer nostalgia. Spatial and material aspects of nostalgia including ruins, regionalism, and objects. Media-related nostalgia such as analogue and digital nostalgia, reboots, revivals, gaming, and graphic novels. Essential reading for students and researchers working in nostalgia studies, this book will also be beneficial to related disciplines such as philosophy, anthropology, geography, history, and literature; cultural, media, heritage, museum, and film studies courses; and more generally for readers interested in how the past is represented and used in the present.




Latino Spin


Book Description

Winner of the 2010 Distinguished Book Award in Latino Studies from the Latin American Studies Association Illegal immigrant, tax burden, job stealer. Patriot, family oriented, hard worker, model consumer. Ever since Latinos became the largest minority in the U.S. they have been caught between these wildly contrasting characterizations leaving us to wonder: Are Latinos friend or foe? Latino Spin cuts through the spin about Latinos’ supposed values, political attitudes, and impact on U.S. national identity to ask what these caricatures suggest about Latinos’ shifting place in the popular and political imaginary. Noted scholar Arlene Dávila illustrates the growing consensus among pundits, advocates, and scholars that Latinos are not a social liability, that they are moving up and contributing, and that, in fact, they are more American than “the Americans.” But what is at stake in such a sanitized and marketable representation of Latinidad? Dávila follows the spin through the realm of politics, think tanks, Latino museums, and urban planning to uncover whether they effectively challenge the growing fear over Latinos’ supposedly dreadful effect on the “integrity” of U.S. national identity. What may be some of the intended or unintended consequences of these more marketable representations in regard to current debates over immigration? With particular attention to what these representations reveal about the place and role of Latinos in the contemporary politics of race, Latino Spin highlights the realities they skew and the polarization they effect between Latinos and other minorities, and among Latinos themselves along the lines of citizenship and class. Finally, by considering Latinos in all their diversity, including their increasing financial and geographic disparities, Dávila can present alternative and more empowering representations of Latinidad to help attain true political equity and intraracial coalitions.




Our America: A Hispanic History of the United States


Book Description

“A rich and moving chronicle for our very present.” —Julio Ortega, New York Times Book Review The United States is still typically conceived of as an offshoot of England, with our history unfolding east to west beginning with the first English settlers in Jamestown. This view overlooks the significance of America’s Hispanic past. With the profile of the United States increasingly Hispanic, the importance of recovering the Hispanic dimension to our national story has never been greater. This absorbing narrative begins with the explorers and conquistadores who planted Spain’s first colonies in Puerto Rico, Florida, and the Southwest. Missionaries and rancheros carry Spain’s expansive impulse into the late eighteenth century, settling California, mapping the American interior to the Rockies, and charting the Pacific coast. During the nineteenth century Anglo-America expands west under the banner of “Manifest Destiny” and consolidates control through war with Mexico. In the Hispanic resurgence that follows, it is the peoples of Latin America who overspread the continent, from the Hispanic heartland in the West to major cities such as Chicago, Miami, New York, and Boston. The United States clearly has a Hispanic present and future. And here is its Hispanic past, presented with characteristic insight and wit by one of our greatest historians.




Yum! MmMm! Que Rico!


Book Description

Chocolate, papaya, corn, and potatoes - these are only a taste of the many delicious foods native to the Americas and celebrated in this delightful collection. Imaginative, evocative poems and exuberant illustrations introduce 14 different indigenous foods, along with a descriptive paragraph of information for each.




Hispanic Reflections on the American Landscape


Book Description

Full color publication. Highlights the Hispanic imprint on the built environment of the United States. This effort by the National Park Service and partners aims to increase the awareness of the historic places associated with the nation's cultural and ethnic groups that are identified, documented, recognized, and interpreted. These constitute the foundation for Hispanic Reflections. Many of the examples are drawn from National Park Service cultural resources programs in partnership with other government agencies and private organizations.