Intersections of Race, Class, Gender, and Nation in Fin-de-siècle Spanish Literature and Culture: (New Hispanisms: Cultural and Literary Studies)

This volume focuses on intersections of race, class, gender, and nation in the formation of the fin-de-siècle Spanish and Spanish colonial subject. Despite the wealth of research produced on gender, social class, race, and national identity few studies have focused on how these categories interacted, frequently operating simultaneously to reveal contexts in which dominated groups were dominating and vice versa. Such revelations call into question metanarratives about the exploitation of one group by another and bring to light interlocking systems of identity formation, and consequently oppression, that are difficult to disentangle. The authors included here study this dynamic in a variety of genres and venues, namely the essay, the novel, the short story, theater, and zarzuelas. These essays cover canonical authors such as Benito Pérez Galdós and Emilia Pardo Bazán, and understudied female authors such as Rosario de Acuña and Belén Sárraga. The authors included here study this dynamic in a variety of genres and venues, namely the essay, the novel, the short story, theater, and zarzuelas. The volume builds on recent scholarship on race, class, gender, and nation by focusing specifically on the intersections of these categories, and by studying this dynamic in popular culture, visual culture, and in the works of both canonical and lesser-known authors.

CONTENTS

Introduction: Intersections of Race, Class, Gender, and Nation in Fin-de-Siècle Spain

Jennifer Smith and Lisa Nalbone

PART I TRANSATLANTIC RELATIONS

1. Challenging Pasts, Exploring Futures: "Race," Gender, and Class in the Fin-de-siècle Essays of Rosario de Acuña, Concepción Gimeno de Flaquer, and Belén Sárraga
Christine Arkinstall

2. Domesticating Cuba: Romantic Liaisons and Imperial Power in Spanish Zarzuela
Mar Soria

3. Racism in "Yankilandia": Emilia Pardo Bazán and the Global Color Line
Christy Presson Shaughnessy

PART II RACIAL RECUPERATION AND RACIAL OTHERNESS

4. Racial Identity, Social Critique, and Class Dynamics in Pardo Bazán’s Una prueba-La Cristiana and El becerro de metal
Maryellen Bieder

5. Good and Bad Fusion in Emilia Pardo Bazán’s El becerro de metal (1906)
Margot Versteeg

6. "Playing Japanese" in Fin-de-siècle Zarzuela
David R. George, Jr.

PART III. SPANISH NATIONAL IDENTITIES

7. The Unbearable Lightness of Being a Nation in Galdós’s Early Historical Fiction
Toni Dorca

8. Realism, Fantasy, and the Gendered Trope of Colonial Relations in Galdós’s Fiction
Mary Coffey

9. Rewriting Carmen in Pardo Bazán’s Insolación: Subversions of "Race," Gender, and Class
Carmen Pereira-Muro, Translation by Holly Villines

Jennifer Smith is Associate Professor of Spanish at Southern Illinois University Carbondale, USA.

Lisa Nalbone is Associate Professor of Spanish at the University of Central Florida, USA.