Academic and research fields are moved by fads, waves, revolutionaries, paradigm shifts, and turns. They all imply a certain degree of change that alters the conditions of a stable system, producing an imbalance that needs to be addressed by the field itself.
New Approaches to Latin American Studies: Culture and Power offers researchers and students from different theoretical fields an essential, turn-organized overview of the radical transformation of epistemological and methodological assumptions in Latin American Studies from the end of the 1980s to the present. Sixteen chapters written by experts in their respective fields help explain the various ways in which to think about these shifts. Questions posited include:
- Why are turns so crucial?
- How did they alter the shape or direction of the field?
- What new questions, objects, or problems did they contribute?
- What were or are their limitations?
- What did they displace or prevent us from considering?
Among the turns included are: memory, transnational, popular culture, decolonial, feminism, affect, indigenous studies, transatlantic, ethical, post/hegemony, deconstruction, cultural policy, subalternism, gender and sexuality, performance, and cultural studies.
Table of Contents:
Introduction: Twenty-Five Years of Latin American Studies [Juan Poblete] 1. The Memory Turn [Michael J. Lazzara] 2. The Transnational Turn [Juan Poblete] 3.The Popular Culture Turn [Pablo Alabarces (Translated by Joanna Meadvin)] 4. The Ethical Turn [Erin Graff Zivin] 5. The Subalternist Turn [Gareth Williams] 6. The Cultural Studies Turn [Mabel Moraña (Translated by Robert Cavooris)] 7. The Decolonial Turn [Nelson Maldonado-Torres (Translated by Robert Cavooris)] 8. The Indigenous Studies Turn [Nicole Fabricant and Nancy Postero] 9. The Performance Turn [Angela Marino] 10. Turning to Feminisms [Sonia E. Alvarez and Claudia de Lima Costa] 11. The Turn of Deconstruction [Alberto Moreiras] 12. The Cultural Policy Turn [Ana Wortman (Translated by Juan Poblete)] 13. The Transatlantic Turn [Bécquer Seguín] 14. The Gender and Sexuality Turn [Robert McKee Irwin and Mónica Szurmuk] 15. The Affect Turn [Laura Podalsky] 16. The Posthegemonic Turn [Abraham Acosta]
About the Author :
Juan Poblete is Professor of Latin/o American Literature and Cultural Studies at the University of California, Santa Cruz. He is the author of Literatura chilena del siglo XIX (2003); editor of Critical Latin American and Latino Studies (2003); and coeditor of Andrés Bello (2009), Redrawing The Nation: National Identities in Latin/o American Comics (2009), Desdén al infortunio: Sujeto, comunicación y público en la narrativa de Pedro Lemebel (2010), Sports and Nationalism in Latin America (2015), and Humor in Latin American Cinema (2015).
Review :
'New Approaches to Latin American Studies offers an invaluable collective account of the transformations and "turns" that the field of Latin American Studies has experienced in the past twenty-five years. Discussing significant theoretical paradigms and concepts (from cultural studies to memory and ethics to affect and posthegemony), the top-rank scholars contribute, in each individual chapter, to the construction of a comprehensive, sophisticated and rigorous cartography of the field of Latin American Studies.' - Ignacio M. Sánchez Prado, author of Screening Neoliberalism and Strategic Occidentalism
'New Approaches to Latin American Studies offers an invaluable collective account of the transformations and "turns" that the field of Latin American Studies has experienced in the past twenty-five years. Discussing significant theoretical paradigms and concepts (from cultural studies to memory and ethics to affect and posthegemony), the top-ranked scholars contribute, in each individual chapter, to the construction of a comprehensive, sophisticated, and rigorous cartography of the field of Latin American Studies.'
—Ignacio M. Sánchez Prado, Author of Screening Neoliberalism and Strategic Occidentalism
'What is the status of theoretical thinking about Latin America? New Approaches to Latin American Studies: Culture and Power includes thought-provoking and engaging answers to this question offered by contemporary thinkers and critics who trace the genealogies, challenges, and contributions of sixteen "turns" or paradigm shifts in the critical engagement of Latin America as an object and subject of study.'
—Yolanda Martínez-San Miguel, Professor of Latino and Caribbean Studies and Comparative Literature, Rutgers-New Brunswick
'What a wonderful set of mappings of the analytical and theoretical frameworks that have informed Latin American Studies and of the salient texts that pioneered these frameworks! They shed new light for seasoned scholars, not to mention for those engaging this highly transdisciplinary field for the first time. Juan Poblete has gathered the very best writers to focus on the various scholarly turns, enabling the reader not only to understand how Latin American realities are understood at different junctures but also how those turns, often initially formulated elsewhere, developed and how they have been adapted. This book is a must for every student of Latin America in the humanities and social sciences.'
—George Yudice, Professor, Department of Modern Languages and Literatures, University of Miami
