Comparative Cultural Studies of Latin America

CLCWeb Annual 2

edited by Sophia A. McClennen and Earl E. Fitz

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Endorsements of  Comparative Cultural Studies and Latin America

"In this essential, and soon-to-be controversial, volume, Sophia A. McClennen and Earl E. Fitz have gathered together the voices of some of the most important and eloquent scholars working in the US and Canadian academy today. Written as a partial response to the l993 Bernheimer report of the American Comparative Literature Association, Comparative Cultural Studies and Latin America offers concrete strategies to revitalize the study of comparative literature in the US through serious and rigorous attention to the potential of inter-American studies (in Spanish, Portuguese, English, French, and indigenous languages) as a theoretical and pedagogical project. Beginning with a manifesto-like introductory essay by McClennen and Fitz, the volume engages in vigorous debates about the state of the field, with articles ranging from philosophically argued studies and literary historical surveys to hard-hitting polemic." Debra Castillo, Cornell University
    

"Comparative Cultural Studies and Latin America offers a series of thoughtful and thought-provoking essays by some of the leading critics of Latin American and Comparative literature, who engage central literary and cultural issues of our times. Not only does this collection apply the perspectives of cultural studies to Latin America , but its comparative approach demonstrates some of the ways in which, as Fredric Jameson has formulated it in his essay on 'Modernism and Imperialism,' 'Latin American literature since the boom has today become perhaps the principal player on the scene of world culture'." Wendy B. Faris,  University of Texas at Arlington

A thematic volume with selected papers from material published in CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture ( = link the title of the journal to http://clcwebjournal.lib.purdue.edu ) , edited by Sophia A. McClennen and Earl E. Fitz.

The genesis of the texts in the volume is in the growing conviction of the editors that, given its vitality and excellence, Latin American literature deserves a more prominent place in comparative literature publications, curricula, and disciplinary discussions. The editors argue that there still exists, in some quarters, a lingering bias against literature written in Spanish and Portuguese and that by embracing Latin American literature more enthusiastically, comparative literature in the context of comparative cultural studies would find itself reinvigorated, placed into productive discourse with a host of issues, languages, literatures, and cultures that have too long been paid scant attention in its purview.

Following an introduction by the editors, the volume contains papers by Gene H. Bell-Villada on the question of canon, by Gordon Brotherston and Lúcia de Sá on the First Peoples of the Americas and their literature, by Elizabeth Coonrod Martínez on the Latin American novel of the 1920s, by Román de la Campa on Latin American Studies, by Earl E. Fitz on Spanish American and Brazilian literature, by Roberto González Echevarría on Latin American and comparative literature, by Sophia A. McClennen on comparative literature and Latin American Studies, by Alberto Moreiras on Borges, by Julio Ortega on the critical debate about Latin American cultural studies, by Christina Marie Tourino on Cuban Americas in New York City, by Mario J. Valdés on the comparative history of literary cultures in Latin America, and by Lois Parkinson Zamora on comparative literature and globalization. Compiled by Sophia A. MCClennen, the volume also contains a bibliography of scholarship in comparative Latin American culture and literature and biographical abstracts of the contributors to the volume.

Sophia A. McClennen currently teaches in the Department of Comparative Litera­ture and the Department of Spanish, Italian, and Portuguese at the Pennsylvania State University . McClennen's interests and publications are in comparative cultural studies and Latin America and she has published articles in journals such as Revista de estudios hispánicos (2002), The Review of Contemporary Fiction (2000), Cultural Logic (2000), Media­tions (1999), and CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture (2000). Her books to date are The Dialectics of Exile: Nation, Time, Language, and Space in Hispanic Literatures (Purdue UP, 2003) and Ariel Dorfman: An Aesthetics of Hope (Duke UP, 2003).

Earl E. Fitz teaches Portuguese, Spanish, and comparative literature at Vanderbilt University where he is also director of Vanderbilt's Program in Comparative Litera­ ture. Fitz has published extensively on comparative approaches to the study of Latin America , including Rediscovering the New World: Inter American Literature in a Comparative Context (1991) and Ambiguity and Gender in the New Novel of Spanish America and Brazil (1993). In his current book project Fitz compares the development of narrative in the United States , Brazil , and Spanish America .