Dictionary of Latin American Cultural Studies

"This book is an essential reference for scholars and students from a wide array of fields represented by Latin American and cultural studies. It provides highly authoritative entries on most of the major topics of the day."--Ignacio M. Sánchez Prado, author of Naciones Intelectuales "This text represents a fantastic resource as well as an excellent pedagogical tool for the diffusion of the main tenets of cultural studies among students and among scholars who are not specialists in Latin American cultural studies."--Ana Del Sarto, coeditor of Latin American Cultural Studies Reader "A dictionary is a book to ask questions of. Not only what each word means, but also why some are present and others are absent, and how the presences and the absences are connected. Irwin and Szurmuk's Dictionary exhaustively registers the sources and lines of development of the studies of culture in Latin America."--Nestor Garcia Canclini, writing in En torno a los estudios culturales The Dictionary of Latin American Cultural Studies is a fundamental reference for students, pedagogues, and investigators interested in understanding the terminology of the field. This comprehensive volume explains and contextualizes fifty-four key terms and theories, including some general concepts in cultural studies (e.g., body, deconstruction, ideology, postmodernism, power, queer theory) as they relate to research in Latin America, and some specific to the field of Latin American studies (e.g., anthropophagy, deterritorialization, lettered city). Each entry defines the term in question, explains its usages, discusses its etymology and the intellectuals who have made relevant contributions, and provides a bibliography of essential sources. Uniquely suited to the student or scholar struggling with translating cultural studies terminology into non-English language topics of study, originally published in Spanish, and with contributions by many of the field's foremost authorities, this dictionary is poised to become a defining text for Latin American cultural studies. Robert McKee Irwin, chair of the Cultural Studies Graduate Group and professor of Spanish at the University of California-Davis, is the author of Bandits, Captives, Heroines, and Saints: Cultural Icons of Mexico's Northwest Borderlands. Monica Szurmuk, research professor at the Institute of Latin American Literature at the University of Buenos Aires, is the author of Women in Argentina: Early Travel Narratives.