Latinx Literature in Transition, 1444–1886: Volume 1

Explores Latinx literary history using decolonial, multilingual, transnational, and transtemporal approaches.

Kenya C. Dworkin y Méndez (Edited by), Elisa Sampson Vera Tudela (Edited by)

9781009313995, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 17 July 2025

492 pages
23.5 x 16.2 x 3.2 cm, 0.854 kg

This volume illuminates and gives voice to actors, objects, events, and processes from the early 1400s to the late 1800s and thinks about how they may relate to Latinx expressive literatures and cultures, challenging common paradigms that think of the field as resolutely modern. Drawing on a diverse range of expertise from scholars from around the globe and examining objects ranging from chronicles, histories, letters, journalism, poetry, talismans, performances, and comix, the volume engages with counternarratives and multifaceted contexts that address intersections of race, gender, class, and other social and political locations. The volume significantly contributes to methodological debates around Latina/o/x studies, offering in-depth and multiple explorations of how to imagine the field's complex evolution. It is an indispensable resource for those seeking to broaden their scholarly understanding of Latinx identity and literature, providing fresh insights and critical perspectives that will enrich academic discussions and research in this field.

Part I. Transacting: Archives and the (Un)ma(r)king of Difference: 1. Archiving Indians/Indios and fabricating Whites: colonial Spanish-American 'antiquities' and late eighteenth-century elites in Philadelphia Ruth Hill
2. Forever present and silent no more: early Sephardic voices in the Spanish North American Atlantic Emily Colbert-Cairns
3. Talismanic fragments of the Muslim Atlantic: the Malê revolt of 1835 Zeinab Mcheimech
4. The mid nineteenth-century press and periodical poetry: Francisco P. Ramírez's Borderlands Anthology Ayendy Bonifacio
Part II. Transcending: Narrative and Counternarratives: 5. La Llorona's ghosts: losses and omens in colonial and contemporary texts Matthew Goldmark
6. From Mary Rowlandson to Lola Medina: rethinking the captivity narrative genre Nicole Eitzen Delgado
7. Early Latinx formation in Inca Garcilaso: Spanish encounters with the Lady of Cofachiqui Thomas Ward
8. 'Tragic time': an unromantic re-reading of nineteenth-century Cuban history Dalia Antonia Caraballo Muller
Part III. Transgressing: Beyond Empire, Nation, or Race: 9. When words are not enough: José Martí, race, and writing/righting the imagined nation Kenya C. Dworkin y Méndez
10. The First Filipino and the Archive: Introducing Rizal in colonial Latinx studies Ernest Rafael Hartwell
11. Anarchist Media, Cuba's War for Independence, and the Forging of a Radical Transnational Latinidad, 1880s–1890s Kirwin Shaffer
12. Creole patriotism and the colonial archive: Francisco de Florencia and the early Florida frontier Jason Dyck
Part IV. Transcreating: Texts, Subtexts and Creative Anachronism: 13. Spanish Baroque theater and the transatlantic: Bartolomé de Alva's Nahuatl transcreation of El animal profeta y dichoso patricida José Estrada
14. The epistemic disobedience of Latinx Shakespeares Carla Della Gatta
15. The strange case of a 'lost' dramatic performance: early Californio literary culture and Anglo-American historiographic censoring Pedro García-Caro
16. Mars is Oggún: African-Cuban spirituality and the divine masculine in the poetry of Plácido Matthew Pettway
17. Drawing the Latinx migrant subject: From Guaman Poma via Cornejo Polar to Martín López Lam's Las edades de la rata (2019) Andrea Aramburú

Subject Areas: Literary studies: general [DSB]