Colonial Itineraries Of Contemporary Mexico

"This book discusses rewritings of the Mexican colonia to question present-day realities of marginality and inequality, imposed political domination, and hybrid subjectivities. Critics examine literature and films produced in and around Mexico since 2000to broaden our understanding beyond the theories of the new historical novel and upend the notion of the novel as the sole re-creative genre"--

Analyzes literary and cultural representations of iconic Mexican women to explore how these reimaginings can undermine or perpetuate gender norms in contemporary Mexico. In Troubled Memories, Oswaldo Estrada traces the literary and cultural representations of several iconic Mexican women produced in the midst of neoliberalism, gender debates, and the widespread commodification of cultural memory. He examines recent fictionalizations of Malinche, Hernán Cortés’s indigenous translator during the Conquest of Mexico; Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz, the famous Baroque intellectual of New Spain; Leona Vicario, a supporter of the Mexican War of Independence; the soldaderas of the Mexican Revolution; and Frida Kahlo, the tormented painter of the twentieth century. Long associated with gendered archetypes and symbols, these women have achieved mythical status in Mexican culture and continue to play a complex role in Mexican literature. Focusing on contemporary novels, plays, and chronicles in connection to films, television series, and corridos of the Mexican Revolution, Estrada interrogates how and why authors repeatedly recreate the lives of these historical women from contemporary perspectives, often generating hybrid narratives that fuse history, memory, and fiction. In so doing, he reveals the innovative and sometimes troublesome ways in which authors can challenge or perpetuate gendered conventions of writing women’s lives. “A leading scholar on gender and literature, Oswaldo Estrada delivers a thorough, rigorous, and exciting account on the persistence of female icons in contemporary culture. Steeped in his deep knowledge of Mexico’s cultural history, Estrada’s book is a key contribution to questions of gender, iconicity, and the interrelations between popular and literary culture—a must read for scholars and students.” — Ignacio M. Sánchez Prado, author of Strategic Occidentalism: On Mexican Fiction, the Neoliberal Book Market, and the Question of World Literature “By studying the way some of the most prominent female Mexican icons of all time have been reimagined in contemporary fiction and transformed into objects of consumerism, symbols of national identity, and memories of the past, this book fills a dire need in the Mexican studies field. The scholarship is exemplary, the style is impeccable, and reading the author is a pleasure.” — Patricia Saldarriaga, Middlebury College

This edited collection explores how contemporary Latin American cinema has dealt with and represented issues of human rights, moving beyond many of the recurring topics for Latin American films. Through diverse interdisciplinary theoretical and methodological approaches, and analyses of different audiovisual media from fictional and documentary films to digitally-distributed activist films, the contributions discuss the theme of human rights in cinema in connection to various topics and concepts. Chapters in the volume explore the prison system, state violence, the Mexican dirty war, the Chilean dictatorship, debt, transnational finance, indigenous rights, social movement, urban occupation, the right to housing, intersectionality, LGBTT and women’s rights in the context of a number of Latin American countries. By so doing, it assesses the long overdue relation between cinema and human rights in the region, thus opening new avenues to aid the understanding of cinema’s role in social transformation.

"In September 2015, Junípero Serra was canonized by Pope Francis in Washington DC against the protest of many Californian Native Americans who criticized his brutal treatment of their ancestors and destruction of their culture. Like most complex historical figures, Junípero Serra has been interpreted in countless ways, often contextualized mainly in California. This book situates Serra in the context of the three major places that he lived, learned, and proselytized: Mallorca, Mexico, and Alta California. Scholars from all three countries contribute to a rare glimpse into the life of the saint by considering his use of music and art, his representation in popular culture; his education, ideology, and Franciscan influence; the plans and building of the missions; and his relation to native peoples."--Provided by publisher.

Rebecca Janzen brings a unique applied understanding of religion to bear on analysis of Mexican cinema from the Golden Age of the 1930s onward. Unholy Trinity first examines canonical films like Emilio Fernández's María Candelaria and Río Escondido that mythologize Mexico's past, suggesting that religious imagery and symbols are used to negotiate the place of religion in a modernizing society. It next studies films of the 1970s, which use motifs of corruption and illicit sexuality to critique both church and state. Finally, an examination of films from the 1990s and 2000s, including Guita Schyfter's Novia que te vea, a film that portrays Mexico City's Ashkenazi and Sephardic Jewish communities in the twentieth century, and Carlos Carrera's controversial 2002 film El crimen del padre Amaro, argues that religious imagery—related to the Catholic Church, people's interpretations of Catholicism, and representations of Jewish communities in Mexico—allows the films to critically engage with Mexican politics, identity, and social issues.

This is the first major collection to remap the American West though the intersectional lens of gender and sexuality, especially in relation to race and Indigeneity. Organized through several interrelated key concepts, The Routledge Companion to Gender and the American West addresses gender and sexuality from and across diverse and divergent methodologies. Comprising 34 chapters by a team of international contributors, the Companion is divided into four parts: Genealogies Bodies Movements Lands The volume features leading and newer scholars whose essays connect interdisciplinary fields including Indigenous Studies, Latinx and Asian American Studies, Western American Studies, and Queer, Feminist, and Gender Studies. Through innovative methodologies and reclaimed archives of knowledge, contributors model fresh frameworks for thinking about relations of power and place, gender and genre, settler colonization and decolonial resistance. Even as they reckon with the ongoing gendered and racialized violence at the core of the American West, contributors forge new lexicons for imagining alternative Western futures. This pathbreaking collection will be invaluable to scholars and students studying the origins, myths, histories, and legacies of the American West. This is a foundational collection that will become invaluable to scholars and students across a range of disciplines including Gender and Sexuality Studies, Literary Studies, Indigenous Studies, and Latinx Studies.

Mexicana and Chicana authors from the late 1970s to the turn of the century helped overturn the patriarchal literary culture and mores of their time. This landmark volume acquaints readers with the provocative, at times defiant, yet subtle discourses of this important generation of writers and explains the influences and historical contexts that shaped their work. Until now, little criticism has been published about these important works. Addressing this oversight, Teaching Late-Twentieth-Century Mexicana and Chicana Writers starts with essays on Mexicana and Chicana authors. It then features essays on specific teaching strategies suitable for literature surveys and courses in cultural studies, Latino studies, interdisciplinary and comparative studies, humanities, and general education that aim to explore the intersectionalities represented in these works. Experienced teachers offer guidance on using these works to introduce students to border studies, transnational studies, sexuality studies, disability studies, contemporary Mexican history and Latino history in the United States, the history of social movements, and concepts of race and gender.

A camp lipsynched routine by three air stewards distracts unsuspecting passengers from the fact that their plane is to make a crash landing. Performance functions as a diversion from unsavoury realities. In this way, Pedro Almodóvar's 2013 film I'm So Excited adopts a strategy of subversive anti-establishment censor-evading filmmaking practices under Franco. Contemporary cinematic performance in Spain intersects with politics to provide a platform for views and voices that do not conform to the dominant political narrative. An essential text for scholars, students and aficionados of Spanish cinema, Subversive Spanish Cinema: The Politics of Performance is the first single-authored monograph to focus on performance in this context. The book analyses interactions between performance and politics in technical and conceptual terms considering, for example, performance styles, the narrative role of performance and political interventions by actors such as Javier Bardem and Juan Diego Botto. Ultimately, Subversive Spanish Cinema: The Politics of Performance posits performance, within the specific context of contemporary Spanish cinema, as a politically-potent device and proposes that it is precisely for this reason that the arts have borne the brunt of aggressive austerity measures enforced by Spain's conservative government in recent years.