The Theater In New Spain In The Early Eighteenth Century

Previously published as a special issue of The Bulletin of Spanish Studies, The Eighteenth-Century Theatre in Spain is the second in a series of research bibliographies on the Theatre in Spain. Representing ten years of searches and compilation by its specialist authors, this volume draws together data on more than 1,500 books, articles and documents concerned with Spanish eighteenth-century theatre. Studies of plays and playwrights are included as well as material dealing with theatres, actors and stagecraft. Wherever possible, items listed have been personally examined, and their library location in Britain, Spain or USA is provided. Scholars with interests in drama will find in this single-volume work of reference a wealth of reliable information concerning this specialist field.

The first comprehensive historical study of the images and shrines of New Spain, rich in stories and patterns of change over time.

The Cambridge History of Latin American Literature is by far the most comprehensive work of its kind ever written. Its three volumes cover the whole sweep of Latin American literature (including Brazilian) from pre-Colombian times to the present, and contain chapters on Latin American writing in the USA. Volume 3 is devoted partly to the history of Brazilian literature, from the earliest writing through the colonial period and the Portuguese-language traditions of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries; and partly also to an extensive bibliographical section in which annotated reading lists relating to the chapters in all three volumes of The Cambridge History of Latin American Literature are presented. These bibliographies are a unique feature of the History, further enhancing its immense value as a reference work.

Throughout Spanish colonial America, limpieza de sangre (literally, "purity of blood") determined an individual's status within the complex system of social hierarchy called casta. Within this socially stratified culture, those individuals at the top were considered to have the highest calidad-an all-encompassing estimation of a person's social status. At the top of the social pyramid were the Peninsulares: Spaniards born in Spain, who controlled most of the positions of power within the colonial governments and institutions. Making up most of the middle-class were criollos, locally born people of Spanish ancestry. During the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries, Peninsulare intellectuals asserted their cultural superiority over criollos by claiming that American Spaniards had a generally lower calidad because of their "impure" racial lineage. Still, given their Spanish heritage, criollos were allowed employment at many Spanish institutions in New Spain, including the center of Spanish religious practice in colonial America: Mexico City Cathedral. Indeed, most of the cathedral employees-in particular, musicians-were middle-class criollos. In Playing in the Cathedral, author Jesús Ramos-Kittrell explores how liturgical musicians-choristers and instrumentalists, as well as teachers and directors-at Mexico City Cathedral in the mid-eighteenth century navigated changing discourses about social status and racial purity. He argues that criollos cathedral musicians, influenced by Enlightenment values of self-industry and autonomy, fought against the Peninsulare-dominated, racialized casta system. Drawing on extensive archival research, Ramos-Kittrell shows that these musicians held up their musical training and knowledge, as well as their institutional affiliation with the cathedral, as characteristics that legitimized their calidad and aided their social advancement. The cathedral musicians invoked claims of "decency" and erudition in asserting their social worth, arguing that their performance capabilities and theoretical knowledge of counterpoint bespoke their calidad and status as hombres decentes. Ultimately, Ramos-Kittrell argues that music, as a performative and theoretical activity, was a highly dynamic factor in the cultural and religious life of New Spain, and an active agent in the changing discourses of social status and "Spanishness" in colonial America. Offering unique and fascinating insights into the social, institutional, and artistic spheres in New Spain, this book is a welcome addition to scholars and graduate students with particular interests in Latin American colonial music and cultural history, as well as those interested in the intersections of music and religion.

Foundational Arts examines how the relationships between mural painting and missionary theater became a transcultural process for mass conversion of Native populations to Christianity. Michael K. Schuessler studies the New World expressions of dramatic and plastic arts and how they became the tools of European friars to Christianize Native peoples and ultimately create a new and unique literary and artistic tradition.

In Trafficking Hector Amaya examines how the dramatic escalation of drug violence in Mexico in 2008 prompted new forms of participation in public culture in Mexico and the United States. He contends that, by becoming a site of national and transnational debate about the role of the state, this violence altered the modes publicness could take, transforming assumptions about freedom of expression and the rules of public participation. Amaya examines the practices of narcocorrido musicians who take advantage of digital production and distribution technologies to escape Mexican censors and to share music across the US-Mexico border, as well as anonymous bloggers whose coverage of trafficking and violence from a place of relative safety made them public heroes. These new forms of being in the public sphere, Amaya demonstrates, evolved to exceed the bounds of the state and traditional media sources, signaling the inadequacy of democratic theories of freedom and publicness to understand how violence shapes public discourse.