Imagination Beyond Nation [Paperback]

Eva Bueno (Author), Terry Caesar (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: March 4, 1999 | Series: Pitt Latin American Studies

Can scholarly pursuit of soap operas and folk art actually reveal a national imagination? This innovative collection features studies of iconography in Mexico, telenovelas in Venezuela, drama in Chile, cinema in Brazil, comic strips and tango in Argentina, and ceramics in Peru. In examining these popular arts, the scholars gathered here ask the same broad questions: what precisely is a national culture at the level of the popular? The national idea in Latin America emerges from these pages as a problematic, divided one, worth sustained attention in the field of culture studies. Many different arts come forth in all their richness and vitality, compelling us to look, listen, and understand.

Editorial Reviews

Review

“It is inordinately refreshing to read these essays. They are original and provocative.... Perhaps the singlemost original contribution is the essays' relationship to questions of nationness. In a field that is often absurdly tied to the idea and preservation of some kind of threatened or precarious national essence perceived as embodied in various objects and popular culture practices, these essays expand and problematize the idea of nationness while sustaining its possibility.”
--Ana M. López, Tulane University

About the Author

Eva P. Bueno teaches Spanish and comparative literature at Pennsylvania State University, Dubois. She has published Resisting Boundaries: The Subject of Naturalism in Brazil (1995) and essays on Spanish-American and Brazilian literature in magazines such as MLN, Revista de cr'tica literaria latinoamericana, Sociocriticism, and others. She is editing The Feminist Encyclopedia of Latin American Literature and Naming the Father. Her book on the career of filmmaker Amcio Mazzaropi will be published in Brazil next year.

Terry Caesar teaches modern American literature and literary theory at Clarion University. He is the author of Forgiving the Boundaries (1995), a study of American travel writing, and two collections of essays on the politics of the profession, Conspiring with Forms (1992) and Writing in Disguise (1998). His essays on a variety of subynchon, and postmodernism, have been published in American Literary History, History, Substance, and the Yale Journal of Criticism.

Product Details

• Paperback: 328 pages
• Publisher: University of Pittsburgh Press; 1 edition (March 4, 1999)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0822956861
• ISBN-13: 978-0822956860
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 6 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,831,344 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Héctor Fernández L'Hoeste (Ph.D. in Hispanic Languages and Literature, Stony Brook University 1996) is associate professor at Georgia State University in Atlanta, where teaches Latin American cultural studies. He is the director of the Center for Latin American and Latino/a Studies (CLALS) at Georgia State. His publications include Narrativas de representación urbana (Lang, 1998), Rockin' Las Americas (University of Pittsburgh Press, 2004), and Redrawing The Nation (Palgrave Macmillan, 2009). His articles on Latin American culture, literature, and media have appeared in journals such as Hispania, National Identities, Chasqui, Revista de Estudios Hispánicos, Revista de Estudios Colombianos, and Film Quarterly.