Critical Studies of Latinxs in the Americas

ISSN: 2372-6830

The Latinx presence continues to grow and intersect with every aspect of life in the 21st century. This is evident when one considers the appointment of Sonia Sotomayor as Associate Justice to the United States Supreme Court. As well as the prominence of distinct Latinx individuals in various spheres of social, cultural, and political life such as Mario J. Molina, Nobel Prize winner and recipient of the Medal of the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2013; and Jorge Maria Bergoglio (Pope Francis) who has revolutionized the Catholic church since he became the highest ecclesiastical authority of the Catholic world in 2013. Latino Studies, as an academic field of inquiry, began to emerge during the early 1990s surfacing from the more recognized field of Chicano Studies. As such, the major contributions to the field first emerged from Mexican/Chicano scholarship—publications such as Aztlán, the most important journal in the field of Chicano Studies since 1970; Gloria Anzaldúa’’s groundbreaking memoir/essay, Borderlands/La Frontera: The New Mestiza (1987); George J. Sanchez’s historical account, Becoming Mexican American: Ethnicity, Culture, and Identity in Chicano Los Angeles, 1900-1945 (1995); and the two volumes of The Chicano Studies Reader: An Anthology of Aztlan, 1970-2010. These are a few examples of the consolidation and the continuing development of Chicano Studies in the United States. In the past two decades, Latino Studies have grown and expanded significantly. There have been a large number of publications about Latinxs in the Midwest and North East; in addition, due to the fast-growing population of Latinxs in the area, new scholarship has emerged about the Latinxs in the New South. Some examples of the emerging field of Latino Studies are the Latinos on the East Coast (2015) edited by Yolanda Medina and Ángeles Donoso Macaya, Global Cities and Immigrants (2015) by Francisco Velasco Caballero and María de los Angeles Torres; the Handbook of Latinos and Education (2010) edited by Enrique Murillo, et al.; Angela Anselmo’s and Alma Rubal-Lopez’s 2004 On Becoming Nuyoricans; David Carey Jr. and Robert Atkinson (2009) Latino Voices in New England; Yolanda Prieto’s case study entitled, The Cubans of Union City: Immigrants and Exiles in a New Jersey Community (2009); and Lawrence La Fontaine-Stokes’ Queer Ricans Cultures and Sexualities in the Diaspora (2009). Critical Studies of Latinxs in the Americas will become the counterpart of the aforementioned research about the Latinx diaspora that deserve equal scholarly attention and will add to the academic field of inquiry that highlights the lived experience, consequential progress and contributions, as well as the issues and concerns that all Latinxs face in present times. This provocative series will offer a critical space for reflection and questioning of what it means to be Latinx living in the Americas, extending the dialogue to include the North and South hemispheric relations that are prevalent in other fields of global studies such as Post-Colonial Theory, Post-Colonial Feminism, Latin American and Caribbean Studies, Critical Race Theory, and others. This broader scope can contribute to prolific interdisciplinary research and can also promote changes in policies and practices that will enable today’s leaders to deal with the overall issues that affect us all. Topics that explore contemporary inequalities and social exclusions associated with processes of racialization, economic exploitation, health, education, transnationalism, immigration, identity politics, and abilities that are not commonly highlighted in the current literature as well as the multitude of socio-economic, and cultural commonalities and differences among the Latinxs in the Americas will be at the center of the series. As the Latinx population continues to grow and change, and universities enhance their Latino Studies programs to be inclusive of all types of Latinx identities, a series dedicated to the lived experience of Latinxs in the Americas and a consideration of their progress and concerns in the social, cultural, political, economic, and artistic arenas is of incredible value in the quest for pedagogical practices and understandings that apply a critical perspective to the issues facing scholars in this area of study. Scholars, faculties, and students alike will benefit from this series. Expressions of interest for authored or edited books will be considered on a first come basis. A Book Proposal Guideline is available on request. For individual or group inquiries please contact the Series Editors at ymedina@bmcc.cuny.edu & Margarita.MachadoCasas@UTSA.edu.

50 publications

Many Voices

The literature of the Americas has a variety of cultural elements present under the general term "American." The canonical English mainstream of North America and the corresponding Spanish/Portuguese mainstream of South America have nevertheless reflected the arrival, assimilation, and marginality of numerous groups. Their experiences are both unique and representative of universal conditions of cultural contact and conflict. In both the United States and Canada, there are works which represent diverse aspects of the Black, Irish, Italian, Hispanic or Latino, Franco, German, Jewish, Portuguese, Greek, Slavic, and Asian communities, among others, as writers give both creative and testimonial form to the realities, both past and present of groups arriving subsequent to the original colonial period. In Latin America, some of these same groups are represented in the fiction written in Spanish and Portuguese. While this series focuses on specific ethnic groups and/or individual representatives, the fictional and poetic texts therein may address a range of issues, among them race relations, language and bilingualism, nationalism, colonialism, gender, class, cultural conflict, identity and maintenance, the context of multiculturalism. Critical approaches may include ethnocriticism, historical analyses, others, as well as structural critiques of these sorts of texts which by the very nature of their multiple focus become the aesthetic model for their content: a sort of border, mixed-blood, metis linguistic mode that in turn requires a double vision of its readers and critics. The literature of the Americas has a variety of cultural elements present under the general term "American." The canonical English mainstream of North America and the corresponding Spanish/Portuguese mainstream of South America have nevertheless reflected the arrival, assimilation, and marginality of numerous groups. Their experiences are both unique and representative of universal conditions of cultural contact and conflict. In both the United States and Canada, there are works which represent diverse aspects of the Black, Irish, Italian, Hispanic or Latino, Franco, German, Jewish, Portuguese, Greek, Slavic, and Asian communities, among others, as writers give both creative and testimonial form to the realities, both past and present of groups arriving subsequent to the original colonial period. In Latin America, some of these same groups are represented in the fiction written in Spanish and Portuguese. While this series focuses on specific ethnic groups and/or individual representatives, the fictional and poetic texts therein may address a range of issues, among them race relations, language and bilingualism, nationalism, colonialism, gender, class, cultural conflict, identity and maintenance, the context of multiculturalism. Critical approaches may include ethnocriticism, historical analyses, others, as well as structural critiques of these sorts of texts which by the very nature of their multiple focus become the aesthetic model for their content: a sort of border, mixed-blood, metis linguistic mode that in turn requires a double vision of its readers and critics. The literature of the Americas has a variety of cultural elements present under the general term "American." The canonical English mainstream of North America and the corresponding Spanish/Portuguese mainstream of South America have nevertheless reflected the arrival, assimilation, and marginality of numerous groups. Their experiences are both unique and representative of universal conditions of cultural contact and conflict. In both the United States and Canada, there are works which represent diverse aspects of the Black, Irish, Italian, Hispanic or Latino, Franco, German, Jewish, Portuguese, Greek, Slavic, and Asian communities, among others, as writers give both creative and testimonial form to the realities, both past and present of groups arriving subsequent to the original colonial period. In Latin America, some of these same groups are represented in the fiction written in Spanish and Portuguese. While this series focuses on specific ethnic groups and/or individual representatives, the fictional and poetic texts therein may address a range of issues, among them race relations, language and bilingualism, nationalism, colonialism, gender, class, cultural conflict, identity and maintenance, the context of multiculturalism. Critical approaches may include ethnocriticism, historical analyses, others, as well as structural critiques of these sorts of texts which by the very nature of their multiple focus become the aesthetic model for their content: a sort of border, mixed-blood, metis linguistic mode that in turn requires a double vision of its readers and critics.

5 publications