Producing the Pacific offers the reader an interdisciplinary reading of the maps, narratives and rituals related to the three Spanish voyages to the South Pacific that took place between 1567 and 1606. These journeys were led by Alvaro de Mendana, Pedro Fernandez de Quiros and Isabel Barreto, the first woman ever to become admiral of and command a fleet. Mercedes Maroto Camino presents a cultural analysis of these journeys and takes issue with some established notions about the value of the past and the way it is always rewritten from the perspective of the present. She highlights the...

Practising Places offers an original insight into the culture of early modern Spain in so far as the various fields explored here are seldom juxtaposed. Literary texts, urban views and paintings are analysed side by side in a hybrid cultural interpretation that is as cartographic as it is architectural, historical or literary. This book presents a "thick" description which focuses on the first picaresque novel, Lazarillo de Tormes, the autobiographical writing of Teresa of Avila, and the urban views of Spanish towns drafted or painted by Joris Hoefnagel, Anton Van den Wyngaerde and El Greco....

A welcome addition to the fields of Latino and (trans-)American cultural and literary studies, Latino Dreams focuses on a selection of Latino narratives, published between the mid-1980s and the mid-1990s, that may be said to traffic in the U.S.A.'s attendant myths and governing cultural logics. The selection includes novels by authors who have received little academic attention-Abraham Rodriguez, Achy Obejas, and Benjamin Alire Saenz-along with underattended texts from more renowned writers-Rosario Ferre, Coco Fusco, and Guillermo Gomez-Pena. Latino Dreams takes a transcultural approach in...

La pulsión mimética, tomada en su sentido lato de principio que se manifiesta en cualquier tipo de relación humana, es una preocupación constante en la obra del autor argentino Manuel Puig (1932-1990). En este estudio, que presenta un riguroso análisis de cuatro novelas – Boquitas pintadas, The Buenos Aires Affair, Maldición eterna a quien lea estas páginas y Cae la noche tropical – se examina el complejo vínculo entre las dimensiones psicológicas, sociológicas, poéticas y epistemológicas de esta mímesis tan fundamental como inasible. Comprender mejor la colisión de lógicas...