New Books in Latin American Studies
Episodes
Brooke Larson, "The Lettered Indian: Race, Nation, and Indigenous Education in Twentieth-Century Bolivia" (Duke UP, 2023)
11 Apr 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Bringing into dialogue the fields of social history, Andean ethnography, and postcolonial theory, The Lettered Indian: Race, Nation, and Indigenous E...
Gustavo Guzmán, "Attitudes of the Chilean Right toward Jews: From Acceptable Undesirables to Respected Businessmen" (Brill, 2022)
07 Apr 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Gustavo Guzmán's Attitudes of the Chilean Right toward Jews: From Acceptable Undesirables to Respected Businessmen (Brill, 2022) is the first book ...
Marc Edelman, "Peasant Politics of the Twenty-First Century: Transnational Social Movements and Agrarian Change" (Cornell UP, 2024)
06 Apr 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Peasant Politics of the Twenty-First Century: Transnational Social Movements and Agrarian Change (Cornell University Press, 2024) by Dr. Marc Edelman...
Mauricio Fernando Castro, "Only a Few Blocks to Cuba: Cold War Refugee Policy, the Cuban Diaspora, and the Transformations of Miami" (U Pennsylvania Press, 2024)
05 Apr 2024
Contributed by Lukas
In Only a Few Blocks to Cuba: Cold War Refugee Policy, the Cuban Diaspora, and the Transformations of Miami (U Pennsylvania Press, 2024), Mauricio C...
José Tenorio, "School Food Politics in Mexico: The Corporatization of Obesity and Healthy Eating Policies" (Routledge, 2023)
30 Mar 2024
Contributed by Lukas
For decades now, we’ve all heard the refrain – we are in a war against obesity, with perhaps the most important battle being fought over the healt...
Denise Kripper, "Narratives of Mistranslation: Fictional Translators in Latin American Literature" (Routledge, 2023)
25 Mar 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Narratives of Mistranslation: Fictional Translators in Latin American Literature (Routledge, 2023) offers unique insights into the role of the trans...
Emily Conroy-Krutz, "Missionary Diplomacy: Religion and Nineteenth-Century American Foreign Relations" (Cornell UP, 2024)
24 Mar 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Missionary Diplomacy: Religion and Nineteenth-Century American Foreign Relations (Cornell University Press, 2024) illuminates the crucial place of re...
Cristina Rocha, "Cool Christianity: Hillsong and the Fashioning of Cosmopolitan Identities" (Oxford UP, 2024)
24 Mar 2024
Contributed by Lukas
When did Christianity become cool? How did an Australian church conquer the world and expand into Brazil, a country with its own crop of powerful mega...
Lillian Guerra, "Patriots and Traitors in Revolutionary Cuba, 1961-1981" (U Pittsburgh Press, 2023)
23 Mar 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Authorities in postrevolutionary Cuba worked to establish a binary society in which citizens were either patriots or traitors. This all-or-nothing app...
Alke Jenss, "Selective Security in the War on Drugs: The Coloniality of State Power in Colombia and Mexico" (Rowman & Littlefield, 2023)
18 Mar 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Paramilitaries, crime, and tens of thousands of disappeared persons—the so-called war on drugs has perpetuated violence in Latin America, at times p...
Daniel Feierstein, "Memories and Representations of Terror: Working Through Genocide" (Routledge, 2024)
16 Mar 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Memories and Representations of Terror: Working Through Genocide (Routledge, 2024) explores how memories and representations shape our understanding...
Andrew J. Kirkendall, "Hemispheric Alliances: Liberal Democrats and Cold War Latin America" (UNC Press, 2022)
16 Mar 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Hemispheric foreign policy has waxed and waned since the Mexican War, and the Cold War presented both extraordinary promises and dangerous threats to ...
Yolanda Ariadne Collins, "Forests of Refuge: Decolonizing Environmental Governance in the Amazonian Guiana Shield" (U California Press, 2024)
12 Mar 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Forests of Refuge: Decolonizing Environmental Governance in the Amazonian Guiana Shield (U California Press, 2024) questions the effectiveness of ma...
Laura Huttunen and Gerhild Perl, "An Anthropology of Disappearance: Politics, Intimacies and Alternative Ways of Knowing" (Berghahn Books, 2023)
10 Mar 2024
Contributed by Lukas
All over the world, people disappear from their families, communities and the state’s bureaucratic gaze, as victims of oppressive regimes or while m...
Diego Javier Luis, "The First Asians in the Americas: A Transpacific History" (Harvard UP, 2024)
05 Mar 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Between 1565 and 1815, the so-called Manila galleons enjoyed a near-complete monopoly on transpacific trade between Spain’s Asian and American colon...
Eline van Ommen, "Nicaragua Must Survive: Sandinista Revolutionary Diplomacy in the Global Cold War" (U California Press, 2024)
02 Mar 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Nicaragua Must Survive: Sandinista Revolutionary Diplomacy in the Global Cold War (University of California Press, 2023) tells the story of the San...
Maxine Lowy, "Latent Memory: Human Rights and Jewish Identity in Chile" (U Wisconsin Press, 2022)
27 Feb 2024
Contributed by Lukas
In the first half of the twentieth century, Jewish immigrants and refugees sought to rebuild their lives in Chile. Despite their personal histories of...
Ariel Mae Lambe, "No Barrier Can Contain It: Cuban Antifascism and the Spanish Civil War" (UNC Press, 2019)
25 Feb 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Ariel Mae Lambe’s new book No Barrier Can Contain It: Cuban Antifascism and the Spanish Civil War (University of North Carolina Press, 2019) is a hi...
Calla Hummel, "Why Informal Workers Organize: Contentious Politics, Enforcement, and the State" (Oxford UP, 2022)
25 Feb 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Informal workers make up over two billion workers or about 50 percent of the global workforce, and yet scholarly understandings of informal workers’...
Raanan Rein, "Populism and Ethnicity: Peronism and the Jews of Argentina" (McGill-Queen's UP, 2020)
23 Feb 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Juan Perón's decade-long regime, from 1946 to 1955, is often presented as Nazi-fascist and antisemitic - claims that are strongly rooted in Argentina...
Magalí Armillas-Tiseyra, "The Dictator Novel: Writers and Politics in the Global South" (Northwestern UP, 2019)
18 Feb 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Where there are dictators, there are novels about dictators. But "dictator novels" do not simply respond to the reality of dictatorship. As this genre...
Pablo Alonso González, "Cuban Cultural Heritage: A Rebel Past for a Revolutionary Nation" (UP of Florida, 2018)
16 Feb 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Cuban Cultural Heritage: A Rebel Past for a Revolutionary Nation (UP of Florida, 2018) explores the role that cultural heritage and museums played in...
Diego Javier Luis, "The First Asians in the Americas: A Transpacific History" (Harvard UP, 2024)
15 Feb 2024
Contributed by Lukas
There’s a popular folk hero in Puebla, Mexico—Catarina de San Juan, who Mexicans hailed as a devoted religious figure after her death in 1688. She...
Marisol LeBrón, "Policing Life and Death: Race, Violence, and Resistance in Puerto Rico" (U California Press, 2019)
14 Feb 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Marisol LeBrón’s new book, Policing Life and Death: Race, Violence, and Resistance in Puerto Rico (University of California Press, 2019), examines ...
Bryce Henson, "Emergent Quilombos: Black Life and Hip-Hop in Brazil" (U Texas Press, 2023)
07 Feb 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Known as Black Rome, Salvador da Bahia, Brazil, is a predominantly Black city. The local art, food, and dance are closely linked to the population's A...
Rachel Nolan, "Until I Find You: Disappeared Children and Coercive Adoptions in Guatemala" (Harvard UP, 2024)
28 Jan 2024
Contributed by Lukas
The poignant saga of Guatemala's adoption industry: an international marketplace for children, built on a foundation of inequality, war, and Indigenou...
Suzanne Oakdale, "Amazonian Cosmopolitans: Navigating a Shamanic Cosmos, Shifting Indigenous Policies, and Other Modern Projects" (U Nebraska Press, 2022)
28 Jan 2024
Contributed by Lukas
In Amazonian Cosmopolitans: Navigating a Shamanic Cosmos, Shifting Indigenous Policies, and Other Modern Projects (U Nebraska Press, 2022), Suzanne ...
Marcia Stephenson, "Llamas beyond the Andes: Untold Histories of Camelids in the Modern World" (U Texas Press, 2023)
27 Jan 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Camelids are vital to the cultures and economies of the Andes. The animals have also been at the heart of ecological and social catastrophe: Europeans...
Chelsea Schields, "Offshore Attachments: Oil and Intimacy in the Caribbean" (U California Press, 2023)
21 Jan 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Chelsea Schields's book Offshore Attachments: Oil and Intimacy in the Caribbean (U California Press, 2023) reveals how the contested management of se...
Patricio Simonetto, "A Body of One's Own: A Trans History of Argentina" (U Texas Press, 2024)
15 Jan 2024
Contributed by Lukas
As a trans history of Argentina, a country that banned medically assisted gender affirmation practices and punished trans lives, A Body of One’s Ow...
Gustav Cederlof, "The Low-Carbon Contradiction: Energy Transition, Geopolitics, and the Infrastructural State in Cuba" (U California Press, 2023)
15 Jan 2024
Contributed by Lukas
In the pursuit of socialism, Cuba became Latin America’s most oil-dependent economy. When the Soviet Union collapsed, the country lost 86 percent of...
Eva van Roekel, "Phenomenal Justice: Violence and Morality in Argentina" (Rutgers UP, 2020)
11 Jan 2024
Contributed by Lukas
In Phenomenal Justice: Violence and Morality in Argentina (Rutgers University Press, 2020), Eva van Roekel grounds her research in phenomenological an...
Sandro R. Barros et al., "The Dissidence of Reinaldo Arenas: Queering Literature, Politics, and the Activist Curriculum" (U Florida Press, 2022)
09 Jan 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Focusing on the didactic nature of the work of Reinaldo Arenas, The Dissidence of Reinaldo Arenas: Queering Literature, Politics, and the Activist Cu...
Marcy Norton, "The Tame and the Wild: People and Animals after 1492" (Harvard UP, 2024)
04 Jan 2024
Contributed by Lukas
In The Tame and the Wild: People and Animals after 1492 (Harvard University Press, 2024), Dr. Marcy Norton offers a dramatic new interpretation of t...
Katherine M. Marino, "Feminism for the Americas: The Making of an International Human Rights Movement" (UNC Press, 2019)
03 Jan 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Katherine M. Marino is an assistant professor of history at the University of California, Los Angeles. Feminism for the Americas: The Making of an Int...
Max Deardorff, "A Tale of Two Granadas: Custom, Community, and Citizenship in the Spanish Empire, 1568–1668" (Cambridge UP, 2023)
02 Jan 2024
Contributed by Lukas
In 1570's New Kingdom of Granada (modern Colombia), a new generation of mestizo (half-Spanish, half-indigenous) men sought positions of increasing pow...
Laura Briggs, "Taking Children: A History of American Terror" (U California Press, 2020)
31 Dec 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Laura Briggs’s Taking Children: A History of American Terror (University of California Press 2020) is a forceful and captivating book that readers w...
Sarah Sarzynski, "Revolution in the Terra Do Sol: The Cold War in Brazil" (Stanford UP, 2018)
30 Dec 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Sarah Sarzynski's Revolution in the Terra Do Sol: The Cold War in Brazil (Stanford UP, 2018) examines the influence of revolutionary social movemen...
Elena Schneider, "The Occupation of Havana: War, Trade and Slavery in the Atlantic World" (UNC Press, 2018)
27 Dec 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Histories of the British occupation of Havana in 1762 have focused on imperial rivalries and the actions and decisions of European planters, colonial ...
Marixa Lasso, "Erased: The Untold Story of the Panama Canal" (Harvard UP, 2019)
26 Dec 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Many of our presumptions about the Panama Canal Zone are wrong; it was not carved out of uninhabited jungle, the creation of Lake Gatún did not flood...
Matt Garcia, "Eli and the Octopus: The CEO Who Tried to Reform One of the World’s Most Notorious Corporations" (Harvard UP, 2023)
25 Dec 2023
Contributed by Lukas
The poignant rise and fall of an idealistic immigrant who, as CEO of a major conglomerate, tried to change the way America did business before he hims...
Nessette Falu, "Unseen Flesh: Gynecology and Black Queer Worth-Making in Brazil" (Duke UP, 2023)
24 Dec 2023
Contributed by Lukas
In Unseen Flesh: Gynecology and Black Queer Worth-Making in Brazil (Duke University Press, 2023) Nessette Falu explores how Black lesbians in Brazil...
Trent Masiki, "The Afro-Latino Memoir: Race, Ethnicity, and Literary Interculturalism" (UNC Press, 2023)
21 Dec 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Despite their literary and cultural significance, Afro-Latino memoirs have been marginalized in both Latino and African American studies. Trent Masiki...
António Costa Pinto, "An Authoritarian Third Way in the Era of Fascism: Diffusion, Models and Interactions in Europe and Latin America" (Routledge, 2021)
19 Dec 2023
Contributed by Lukas
António Costa Pinto's book An Authoritarian Third Way in the Era of Fascism: Diffusion, Models and Interactions in Europe and Latin America (Routle...
Hugo Wong, "America's Lost Chinese: The Rise and Fall of a Migrant Family Dream" (Oxford UP, 2023)
14 Dec 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Like countless other migrants from China, Hugo Wong’s great-grandfathers–Wong Foon Chuck and Leung Hing–travel across the Pacific to make a life...
David Carey, Jr., "Health in the Highlands: Indigenous Healing and Scientific Medicine in Guatemala and Ecuador" (U California Press, 2023)
13 Dec 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Health in the Highlands: Indigenous Healing and Scientific Medicine in Guatemala and Ecuador (University of California Press, 2023) explores how, in...
Genealogies of Modernity Episode 6: A Medieval Anti-Racist
10 Dec 2023
Contributed by Lukas
What if racism shared an origin with opposition to racism? What if the condemnation of injustice gave rise both to an early form of anti-racism and to...
Genealogies of Modernity Episode 5: Picturing Race in Colonial Mexico
09 Dec 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Race is sometimes treated as a biological fact. It is actually a modern invention. But for this concept to gain power, its logic had to be spread – ...
Beatriz Nascimento, "The Dialectic Is in the Sea: The Black Radical Thought of Beatriz Nascimento" (Princeton UP, 2023)
15 Nov 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Beatriz Nascimento (1942-1995) was a poet, historian, artist, and political leader in Brazil's Black movement, an innovative and creative thinker whos...
Alan R. Sandstrom and Pamela E. Sandstrom, "Pilgrimage to Broken Mountain: Nahua Sacred Journeys in Mexico's Huasteca Veracruzana" (UP of Colorado, 2023)
09 Nov 2023
Contributed by Lukas
An ethnographic study based on decades of field research, Pilgrimage to Broken Mountain: Nahua Sacred Journeys in Mexico's Huasteca Veracruzana (UP ...
Graham Denyer Willis, "Keep the Bones Alive: Missing People and the Search for Life in Brazil" (U California Press, 2022)
03 Nov 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Every year at least 20,000 people go missing in São Paulo, Brazil. Many will be found, sometimes in mundane mass graves, but thousands will not. Kee...
Sharony Green, "The Chase and Ruins: Zora Neale Hurston in Honduras" (Johns Hopkins UP, 2023)
01 Nov 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Zora Neale Hurston, an anthropologist and writer best known for her classic novel Their Eyes Were Watching God, led a complicated life often marked b...
Robert C. Bradley, "Eating Peru: A Gastronomic Journey" (U Oklahoma Press, 2023)
28 Oct 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Today, Peru is rightly recognized as the number one food destination on the planet. But twenty-five years ago, the world’s culinary critics were foc...
Marisel C. Moreno, "Crossing Waters: Undocumented Migration in Hispanophone Caribbean and Latinx Literature and Art" (U Texas Press, 2022)
27 Oct 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Debates over the undocumented migration of Latin Americans invariably focus on the southern US border, but most migrants never cross that arbitrary li...
Lucy Swanson, "The Zombie in Contemporary French Caribbean Fiction" (Liverpool UP, 2023)
25 Oct 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Believed to have emerged in the French Caribbean based on African spirit beliefs, the zombie represents not merely the walking dead, but also a walkin...
Paul Clammer, "Black Crown: Henry Christophe, the Haitian Revolution and the Caribbean's Forgotten Kingdom" (Hurst, 2023)
18 Oct 2023
Contributed by Lukas
How did a Caribbean child, born into plantation slavery, come to defeat Napoleon's armies in battle and crown himself king of the first free black nat...
Katherine Jensen, "The Color of Asylum: The Racial Politics of Safe Haven in Brazil" (U Chicago Press, 2023)
18 Oct 2023
Contributed by Lukas
In 2013, as Syrians desperate to escape a brutal war fled the country, Brazil took the remarkable step of instituting an open-door policy for all Syri...
John D. Garrigus, "A Secret Among the Blacks: Slave Resistance Before the Haitian Revolution" (Harvard UP, 2023)
15 Oct 2023
Contributed by Lukas
A bold rethinking of the Haitian Revolution reveals the roots of the only successful slave uprising in the modern world. Unearthing the progenitors of...
Carmen Haydée Rivera and Jorge Duany, "Cuba and Puerto Rico: Transdisciplinary Approaches to History, Literature, and Culture" (U Florida Press, 2023)
15 Oct 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Carmen Haydée Rivera and Jorge Duany's edited volume Cuba and Puerto Rico: Transdisciplinary Approaches to History, Literature, and Culture (U Flor...
James J. A. Blair, "Salvaging Empire: Sovereignty, Natural Resources, and Environmental Science in the South Atlantic" (Cornell UP, 2023)
13 Oct 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Salvaging Empire: Sovereignty, Natural Resources, and Environmental Science in the South Atlantic (Cornell University Press, 2023) by Dr. James J. A....
Lisandro Pérez, "The House on G Street: A Cuban Family Saga" (NYU Press, 2023)
13 Oct 2023
Contributed by Lukas
In The House on G Street: A Cuban Family Saga (NYU Press, 2023), award-winning author Lisandro Pérez tells Cuba’s story through the lens of a sin...
Evan C. Rothera, "Civil Wars and Reconstructions in the Americas: The United States, Mexico, and Argentina, 1860–1880" (LSU Press, 2022)
10 Oct 2023
Contributed by Lukas
In the latter half of the nineteenth century, three violent national conflicts rocked the Americas: the Wars of Unification in Argentina, the War of t...
Angie Lederach, "Feel the Grass Grow: Ecologies of Slow Peace in Colombia" (Stanford UP, 2023)
06 Oct 2023
Contributed by Lukas
What can collaborative research with Colombian campesino leaders teach us about building peace? In this episode, I talk with Angie Lederach, author of...
Daniel R. Reichman, "Progress in the Balance: Mythologies of Development in Santos, Brazil" (Cornell UP, 2023)
30 Sep 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Progress and development have long been important issues in anthropology and social sciences. Based on extensive archives and ethnographic fieldwork, ...
Alba Griffin, "Reading the Walls of Bogota: Graffiti, Street Art, and the Urban Imaginary of Violence" (U Pittsburgh Press, 2023)
22 Sep 2023
Contributed by Lukas
A cultural imaginary is a structuring space through which collective understandings of cultural and society phenomena are formed, reproduced, and acce...
Kevin Funk, "Rooted Globalism: Arab–Latin American Business Elites and the Politics of Global Imaginaries" (Indiana UP, 2022)
20 Sep 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Triumphant capitalism has in our time engendered a new global class that lives and works in a borderless world, beyond the reach of national politics ...
Moisés Kopper, "Architectures of Hope: Infrastructural Citizenship and Class Mobility in Brazil's Public Housing" (U Michigan Press, 2022)
19 Sep 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Moisés Kopper's Architectures of Hope: Infrastructural Citizenship and Class Mobility in Brazil's Public Housing (U Michigan Press, 2022) examines...
Oscar Webber, "Negotiating Relief and Freedom: Responses to Disaster in the British Caribbean, 1812-1907" (Manchester UP, 2023)
17 Sep 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Negotiating Relief and Freedom: Responses to Disaster in the British Caribbean, 1812-1907 (Manchester University Press, 2023) by Dr. Oscar Webber is ...
Edgar Garcia, "Emergency: Reading the Popol Vuh in a Time of Crisis" (U Chicago Press, 2022)
16 Sep 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Today’s guest is Edgar Garcia. Garcia’s new book Emergency: Reading the Popol Vuh in a Time of Crisis (University of Chicago Press, 2022). Emer...
Debbie Sharnak, "Of Light and Struggle: Social Justice, Human Rights, and Accountability in Uruguay" (U Pennsylvania Press, 2023)
15 Sep 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Debbie Sharnak's new book, Of Light and Struggle: Social Justice, Human Rights, and Accountability in Uruguay (University of Pennsylvania Press, 202...
A Better Way to Buy Books
12 Sep 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Bookshop.org is an online book retailer that donates more than 80% of its profits to independent bookstores. Launched in 2020, Bookshop.org has alre...
Kathleen M. Osberger, "I Surrender: A Memoir of Chile's Dictatorship, 1975" (Oribis Books, 2023)
05 Sep 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Today I talked to Kathleen Osberger about her book I Surrender: A Memoir of Chile's Dictatorship, 1975 (Oribis Books, 2023). In 1975, Kathleen Os...
Yanna Yannakakis, "Since Time Immemorial: Native Custom and Law in Colonial Mexico" (Duke UP, 2023)
04 Sep 2023
Contributed by Lukas
In Since Time Immemorial: Native Custom and Law in Colonial Mexico (Duke UP, 2023), Yanna Yannakakis traces the invention of Native custom, a legal...
Bryan Pitts, "Until the Storm Passes: Politicians, Democracy, and the Demise of Brazil's Military Dictatorship" (U California Press, 2023)
03 Sep 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Bryan Pitts' book Until the Storm Passes: Politicians, Democracy, and the Demise of Brazil's Military Dictatorship (U California Press, 2023) revea...
Romina Yalonetzky, "Gente Como Uno: Class, Belonging, and Transnationalism in Jewish Life in Lima" (Academic Studies Press, 2021)
02 Sep 2023
Contributed by Lukas
In Gente Como Uno: Class, Belonging, and Transnationalism in Jewish Life in Lima (Academic Studies Press, 2021), Dr. Romina Yalonetzky introduc...
Jaime M. Pensado, "Love and Despair: How Catholic Activism Shaped Politics and the Counterculture in Modern Mexico" (U California Press, 2023)
01 Sep 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Love and Despair: How Catholic Activism Shaped Politics and the Counterculture in Modern Mexico (U California Press, 2023) explores the multiple and ...
Jonathan Ablard, "Madness in Buenos Aires: Patients, Psychiatrists, and the Argentine State, 1880-1983" (Ohio UP, 2008)
01 Sep 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Madness in Buenos Aires: Patients, Psychiatrists, and the Argentine State, 1880-1983 (Ohio UP, 2008) examines the interactions between psychiatrists,...
James S. Damico et al., "Commemorative Literacies and Labors of Justice: Resistance, Reconciliation, and Recovery in Buenos Aires and Beyond" (Routledge, 2021)
30 Aug 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Commemorative Literacies and Labors of Justice: Resistance, Reconciliation, and Recovery in Buenos Aires and Beyond (Routledge, 2021) examines litera...
Ana Lucia Araujo, "Museums and Atlantic Slavery" (Routledge, 2021)
29 Aug 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Ana Lucia Araujo's book Museums and Atlantic Slavery (Routledge, 2021) explores how slavery, the Atlantic slave trade, and enslaved people are repre...
Christina Heatherton, "Arise!: Global Radicalism in the Era of the Mexican Revolution" (U California Press, 2022)
25 Aug 2023
Contributed by Lukas
The Mexican Revolution was a global event that catalyzed international radicals in unexpected sites and struggles. Tracing the paths of figures like B...
Jennifer Cearns, "Circulating Culture: Transnational Cuban Networks of Exchange" (UP of Florida, 2023)
20 Aug 2023
Contributed by Lukas
“In this subtle and beautifully crafted ethnography, Cearns invites us to travel through the many Cuban circuits of exchange that give shape to muta...
Andrew Johnson, "If I Give My Soul: Faith Behind Bars in Rio de Janeiro" (Oxford UP, 2017)
16 Aug 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Pentecostal Christianity is flourishing inside the prisons of Rio de Janeiro. To find out why, Andrew Johnson dug deep into the prisons themselves. He...
Sarah Muir, "Routine Crisis: An Ethnography of Disillusion" (U Chicago Press, 2021)
11 Aug 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Argentina, once heralded as the future of capitalist progress, has a long history of economic volatility. In 2001–2002, a financial crisis led to it...
Cindy McCulligh, "Sewer of Progress: Corporations, Institutionalized Corruption, and the Struggle for the Santiago River" (MIT Press, 2023)
06 Aug 2023
Contributed by Lukas
For almost two decades, the citizens of Western Mexico have called for a cleanup of the Santiago River, a water source so polluted it emanates an over...
Christine Keiner, "Deep Cut: Science, Power, and the Unbuilt Interoceanic Canal" (U Georgia Press, 2020)
05 Aug 2023
Contributed by Lukas
The Atlantic-Pacific Central American sea-level canal is generally regarded as a spectacular failure. However, Deep Cut: Science, Power, and the Unbu...
Borges and Memory: Encounters with the Human Brain
03 Aug 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Imagine the astonishment felt by neuroscientist Rodrigo Quian Quiroga when he found a fantastically precise interpretation of his research findings in...
Gilbert M. Joseph and Timothy J. Henderson, "The Mexico Reader: History, Culture, Politics" (Duke UP, 2022)
02 Aug 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Gilbert M. Joseph and Timothy J. Henderson's book The Mexico Reader: History, Culture, Politics (Duke UP, 2022) is a vivid and comprehensive guide ...
Sarah E. Vaughn, "Engineering Vulnerability: In Pursuit of Climate Adaptation" (Duke UP, 2022)
29 Jul 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Sarah E. Vaughn’s Engineering Vulnerability: In Pursuit of Climate Adaptation (Duke UP, 2022) examines climate adaptation strategies that upend th...
Margaret M. Power, "Solidarity Across the Americas: The Puerto Rican Nationalist Party and Anti-Imperialism" (UNC Press, 2023)
29 Jul 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Throughout its quest for freedom from colonial rule, the Puerto Rican Nationalist Party (PNPR) created strategy through a solidarity that moved far be...
Irina Carlota Silber, "After Stories: Transnational Intimacies of Postwar El Salvador" (Stanford UP, 2022)
29 Jul 2023
Contributed by Lukas
After Stories: Transnational Intimacies of Postwar El Salvador (Stanford UP, 2022) builds upon Irina Carlota [Lotti] Silber's nearly 25 years of eth...
Eric Van Young, "Stormy Passage: Mexico from Colony to Republic, 1750-1850" (Rowman & Littlefield, 2022)
27 Jul 2023
Contributed by Lukas
In Stormy Passage: Mexico from Colony to Republic, 1750-1850 (Rowman & Littlefield, 2022), Eric Van Young draws on four decades of extraordinary sc...
Anthony Russell Jerry, "Blackness in Mexico: Afro-Mexican Recognition and the Production of Citizenship in the Costa Chica" (UP of Florida, 2023)
26 Jul 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Through historical and ethnographic research, Blackness in Mexico: Afro-Mexican Recognition and the Production of Citizenship in the Costa Chica (UP...
Stefan Rinke, "Conquistadors and Aztecs: A History of the Fall of Tenochtitlan" (Oxford UP, 2023)
22 Jul 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Five hundred years ago, a flotilla landed on the coast of Yucatán under the command of the Spanish conquistador Hérnan Cortés. While the official g...
Vivian Nun Halloran, "Caribbean American Narratives of Belonging" (Ohio State UP, 2023)
16 Jul 2023
Contributed by Lukas
In Caribbean American Narratives of Belonging (Ohio State University Press, 2023), Vivian Nun Halloran analyzes memoirs, picture books, comic book...
Jessica P. Cerdeña, "Pressing Onward: The Imperative Resilience of Latina Migrant Mothers" (U California Press, 2023)
10 Jul 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Pressing Onward: The Imperative Resilience of Latina Migrant Mothers (U California Press, 2023) centers the stories of mothers who migrated from Lati...
Linda J. Seligmann, "Quinoa: Food Politics and Agrarian Life in the Andean Highlands" (U Illinois Press, 2022)
08 Jul 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Quinoa's new status as a superfood has altered the economic fortunes of Quechua farmers in the Andean highlands. Linda J. Seligmann journeys to the Hu...
David Tavárez, "Rethinking Zapotec Time: Cosmology, Ritual, and Resistance in Colonial Mexico" (U Texas Press, 2022)
05 Jul 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Professor David Tavárez, historian and linguistic anthropologist, is Professor of Anthropology and at Vassar College. He is a specialist in Nahuatl a...
Andrew Snyder, "Critical Brass: Street Carnival and Musical Activism in Olympic Rio de Janeiro" (Wesleyan UP, 2022)
09 Jun 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Critical Brass: Street Carnival and Musical Activism in Olympic Rio de Janeiro (Wesleyan University Press, 2022) tells the story of neofanfarrismo,...
Gladys L. Mitchell-Walthour, "The Politics of Survival: Black Women Social Welfare Beneficiaries in Brazil and the United States" (Columbia UP, 2023)
04 Jun 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Poor Black women who benefit from social welfare are marginalized in a number of ways by interlocking systemic racism, sexism, and classism. The media...
César Ernesto Abadía-Barrero, "Health in Ruins: The Capitalist Destruction of Medical Care at a Colombian Maternity Hospital" (Duke UP, 2022)
03 Jun 2023
Contributed by Lukas
In Health in Ruins: The Capitalist Destruction of Medical Care at a Colombian Maternity Hospital (Duke UP, 2022), César Ernesto Abadía-Barrero chr...