In scholarship on language pedagogy, there is growing momentum for teaching Afrodescendant literature in language classrooms. Various teachers and scholars of languages and literatures have responded to the need for greater racial inclusion in language curricula by exploring approaches to teaching Afro-Hispanic literary texts (Villegas Rogers…

This article looks into the place of Machado de Assis in literature and his peculiar treatment of intertextual sources through a careful analysis of three short stories from the collection "Histórias sem data." "The Devil's Church," "An Alexandrian Tale," and "The Academies of Siam" are clearly set apart…

Carmen Martín Gaite's "Caperucita en Manhattan" is a Young Adult novel ahead of its time. If this category had existed in Spain when it was published, it is likely that it would have earned the critical recognition it deserves. The novel's exciting plot, captivating prose, wise cultural commentary, factual content, sense of humor, and…

Nicolás Guillén's "El gran zoo" (1967), illustrated by Fayad Jamís, was the first Hispanic bestiary to prominently feature humans in a space traditionally inhabited by beasts. Guillén's verses transform the bestiary from a didactic tool used for centuries to instruct and uniform society into a subversive text that openly denounces the…

Critics have commented on the power of writing--the biblical Word as creation--in Bernardo Carvalho's work. It forges connections through words between others who are out of place, searching for order in what appears to be chaos. However, this motif from both Genesis and the New Testament is also mediated by another creation narrative: the Big…

Cristina Fernández Cubas's short story "La nueva vida" ("La habitación de Nona" 2015) foregrounds the play between truth and fiction, past and present, and death and identity, where the widowed protagonist finds meaning not in philosophy, but in physics. Widowed in 2007 at age 62, Fernández Cubas focalized this story through…

Requirements for the undergraduate major in Hispanic literature and offerings of Spanish peninsular and Latin American literature courses surveying the canon, masterpieces, major works, major authors, major trends, or representative works at fifty-six selected US colleges and universities were examined for academic years 1990-91, 2002-03, 2013-14,…

This article discusses the representation of news media in two crime novels by Argentine writer Claudia Piñeiro: "Betibú" (2011) and "Las maldiciones" (2017). It proposes that in these two novels, Piñeiro addresses both the limitations and the possibilities of activist journalism in the twenty-first century. Piñeiro's work…

Ahead of the recent wave of social justice movements (e.g., [All] Black Lives Matter (#BLM), #MeToo, #StopJewishHate, #StopAsianHate), in 2019 the American Council on the Teaching of Foreign Languages (ACTFL) declared a stance on diversity, equity, inclusion, and belonging (DEIB) in language education. It affirmed that it "values diversity…

In 1623, Hernando Ruiz de Alarcón, a parish priest in Atenango, Mexico, was commissioned by his archbishop to record Nahua beliefs and healing practices for the purpose of denouncing their superstitions and demonic magic. His "Treatise on the Heathen Superstitions That Today Live Among the Indians Native to This New Spain," 1629…

A central theme throughout Machado de Assis's works is the way characters look at each other inside and outside houses. This article argues that vision, race, and houses define his narrative strategies in the short stories "Pai contra Mãe" and "O Caso da Vara," and the novels "Dom Casmurro," "Memórias póstumas de…

On the eighth of October, 1622, Lope de Vega finished "La nueva victoria de don Gonzalo de Córdoba." This "comedia" recounts a Spanish victory in the Battle of Fleurus, one of several military triumphs that encouraged hope and excitement during the early years of Philip IV's reign. The battle had occurred in late August of…

Hispanic Catholic liturgical ceremonies since the thirteenth century have drawn upon material-symbolic imagery of "Cristos articulados" [jointed Christ-figures] for staging episodes from the Passion of Christ during Holy Week, such as the "Veneration of the Cross," the "Holy Burial," the "Visit to the…

By reclaiming the power of self-definition and the use of the term "travesti" to designate their unique experience within the Latin American cultural, economic, and political context, "travesti" intellectuals have fought the dehumanization of their personhood. In her novel "Las malas," the Argentine author Camila Sosa…

Through her epistolary correspondence and her novel "Ifigenia" (1924), Teresa de la Parra (1889-1936) questions racial stratification systems reminiscent of colonial times and still present in twentieth-century Venezuela. Parra establishes the malleability of racial categories through a moderate racial discourse that intends to…