Results by title

370 books match the query 'Spain' and 13 start with r

cover of Reading and Writing the Ambiente: Queer Sexualities in Latino, Latin American, and Spanish Culture

Reading and Writing the Ambiente

Queer Sexualities in Latino, Latin American, and Spanish Culture

Susana Chávez-Silverman

University of Wisconsin Press, 2000

In this dynamic collection of essays, many leading literary scholars trace gay and lesbian themes in Latin American, Hispanic, and U.S. Latino literary and cultural texts. Reading and Writing the Ambiente is consciously ambitious and far-ranging, historically as well as geographically. It includes discussions of texts from as early as the seventeenth century to writings of the late twentieth century.
    Reading and Writing the Ambiente also underscores the ways in which lesbian and gay self-representation in Hispanic texts differs from representations in Anglo-American texts. The contributors demonstrate that—unlike the emphasis on the individual in Anglo- American sexual identity—Latino, Spanish, and Latin American sexual identity is produced in the surrounding culture and community, in the ambiente. As one of the first collections of its kind, Reading and Writing the Ambiente is expressive of the next wave of gay Hispanic and Latin scholarship.

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cover of Refiguring Spain: Cinema/Media/Representation

Refiguring Spain

Cinema/Media/Representation

Marsha Kinder, ed.

Duke University Press, 1997

In Refiguring Spain, Marsha Kinder has gathered a collection of new essays that explore the central role played by film, television, newspapers, and art museums in redefining Spain’s national/cultural identity and its position in the world economy during the post-Franco era. By emphasizing issues of historical recuperation, gender and sexuality, and the marketing of Spain’s peaceful political transformation, the contributors demonstrate that Spanish cinema and other forms of Spanish media culture created new national stereotypes and strengthened the nation’s place in the global market and on the global stage.
These essays consider a diverse array of texts, ranging from recent films by Almodóvar, Saura, Erice, Miró, Bigas Luna, Gutiérrez Aragón, and Eloy de la Iglesia to media coverage of the 1993 elections. Francoist cinema and other popular media are examined in light of strategies used to redefine Spain’s cultural identity. The importance of the documentary, the appropriation of Hollywood film, and the significance of gender and sexuality in Spanish cinema are also discussed, as is the discourse of the Spanish media star—whether involving film celebrities like Rita Hayworth and Antonio Banderas or historical figures such as Cervantes. The volume concludes with an investigation of larger issues of government policy in relation to film and media, including a discussion of the financing of Spanish cinema and an exploration of the political dynamics of regional television and art museums. Drawing on a wide range of critical discourses, including feminist, postcolonial, and queer theory, political economy, cultural history, and museum studies, Refiguring Spain is the first comprehensive anthology on Spanish cinema in the English language.

Contributors. Peter Besas, Marvin D’Lugo, Selma Reuben Holo, Dona M. Kercher, Marsha Kinder, Jaume Martí-Olivella, Richard Maxwell, Hilary L. Neroni, Paul Julian Smith, Roland B. Tolentino, Stephen Tropiano, Kathleen M. Vernon, Iñaki Zabaleta

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cover of Regulating Finance: The Political Economy of Spanish Financial Policy from Franco to Democracy

Regulating Finance

The Political Economy of Spanish Financial Policy from Franco to Democracy

Arvid John Lukauskas

University of Michigan Press, 1997

In recent years many countries have liberalized their financial markets as a central element of their efforts to reform their economies and increase their economic growth rates. Financial deregulation leads to a fundamental restructuring of a country's economy and polity, as market forces, not state officials, begin to determine who obtains financial resources and at what cost. A critical question is whether countries can undertake a program of liberalization while undergoing democratic transformation. In this study, Arvid John Lukauskas explores why governments tightly regulate their country's financial system and why they choose to liberalize it. Using a rational choice approach, Lukauskas contends that public officials provide the dynamic behind the evolution of financial regulation as they seek to retain power and generate public revenue. Lukauskas argues that the nature of a country's political institutions shape the incentives facing politicians and influence whether they seek to regulate closely or liberalize financial markets in the pursuit of their goals. Lukauskas then tests his ideas in an in-depth case study of the evolution of financial policy in Spain, a country that transformed its financial system into a mostly market-based system after years of heavy state intervention, while undergoing a transformation from a dictatorship to a democracy. Contrary to the conventional wisdom that leaders will not undertake structural change during periods of democratization, he finds that leaders in Spain undertook financial liberalization despite opposition from powerful groups, because democratization gave Spanish leaders a strong incentive to improve economic performance through financial reform in order to compete for votes. Regulating Finance will be of interest to political scientists and economists interested in studying financial markets and the effects of regime change, including democratization, on economic reform.
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cover of Religion and Spanish Film: Luis Buñuel, the Franco Era, and Contemporary Directors

Religion and Spanish Film

Luis Buñuel, the Franco Era, and Contemporary Directors

Elizabeth Scarlett

University of Michigan Press, 2014

Treatments of religion found in Spanish cinema range from the pious to the anticlerical and atheistic, and every position in between. In a nation with a strong Catholic tradition, resistance to and rebellion against religious norms go back almost as far as the notion of “Sacred Spain.” Religion and Spanish Film provides a sustained study of the religious film genre in Spain practiced by mainstream Francoist film makers, the evolving iconoclasm, parody, and reinvention of the Catholic by internationally renowned Surrealist Luis Buñuel, and the ongoing battle of the secular versus the religious manifested in critically and popularly acclaimed directors Pedro Almodóvar, Julio Medem, Alejandro Amenábar, and many others. The conflicted Catholicism that emerges from examining religious themes in Spanish film history shows no sign of ending, as unresolved issues from the Civil War and Franco dictatorship, as well as the unsettled relationship between Church and State, continue into the present.
  
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cover of Republic of Egos: A Social History of the Spanish Civil War

Republic of Egos

A Social History of the Spanish Civil War

Michael Seidman

University of Wisconsin Press, 2002

Most histories of the Spanish Civil War (1936–1939) have examined major leaders or well-established political and social groups to explore class, gender, and ideological struggles. The war in Spain was marked by momentous conflicts between democracy and dictatorship, Communism and fascism, anarchism and authoritarianism, and Catholicism and anticlericalism that still provoke our fascination.
    In Republic of Egos, Michael Seidman focuses instead on the personal and individual experiences of the common men and women who were actors in a struggle that defined a generation and helped to shape our world. By examining the roles of anonymous individuals, families, and small groups who fought for their own interests and survival—and not necessarily for an abstract or revolutionary cause—Seidman reveals a powerful but rarely considered pressure on the outcome of history. He shows how price controls and inflation in the Republican zone encouraged peasant hoarding, black marketing, and unrest among urban workers. Soldiers of the Republican Army responded to material shortages by looting, deserting, and fraternizing with the enemy. Seidman’s focus on average, seemingly nonpolitical individuals provides a new vision of both the experience and outcome of the war.

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cover of Republican Portugal: A Political History, 1910–1926

Republican Portugal

A Political History, 1910–1926

Douglas L. Wheeler

University of Wisconsin Press, 1998

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cover of Rereading the Black Legend: The Discourses of Religious and Racial Difference in the Renaissance Empires

Rereading the Black Legend

The Discourses of Religious and Racial Difference in the Renaissance Empires

Edited by Margaret R. Greer, Walter D. Mignolo, and Maureen Quilligan

University of Chicago Press, 2008

The phrase “The Black Legend” was coined in 1912 by a Spanish journalist in protest of the characterization of Spain by other Europeans as a backward country defined by ignorance, superstition, and religious fanaticism, whose history could never recover from the black mark of its violent conquest of the Americas. Challenging this stereotype, Rereading the Black Legend contextualizes Spain’s uniquely tarnished reputation by exposing the colonial efforts of other nations whose interests were served by propagating the “Black Legend.”

A distinguished group of contributors here examine early modern imperialisms including the Ottomans in Eastern Europe, the Portuguese in East India, and the cases of Mughal India and China, to historicize the charge of unique Spanish brutality in encounters with indigenous peoples during the Age of Exploration. The geographic reach and linguistic breadth of this ambitious collection will make it a valuable resource for any discussion of race, national identity, and religious belief in the European Renaissance.
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cover of Return to the Center: Culture, Public Space, and City Building in a Global Era

Return to the Center

Culture, Public Space, and City Building in a Global Era

By Lawrence A. Herzog

University of Texas Press, 2006

The redesign and revitalization of traditional urban centers is the cutting edge of contemporary urban planning, as evidenced by the intense public and professional attention to the rebuilding of city cores from Berlin to New York City's "Ground Zero." Spanish and Latin American cities have never received the recognition they deserve in the urban revitalization debate, yet they offer a very relevant model for this "return to the center." These cultures have consistently embraced the notion of a city whose identity is grounded in its organic public spaces: plazas, promenades, commercial streets, and parks that invite pedestrian traffic and support a rich civic life. This groundbreaking book explores Spanish, Mexican, and Mexican-American border cities to learn what these urban areas can teach us about effectively using central public spaces to foster civic interaction, neighborhood identity, and a sense of place.

Herzog weaves the book around case studies of Madrid and Barcelona, Spain; Mexico City and Querétaro, Mexico; and the Tijuana-San Diego border metropolis. He examines how each of these urban areas was formed and grew through time, with attention to the design lessons of key public spaces. The book offers original and incisive discussions that challenge current urban thinking about politics and public space, globalization, and the future of privatized communities, from gated suburbs to cyberspace. Herzog argues that well-designed, human-scaled city centers are still vitally necessary for maintaining community and civic life. Applicable to urban renewal projects around the globe, Herzog's book will be important reading for planners, architects, designers, and all citizens interested in creating more livable cities.

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cover of Rim of Christendom: A Biography of Eusebio Francisco Kino, Pacific Coast Pioneer

Rim of Christendom

A Biography of Eusebio Francisco Kino, Pacific Coast Pioneer

Herbert Eugene Bolton; Foreword by John L. Kessell

University of Arizona Press, 1984

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cover of Rio del Norte: People of Upper Rio Grande from Earliest Times to Pueblo Revolt

Rio del Norte

People of Upper Rio Grande from Earliest Times to Pueblo Revolt

Carroll L. Riley

University of Utah Press, 1995

Rio del Norte chronicles the upper Rio Grande region and its divers peoples across twelve thousand years of continuous history. Based on the most up-to-date historical and archaeological research, Rio del Norte is a tour de force, highlighting the unbroken history of the upper Rio Grande.

Beginning with the mammoth hunters of eleven millennia ago, Carroll Riley adeptly eaves the threads of twelve thousand years of continuous history through the introduction of agriculture, the rise of the Basketmaker-Pueblo (Anasazi) people, and the extraordinary "quickening" that occurred along the Rio Grande and its tributaries as the Anasazi era ended.

At that time large towns appeared, some holding several thousand people who practiced irrigation-based agriculture, maintained complex social and political organizations, and had a rich artistry. This "golden age" was continuing when Spaniards contacted, then colonized and missionized the region. In 1680 the Pueblos joined in a powerful record and ousted the invaders. Although the Spanish returned, the Pueblos have maintained important parts of their cultural heritage to the present.

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cover of Rite, Flesh, and Stone: The Matter of Death in Contemporary Spanish Culture

Rite, Flesh, and Stone

The Matter of Death in Contemporary Spanish Culture

Antonio Córdoba

Vanderbilt University Press, 2021

Forensic science provides information and data behind the circumstances of a particular death, but it is culture that provides death with meaning. With this in mind, Rite, Flesh, and Stone proposes cultural matters of death as its structuring principle, operating as frames of the expression of mortality within a distinct set of coordinates. The chapters offer original approaches to how human remains are handled in the embodied rituals and social performances of contemporary funeral rites of all kinds; furthermore, they explore how dying flesh and corpses are processed by means of biopolitical technologies and the ethics of (self-)care, and how the vibrant and breathing materiality of the living is transformed into stone and analogous kinds of tangible, empirical presence that engender new cartographies of memory. Each coming from a specific disciplinary perspective, authors in this volume problematize conventional ideas about the place of death in contemporary Western societies and cultures using Spain as a case study.

Materials analyzed here—ranging from cinematic and literary fictions, to historical archives and anthropological and ethnographic sources—make explicit a dynamic scenario where actors embody a variety of positions toward death and dying, the political production of mortality, and the commemoration of the dead. Ultimately, the goal of this volume is to chart the complex network in which the disenchantment of death and its reenchantment coexist, and biopolitical control over secularized bodies overlaps with new avatars of the religious and non-theistic desires for memorialization and transcendence.
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cover of Romans in a New World: Classical Models in Sixteenth-Century Spanish America

Romans in a New World

Classical Models in Sixteenth-Century Spanish America

David A. Lupher

University of Michigan Press, 2006

Romans in a New World shows how the ancient Romans haunted the Spanish conquest of the New World, more often than not as passionately rejected models. While the conquistadors themselves and their publicists challenged the reputations of the Romans for incomparable military genius and daring, Spanish critics of the conquest launched a concerted assault upon two other prominent uses of ancient Rome as a model: as an exemplar of imperialistic motives and behavior fit for Christians to follow, and as a yardstick against which to measure the cultural level of the natives of the New World.
In the course of this debate, many Spaniards were inspired to think more deeply on their own ethnic ancestry and identity, as Spanish treatment of the New World natives awakened the slumbering memory of Roman treatment of the Iberian tribes whom modern Spaniards were now embracing as their truest ancestors. At the same time, growing awareness of the cultural practices--especially the religious rituals--of the American natives framed a new perspective on both the pre-Christian ancestors of modern Europeans and even on the survival of "pagan" customs among modern Europeans themselves. In this incisive study, David A. Lupher addresses the increasingly debated question of the impact the discovery of the New World had upon Europeans' perceptions of their identity and place in history.
Romans in a New World holds much to interest both classicists and students of the history and culture of early modern Europe--especially, though not exclusively, historians of Spain. David A. Lupher's concern with the ideology of imperialism and colonization and with cross-cultural negotiations will be useful to students of cultural studies, as well.
David A. Lupher is Professor of Classics, University of Puget Sound.
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cover of Ruin and Restitution: Reinterpreting Romanticism in Spain

Ruin and Restitution

Reinterpreting Romanticism in Spain

Philip W. Silver

Vanderbilt University Press, 1997

In this highly suggestive work, Philip Silver confronts and corrects the entire critical tradition on Spanish romanticism and suggests a new "restitutional" theory of that period in Spanish cultural and political history.
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