In This Issue

Abstract

Arizona Journal of Hispanic Cultural Studies In This Issue The success of the Arizona Journal of Hispanic Cultural Studies lies in the scholarship and creativity of its contributors, the advice and expertise of its editorial board members and the generous consideration of our many outside readers. Never has this been more clear than at the conference "Hispanic Cultural Studies: The State of the Art" held in Tucson on September 18-21, 2002. Through a variety of panels, round tables, general and special sessions and informal conversation, scholars from all over the world had the opportunity to exchange ideas about where the diverse and multidisci-plinary field of Cultural Studies had been, where it was going, and what its possibilities, responsibilities and challenges would prove to be as it becomes increasingly institutionalized yet more heterogeneous. The conference was an ideal opportunity to gather all of those friends and supporters of the journal who have made working on the alwaysevolving publication an exhilarating one for the past six years. Our global, virtual intellectual community became an actual community for three very productive and exciting days. Much like the "State the Art" conference, this volume's collection of essays spans centuries, continents, media and approaches. Xoán González-Millán discovers how cultural identity in contemporary Galicia is better understood when put in the context of the history of the Galician exile community, which maintained and refined certain sociocultural, political and ideological markers that were essential to the revitalization of Galician culture after the death of Franco. Kevin O'Donnell's careful attention to El único camino, the 1962 autobiography of the legendary orator and political activist Dolores Ibárruri "La Pasionaria" carefully bringing her out of the realm of myth and restoring her to history so that, as O'Donnell hopes in his conclusion, "we can put history in motion again." Lisa Surwillo begins her article with a critical look at the premiere of Garcia Gutierrez's play El Trovador in 1836. Her analysis of the connection between Spanish cultural production and reception, liberalism and romanticism is unique in its shifting of literary production fully into the realm of economics as she focuses on the analogy of the creation of a new literature to the creation of new lands, at a time in which Spain was still dealing with the loss of extensive colonial territories. Beatriz C. Peña takes a similar approach to a very different object of study when she looks at the eighteenth-century European depiction and definition of the Boricua in one of Puerto Rico's foundational texts, Historia geográfica, civil y natural de la isla de San Juan Bautista de Puerto Rico (1788) by Fray AgustÃ-n Iñigo Abbad y Lasierra. MarÃ-a Fernanda Lander's essay, informed by Michel Foucault and Norbert Elias's ideas about what civilizing and colonizing discourses both reveal and hide, studies Venezuelan Manuel Antonio Carreño's Manual de urbanidad y buenas maneras (1854) and seeks to uncover the ideology behind a text that is full of the anxiety of a new nation as it tries to incorporate itself into the "civilized rhythm" of the Old World. Toni Dorca urges us to reconsider the work of the Spanish nineteenth-century author José MarÃ-a de Pereda in light of visual discourses and technologies of the time that helped to shape his work and its aesthetic—namely, the poetics of costumbrismo, contemporary painting, and Mestres's illustrations. Guadalupe Cortina surveys the current situation of the (under)representation of Latinos in television and film in the United States and the cultural politics of Latinos in the mass media industries, with a special focus on Karyn Kusama's 2000 film Girlfight. Brad Epps is this volume's Guest Editor and has expertly compiled a set of essays that includes a variety of approaches to the culture of the city of Barcelona which, as he makes clear in his introduction, is much richer than we have been led to believe from the easily-consumed images of the cosmopolitan city by the sea that we are given, often by the Catalans themselves. José MarÃ-a RodrÃ-guez provides us with this volume's...