Introduction

Abstract

On behalf of the Editorial Board of Mester, the academic journal of the graduate students of the Department of Spanish and Portuguese at the University of California, Los Angeles, I am honored to introduce its fifty-first volume. Mester 51 welcomed submissions for articles, essays, and interviews from transdisciplinary perspectives that examine the various ways in which the body is interpreted by cultural products from any period. Contributors showed interest in analyzing how bodies are represented, what their aesthetic and/or political functions are, what spaces they occupy in the social network, and how they interact with power when building “the cultural.” We believe discussions regarding the definition, autonomy, place, and limits of bodies, both individual and social, are essential for rethinking how bodies are/were studied and (under)valued.