Non-Normative Sexualities in US Latinx and Latin American Literature Through a Capitalist Lens ed. by Kathryn Quinn-Sánchez, and Michele Shaul (review)

Non-Normative Sexualities in US Latinx and Latin American Literature Through a Capitalist Lens studies how Latin American and Latinx authors represent non-normative sexualities through a capitalist lens. In our society, heterosexuality manifests as privilege and has been normalized to such an extent that any sexuality that is perceived as different from the dominant cis-gendered, heteropatriarchal norm is considered deviant. Non-normative sexualities continue to be viewed by society as detrimental to the health of the nation. Consequently, how one is perceived by the dominant culture continues to limit one’s ability to thrive. Each chapter serves to analyze how one’s perceived gender identity or sexuality can block access to economic opportunity. Queer, trans, spatial and intersectional theories form the base of the literary analyses. One of the contributors’ goals is to present capitalism as it is intersectionally present in life, identity, and society. The authors studied in this collection come from the USA, Puerto Rico, Mexico, and the Southern Cone of Latin America.

SummaryChildhood obesity in US Latinx and Latin American populations is a persistent, complex public health issue and, as such, requires solutions grounded on systems science theory and methods. In this paper, we introduce an action‐oriented framework to design, implement, evaluate, and sustain whole‐of‐community systems changes for childhood obesity prevention in US Latinx and Latin American populations. Our framework covers six action steps: (1) foster multisectoral team; (2) map the system, its context, and drivers; (3) envision system‐wide changes; (4) effect system‐wide changes; (5) monitor, learn, and adapt; and (6) scale and sustain. We also propose 10 principles that put human and environmental rights and systems thinking at the center of these systems‐based solutions. For each action step, we provide a list of concrete activities, methods, approaches, and examples that can be used to guide and inform the work needed to achieve the expected outputs. Finally, we discuss how a wider adoption of systems science for childhood obesity prevention among US Latinx and Latin American populations can be encouraged and sustained.

<i>Cultural Capital</i>: Reflections from a Latin Americanist

Mainstream International Relations and Foreign Policy Analysis have often concentrated on material factors and actors’ preferences, leaving out ideational dynamics. However, US–Latin American relations in general seem fraught with ideas, narratives and historical references re-articulated from time to time on both sides. In his campaign, Barack Obama announced a fresh start of US–Latin American relations, promising to “restore American leadership in Latin America”, at the same time creating “a new partnership for the Americas”, combining two narratives in US–Latin American policy. “Leadership”, enshrined in the Monroe Doctrine and the Roosevelt corollary, which declared Latin America the “backyard” of the USA, and “Partnership”, related to the Good Neighbor Policy declared by Franklin Delano Roosevelt, which aimed at establishing a more equal relation of partners. This discourse shows that inherited traditions and foreign policy narratives are subject to cycles of re-production, re-articulation and subtle change. In order to grasp the relevance of ideas in US–Latin American relations, we advocate a turn towards “ideational approaches” of discursive and constructivist providence. The article first situates “ideas” to key concepts of a more interpretive foreign policy analysis, which focuses on tradition and narratives. As a second step, US–Latin American relations are located within a specific, hegemony-oriented ideational account of foreign policy. Two analytical sketches of crucial cases of recent US–Latin American relations follow, the War on Drugs and the reactions towards the coup d’état in Honduras, showing how ideas were articulated on both the USA and the Latin American side and what role they played. The overall focus of the paper is thus on elucidating the ideational dynamics that underpin the political relations between the USA and Latin America.

US involvement in Latin American affairs during the Cold War period was extraordinarily deep and, according to most scholars, generally malicious. Successive administrations in Washington involved themselves in the domestic affairs of every Latin American state, attempting either to strengthen cooperative governments or to weaken ones that demonstrated geopolitical independence. While repeated interventions, in themselves, suggest that the US government may not have used its power responsibly, the greater problem is that fears about political reliability consistently trumped concerns about democracy, human rights, and economic development. These fears led policymakers in Washington to embrace a long list of brutal dictators and to engage in covert backing for insurgent groups and military cabals dedicated to overthrowing established governments. There are exceptions to this unpleasant history, but periods of genuine respect in Washington for Latin American independence were few and far between. Many scholars have suggested that Cold War concerns about the spread of communism in the region alone drove US policy, especially in the wake of Cuba’s alignment with the Soviet Union. Others have argued that, while Cuba was deeply troubling, the United States operated simply as a traditional imperial state, attempting to ensure it retained political and economic control over its weaker neighbors. A number of scholars have explored responses to US influence to explain how Latin Americans negotiated with, mitigated the influence of, or even manipulated Washington’s power. This idea is often expanded beyond discussions of US political, military, or economic engagement to focus on cultural penetration and to explain that the importation of items such as films, music, and even cartoons operated alongside other types of imperialism. These last types of studies, which look more intently at Latin American societies than at US government decision-making, are just one piece of the scholarship on the Cold War in Latin America. Because of the importance of the Cold War in Latin America and its impact on the totality of political, economic, social, and cultural developments, it may be possible to argue that essentially any book written about Latin America from the end of World War II to the late 1980s might be considered Cold War history. Because exploring the totality of that literature is not possible or practical in one essay, this bibliography will focus on the substantial scholarship that explores concrete US efforts to fight the Cold War in the region, and the responses to those efforts. It will consider works specifically part of the subfield of US–Latin American relations, which is part of the larger history of US international history. Said differently, if only for practical purposes, this bibliography will try to draw a distinction between scholarship on the internal Cold War in Latin America and scholarship on US–Latin American relations during the Cold War period.

This essay explores the historiography of US–Latin American scientific relations, emphasising its contributions to theorising power dynamics in scientific practice and the production of knowledge. This literature has long been divided into two distinct strands: one focusing on US science and empire and the other on the development of national scientific communities in Latin America. While both emerged in conversation with mid-twentieth-century models of scientific diffusion, they have each developed with their own particular preoccupations. The former has emphasised how imperial expansion shaped US scientific institutions and culture, while the latter has focused on questions of science, economic development, and dependency. Since the 2000s, more space for cross-fertilisation between scholarship based in Latin American countries and the United States has opened up, particularly as work became increasingly multi-archival and transnational. Historians have begun to recognise how US–Latin American encounters shaped participants and ideas on all sides. New approaches to the history of US–Latin American scientific relations are emerging that recognise the complex dynamics of power and knowledge across a range of colonial and postcolonial contexts.

Theatrical practice in Latin America predates the European conquest, and since the conquest has been a site for the expression of new cultural formations, often enacting or contesting prevailing systems of power. As in the field of theater studies generally, the term “theater” encompasses a range of performance practices, and overlaps in key periods with religious rites, political spectacle, festival, social and modern dance, performance art, and popular culture forms. Major concerns of the field include asking how European-based dramatic forms have been reinvented through their continuous interaction with indigenous and African cultural forms, and vice versa; what are the meanings of modernist and post-modernist dramatic forms in societies where modernity is an unstable context; how theater practitioners have transformed traditional forms of theater into an activist “Theatre of the Oppressed”; and what role theater plays in the contemporary neoliberal moment. While scholarship on theater in Latin America dates to the early 20th century, the field of Latin American theater studies—which defines its object of study as theater from the entire region—emerged alongside Popular Theater practice of the 1960s and 1970s, which similarly understood itself as a continental project. Both practice and scholarship, forged in the context of the Cold War, embraced a socially critical stance in favor of the working classes (the “popular” classes), understood theater as a vehicle for social change, and believed that shared Latin American aesthetics and methods were emerging. The field has retained this fundamental interest in the social and political dimensions of theater and has responded to the changing geopolitics of the region. A significant development in the field was the shift in the 1990s from a continental to a hemispheric frame. The hemispheric orientation sought, on one hand, to reshape disciplinary boundaries that rendered the formative, and often repressive, relation between the United States and its southern neighbors invisible; on the other, it affirms shared histories, culture, and aesthetics between US Latinx and Latin American communities and artists. This bibliography addresses the history, theories, and practices of Latin American theater studies and maps its changing disciplinary boundaries and thematic concerns over time. The periodization is intentionally loose. For example, works related to revolutionary aesthetics and the politics of the body are concentrated in the 1960s and 1990s respectively, but these represent threads in both practice and scholarship that continue well past those dates.

New Beginnings Bill Johnson González This issue of Diálogo marks an important moment of transition for our journal. Since 2010, when she accepted the position as Director of the Center for Latino Research at DePaul University, Dr. Elizabeth Martínez has directed Diálogo as Editor in Chief, a role that finally came to an end with the publication of our previous issue in Fall 2019. Elizabeth shepherded the journal through its first major growth spurt: from a non-peer-reviewed, annual, magazine-style journal, to a biannual, fully refereed, academic journal, publishing work by scholars from around the world. Under Elizabeth's guidance, the journal was awarded the Council of Editors of Learned Journals' Phoenix Award in 2015 for most transformed and revitalized journal. In addition, thanks to Elizabeth's hard work and leadership, our journal is now published by the University of Texas Press, is fully indexed in the MLA International Bibliography, and is accessible online through Project Muse. As she moves on to new projects and new horizons, I wanted to express our thanks to Elizabeth for these significant editorial achievements, and for opening Diálogo up to a wider readership and greater recognition. My editorship of Diálogo officially begins with this issue, whose special theme is the Indigenous presence in contemporary Latin American cinema. This theme, which brings together scholars from across the hemisphere as well as from around the world, exemplifies our commitment to publishing outstanding scholarship that grapples with the complex cultural production and history of the Americas. In the future, we look forward to continuing to publish specially themed issues, and we encourage you to look at the guidelines for submitting new proposals included in the back of this issue. In addition to special themes, however, we are also opening up Diálogo to general submissions from scholars who are working in US Latinx and Latin American Studies. Please feel free to send us queries about whether a particular article would be a good fit for our journal by emailing dialogo@depaul.edu. We are particularly interested in proposals that explore migration, gender and sexuality, and new cultural forms, and projects that take a transnational approach. Upcoming themes already in production include an issue on violence in contemporary Argentine and Peruvian literatures, another on "Latinx Noir" (Latinx detective fiction), and finally, one that explores the histories of Latino Studies programs and departments established throughout the Midwest. We have other innovations in store as we move forward into a new era. Soon, we will be introducing a recurring section for research on Latinx communities in the Midwest. We are also expanding our book and media review section, and we welcome suggestions for book reviews from multiple disciplines. I'm excited to see where our Diálogo will take us! [End Page 1] Bill Johnson González DePaul University Copyright © 2020 University of Texas Press

In this article the imperial is envisaged in terms of a multifaceted terrain of analysis that can encourage us to pose a number of interrelated questions. Five issues are identified for discussion. First, the differential way cultural studies and Marxist political economy approaches interpret the imperial present is assessed. Second, the why and how of imperial power are subjected to debate. Third, the overlapping inside and outside of imperialism are identified and analysed. Fourth, the newness of today's ‘new imperialism’ is highlighted and critically examined and, fifth, in relation to the evolving geopolitics of knowledge, some reflections are offered on the significance of the imperial in global times. The context is predominantly provided by US–Latin American encounters.

The trend about producing and reading graphic novels has grown since the late twentieth century. These books with comic backgrounds seem to have a miraculous energy. They have been even appealing to unenthusiastic readers. They tempt people of different age groups, races and genders. They are also used for teaching ESL courses, e-learning activities, designing reality games, and teaching creative writing. If you talk to its followers, you may get the feedback that graphic novels can fulfil your demands and dreams from writing your assignments to taking you to the moon. Although many researchers have investigated the benefits of graphic novels, many faculties and librarians are still reluctant to include graphic novels in their curricula. Perhaps it is simply the attitude of many teachers and librarians that graphic novels look like a comic book, and simply are not “real” books. They have too few words, too many pictures, and lack quality to be seriously considered as literature. In the following, I, Ruzbeh Babaee, did an interview with Distinguished Professor Frederick Luis Aldama on realities of graphic novels.Aldama is a distinguished scholar and Professor of English at The Ohio State University, United States. In the departments of English and Spanish &amp; Portuguese he is involved in teaching courses on US Latino and Latin American cultural phenomena, literature, film, music, video games, and comic books. He has founded and directed the White House Hispanic Bright Spot awarded LASER/Latino and Latin American Space for Enrichment Research. Professor Aldama won the Ohio Education Summit Award for Founding &amp; Directing LASER in 2016. In April 2017, Aldama was awarded OSU’s Alumni Award for Distinguished Teaching and inducted into the Academy of Teaching. He is the author, co-author, and editor of 30 books, including his first book of fiction/graphic fiction, Long Stories Cut Short: Fictions from the Borderlands.

Research Article| April 01 2020 Queer Battle Fatigue, or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Imposter Inside Me Melissa M. González Melissa M. González Melissa M. González is associate professor of Hispanic studies, core faculty in Latin American studies, and chair of gender and sexuality studies at Davidson College. Her research spans trans and queer studies of twentieth-century and contemporary Latin American and US Latinx literature and culture and has been published in American Quarterly, Critique, Latin American Cultural Studies, and TSQ. In 2019–20, she will be pursuing an MA in computational media at Duke University as a Mellon New Directions Fellow. Search for other works by this author on: This Site Google GLQ (2020) 26 (2): 236–238. https://doi.org/10.1215/10642684-8141802 Cite Icon Cite Share Icon Share Facebook Twitter LinkedIn MailTo Permissions Search Site Citation Melissa M. González; Queer Battle Fatigue, or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Imposter Inside Me. GLQ 1 April 2020; 26 (2): 236–238. doi: https://doi.org/10.1215/10642684-8141802 Download citation file: Zotero Reference Manager EasyBib Bookends Mendeley Papers EndNote RefWorks BibTex toolbar search Search Dropdown Menu toolbar search search input Search input auto suggest filter your search Books & JournalsAll JournalsGLQ Search Advanced Search The text of this article is only available as a PDF. Copyright © 2020 Duke University Press2020 Article PDF first page preview Close Modal Issue Section: ARTICLE You do not currently have access to this content.

Reviewed by: The Emperor's Kites: A Morphology of Borges' Tales, and: Textual Confrontations: Comparative Readings in Latin American Literature, and: Gabriel García Márquez: New Readings, and: García Márquez and Latin America Pamela Finnegan Mary Lusky Friedman . The Emperor's Kites: A Morphology of Borges' Tales. Durham: Duke UP, 1987. 225 pp. $22.50. Alfred J. MacAdam . Textual Confrontations: Comparative Readings in Latin American Literature. Chicago: U of Chicago P, 1987. 106 pp. $19.95. Bernard McGuirk and Richard Cardwell . Gabriel García Márquez: New Readings. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1987. 230 pp. $39.50. Alok Bhalla , ed. García Márquez and Latin America. New York: Envoy, 1987. 186 pp. $22.50. Critical and popular acclaim of twentieth-century Latin American letters focuses on Jorge Luis Borges and Gabriel García Márquez, the two authors most generally credited with awakening interest abroad in the literature of the Spanish-speaking Western hemisphere. The books reviewed here corroborate the far-reaching influence of these two authors. The Emperor's Kites: A Morphology of Borges' Tales by Mary Lusky Friedman identifies imbedded in each of Borges' tales the ur narrative, "a story that coexists with the plot but does not necessarily coincide with it." To distinguish between these two texts, the individual story and the paradigmatic text, is analogous to Freud's differentiation "between the manifest and latent content of a dream." Lusky Friedman proceeds by first identifying the ur narrative, explicating its [End Page 263] presence in a representative number of Borges' texts, then turning to the questions of how the ur narrative evolved in Borges' A Universal History of Infamy. Next, other of the ur narrative's antecedents are sought in Borges' nonnarrative work, and, finally, the author hypothesizes that the process of mourning for his father provided Borges the emotional experience and state of mind out of which the ur narrative was metamorphosed into the mature texts of Ficciones and The Aleph, disguising "the motif of oedipal strife" and heightening "the irreality of his tales." The Emperor's Kites is a well-researched, well-argued study that deserves critical attention. Lusky Friedman's thoughts on Oedipal strife lead her to consider at length two crucial aspects of Borgean technique: derealization of experience and impoverishment of the individual (the deemphasizing of personal circumstance). The latter topics as well as Lusky Friedman's discussions of the evolution of violence into mystery, the relationship between loss of selfhood, punishment, and mirrors; the development of the double; Borges' postulation of reality (verisimilitude); and other metaphors basic to the Borges oeuvre help, as well as challenge, the reader to decipher Borges' narrative world. Although Lusky Friedman couches in tentative terms her hypothesis that Borges' genius and the vitality of his work are a product of mourning, her recapitulation of Borges' aesthetic, philosophical, and literary preferences is certain and forceful. The only concern one might voice is that in spite of Borges' known playfulness and wryness, Lusky Friedman always reads Borges seriously, taking him at his word. Nevertheless, her scholarship is commendable, the volume has ample documentation with a Borges bibliography, and the physical volume is attractive and nearly error-free. Textual Confrontations: Comparative Readings in Latin American Literature, although not about Borges, is informed throughout by his presence. MacAdam's presentation approximates a reading of Latin American literature through the filter of Borges' oeuvre. MacAdam's goal is to connect Latin American literature, "an eccentic branch of the Western tradition," with British and American literature "in order to reaffirm Latin America's place in that tradition and to explore those factors that render Latin American literature unique." He concludes that eccentricity in any Western national literature makes manifest that the Western tradition is "vast and growing," that Latin American writers share the belief that "literature ought to raise more questions than it resolves," and that Latin American writers share the belief that writers "are entitled to express their moral concerns in their writing, and critics ought to point out those concerns." In spite of the latter assertion, MacAdam elsewhere dismisses history-bound criticism as ignoring the artistic qualities of the text while simultaneously averring that Latin American reality "has...

Twentieth-Century Latin American Literary Studies and Cultural Autonomy

The last decade has witnessed a crusade by the Brazilian Right, losers of four consecutive presidential elections, to seize power through extralegal means. At the center of this was Operação Lava Jato, which used politicized corruption allegations to discredit the center-left Workers' Party and culminated in the impeachment of Dilma Rousseff, the imprisonment of former president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, and the election of the far-right Jair Bolsonaro. Although it has only gradually become clear, the United States played a key role through efforts to influence Brazilian prosecutors and judges via training programs and informal collaborations.Larissa Rosa Corrêa's monograph on US efforts to influence Brazilian trade unionism during the 1964–85 military dictatorship is thus remarkably timely. Anti-Communist Solidarity sheds light on the softer forms of power used by US empire. In the 2010s, US efforts to influence the Brazilian judiciary had little to do with eliminating corruption and everything to do with restoring US hegemony in an emerging oil-producing and diplomatic power. Similarly, as Corrêa conclusively demonstrates, efforts to bring collective bargaining to Brazil were less about empowering the Brazilian working class than weakening communists. These efforts were carried out by the American Federation of Labor and Congress of Industrial Organizations (AFL-CIO) and its American Institute for Free Labor Development (AIFLD), whose goals under George Meany were inextricably linked to those of US empire.Despite their history of mobilization against the military coups of the 1960s and the Central American wars of the 1980s, in recent decades US Latin Americanist scholars have de-emphasized explanations focused on empire. Thus, it is unsurprising that this vital book was written by a Brazilian, as Brazilian scholars have remained more attuned to the deleterious effects of US imperialism. This focus on US policy by a non-US historian is the book's greatest strength, not only in terms of theoretical orientation but also in terms of the sources consulted. As Alex Lichtenstein points out in his perceptive foreword, through her close examination of Portuguese sources produced by Brazilian trade unionists Corrêa complicates narratives that might assert a unidirectional flow of power from North to South. Despite AIFLD attempts to convince Brazilians of the superiority of the US model of collective bargaining, even some of the most conservative Brazilian trade unionists continued to assert the superiority of their own corporatist labor structure, particularly the labor courts.This final point emerges clearly over the course of the narrative, whose chapters unfold roughly across the administrations of four Brazilian presidents. Chapter 1 demonstrates how the AFL-CIO sought to promote a US trade union model as an antidote to the perceived communist sympathies of the labor movement during the turbulent years preceding the 1964 coup. Chapter 2 shows how US labor ideals were given their fullest expression under the pro-American government of Humberto Castelo Branco, the first military president. In chapter 3, we see how AIFLD began to clash with more nationalist currents in the Brazilian regime that questioned the assumption that a US model was directly applicable to Brazil. After a close analysis of Brazilian labor leaders' oft-critical reactions to the US labor model in chapter 4, chapter 5 shows how AFL-CIO influence in Brazil diminished in the 1970s, as the repression of the “years of lead” closed off opportunities for even capitalism-friendly, US-style labor mobilization.Despite the title, which indicates that Corrêa's book covers 1964–85, the narrative closes in 1974. This decision can be attributed to the fact that US influence over Brazilian unionism waned under more nationalist Brazilian governments. In addition, one set of sources vital to the book—the records of the US Department of State—had, as of the time of Corrêa's research, only been declassified until 1976. However, this means that the most obvious question—the relationship of North American “free and democratic unionism” to Brazil's “new unionism” that appeared in 1978—ultimately remains unanswered. How to explain the fact that Lula and a new generation of left-wing unionists advocated for direct collective bargaining and a weakening of corporatist labor relations—precisely the values AIFLD attempted to inculcate among Brazilian unionists? To what extent did the United States attempt to influence the new unionism led by Lula? These provocative questions will have to remain for future scholars.In addition, two issues may limit the book's impact on an Anglophone audience. First, while the original edition of the book is written in excellent academic Portuguese, the excessively literal translation results in awkward, clunky English that is not particularly readable. Second, the $97.99 price point may be prohibitive to all but the most dedicated specialists. This would be unfortunate because Anti-Communist Solidarity is a must-read not only for historians of Brazilian and Latin American labor history but also for those interested in US labor history, US–Latin American relations, and the strategies of modern-day empires to protect their interests.

This article is a general exploration of US Latinx Pentecostalism’s explicit and implicit theology of the Kingdom of God and how it can contribute to US Latinx Pentecostalism’s socio-political engagement. An overview will be provided of traditional, US Pentecostal Kingdom theology and Kingdom theology in Latin American Liberation Theology. These will be contrasted with US Latinx Pentecostal perspectives. To locate US Latinx Pentecostal theology of the Kingdom of God, this paper will first provide a wide-ranging description of a traditional evangelical hermeneutical process. Afterward, an understanding of the Kingdom that is generally taught and accepted in most evangelical contexts will be discussed. This will be followed by a survey of dominant US Pentecostal theology of the Kingdom of God through the lens of the Assemblies of God doctrinal statements and Pentecostal scholars. The life and work of various Pentecostal ministers and author Piri Thomas will provide a Kingdom perspective of US Latinx Pentecostal practitioners. I will provide an analysis based on their life experiences and some of their writings. The writings of Orlando Costas will set the stage in order to examine the works of other US Latinx Pentecostal scholars. Thereafter, the theologies of Latin American Liberation Theologians Clodivis and Leonardo Boff and others will be surveyed. Before concluding, the article will provide a historical overview of Latinx Pentecostal social engagement in the northeast US with the goal of identifying Kingdom values and priorities.