Academic and research fields are moved by fads, waves, revolutionaries, paradigm shifts, and turns. They all imply a certain degree of change that alters the conditions of a stable system, producing an imbalance that needs to be addressed by the field itself.

New Approaches to Latin American Studies: Culture and Power offers researchers and students from different theoretical fields an essential, turn-organized overview of the radical transformation of epistemological and methodological assumptions in Latin American Studies from the end of the 1980s to the present. Sixteen chapters written by experts in their respective fields help explain the various ways in which to think about these shifts. Questions posited include:

• Why are turns so crucial?
• How did they alter the shape or direction of the field?
• What new questions, objects, or problems did they contribute?
• What were or are their limitations?
• What did they displace or prevent us from considering?

Among the turns included are: memory, transnational, popular culture, decolonial, feminism, affect, indigenous studies, transatlantic, ethical, post/hegemony, deconstruction, cultural policy, subalternism, gender and sexuality, performance, and cultural studies.

About the Author

Juan Poblete is Professor of Latin/o American Literature and Cultural Studies at the University of California, Santa Cruz. He is the author of Literatura chilena del siglo XIX (2003); editor of Critical Latin American and Latino Studies (2003); and coeditor of Andres Bello (2009), Redrawing The Nation: National Identities in Latin/o American Comics (2009), Desden al infortunio: Sujeto, comunicacion y publico en la narrativa de Pedro Lemebel (2010), Sports and Nationalism in Latin America (2015), and Humor in Latin American Cinema (2015).

Reviews

'New Approaches to Latin American Studies offers an invaluable collective account of the transformations and "turns" that the field of Latin American Studies has experienced in the past twenty-five years. Discussing significant theoretical paradigms and concepts (from cultural studies to memory and ethics to affect and posthegemony), the top-rank scholars contribute, in each individual chapter, to the construction of a comprehensive, sophisticated and rigorous cartography of the field of Latin American Studies.' - Ignacio M. Sanchez Prado, author of Screening Neoliberalism and Strategic Occidentalism

'New Approaches to Latin American Studies offers an invaluable collective account of the transformations and "turns" that the field of Latin American Studies has experienced in the past twenty-five years. Discussing significant theoretical paradigms and concepts (from cultural studies to memory and ethics to affect and posthegemony), the top-ranked scholars contribute, in each individual chapter, to the construction of a comprehensive, sophisticated, and rigorous cartography of the field of Latin American Studies.'

-Ignacio M. Sanchez Prado, Author of Screening Neoliberalism and Strategic Occidentalism

'What is the status of theoretical thinking about Latin America? New Approaches to Latin American Studies: Culture and Power includes thought-provoking and engaging answers to this question offered by contemporary thinkers and critics who trace the genealogies, challenges, and contributions of sixteen "turns" or paradigm shifts in the critical engagement of Latin America as an object and subject of study.'

-Yolanda Martinez-San Miguel, Professor of Latino and Caribbean Studies and Comparative Literature, Rutgers-New Brunswick

'What a wonderful set of mappings of the analytical and theoretical frameworks that have informed Latin American Studies and of the salient texts that pioneered these frameworks! They shed new light for seasoned scholars, not to mention for those engaging this highly transdisciplinary field for the first time. Juan Poblete has gathered the very best writers to focus on the various scholarly turns, enabling the reader not only to understand how Latin American realities are understood at different junctures but also how those turns, often initially formulated elsewhere, developed and how they have been adapted. This book is a must for every student of Latin America in the humanities and social sciences.'

-George Yudice, Professor, Department of Modern Languages and Literatures, University of Miami

Book Information
ISBN 9781138067974
Author Juan Poblete
Format Paperback
Page Count 276
Imprint Routledge
Publisher Taylor & Francis Ltd
Weight(grams) 385g