Tropical Apocalypse

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Tropical Apocalypse

Author : Martin Munro
Publisher : University of Virginia Press
ISBN 13 : 081393821X
Total Pages : 240 pages
Book Rating : 4.8/5 (139 download)

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Book Synopsis Tropical Apocalypse by : Martin Munro

Download or read book Tropical Apocalypse written by Martin Munro and published by University of Virginia Press. This book was released on 2015-08-06 with total page 240 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In Tropical Apocalypse, Martin Munro argues that since the earliest days of European colonization, Caribbean—and especially Haitian—history has been shaped by apocalyptic events so that the region has, in effect, been living for centuries in an end time without end. By engaging with the contemporary apocalyptic turn in Caribbean studies and lived reality, he not only provides important historical contextualization for a general understanding of apocalypse in the region but also offers an account of the state of Haitian society and culture in the decades before the 2010 earthquake. Inherently interdisciplinary, his work ranges widely through Caribbean and Haitian thought, historiography, political discourse, literature, film, religion, and ecocriticism in its exploration of whether culture in these various forms can shape the future of a country. The author begins by situating the question of the Caribbean apocalypse in relation to broader, global narratives of the apocalyptic present, notably Slavoj i ek's Living in the End Times. Tracing the evolution of apocalyptic thought in Caribbean literature from Negritude up to the present, he notes the changes from the early work of Aimé Césaire; through an anti-apocalyptic period in which writers such as Frantz Fanon, Antonio Benítez-Rojo, Édouard Glissant, and Michael Dash have placed more emphasis on lived experience and the interrelatedness of cultures and societies; to a contemporary stage in which versions of the apocalyptic reappear in the work of David Scott and Mark Anderson.

Tropical Forest Community Ecology

Author : Walter Carson
Publisher : John Wiley & Sons
ISBN 13 : 1444356267
Total Pages : 686 pages
Book Rating : 4.4/5 (443 download)

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Book Synopsis Tropical Forest Community Ecology by : Walter Carson

Download or read book Tropical Forest Community Ecology written by Walter Carson and published by John Wiley & Sons. This book was released on 2011-08-31 with total page 686 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Historically, tropical ecology has been a science often content with descriptive and demographic approaches, which is understandable given the difficulty of studying these ecosystems and the need for basic demographic information. Nonetheless, over the last several years, tropical ecologists have begun to test more sophisticated ecological theory and are now beginning to address a broad array of questions that are of particular importance to tropical systems, and ecology in general. Why are there are so many species in tropical forests and what mechanisms are responsible for the maintenance of that vast species diversity? What factors control species coexistence? Are there common patterns of species abundance and distribution across broad geographic scales? What is the role of trophic interactions in these complex ecosystems? How can these fragile ecosystems be conserved? Containing contributions from some of the world’s leading tropical ecologists, Tropical Forest Community Ecology provides a summary of the key issues in the discipline of tropical ecology: Includes contributions from some of the world’s leading tropical ecologists Covers patterns of species distribution, the maintenance of species diversity, the community ecology of tropical animals, forest regeneration and conservation of tropical ecosystems

Human Extinction and the Pandemic Imaginary

Author : Christos Lynteris
Publisher : Routledge
ISBN 13 : 1000698882
Total Pages : 205 pages
Book Rating : 4.0/5 (6 download)

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Book Synopsis Human Extinction and the Pandemic Imaginary by : Christos Lynteris

Download or read book Human Extinction and the Pandemic Imaginary written by Christos Lynteris and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2019-09-19 with total page 205 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book develops an examination and critique of human extinction as a result of the ‘next pandemic’ and turns attention towards the role of pandemic catastrophe in the renegotiation of what it means to be human. Nested in debates in anthropology, philosophy, social theory and global health, the book argues that fear of and fascination with the ‘next pandemic’ stem not so much from an anticipation of a biological extinction of the human species, as from an expectation of the loss of mastery over human/non-humanl relations. Christos Lynteris employs the notion of the ‘pandemic imaginary’ in order to understand the way in which pandemic-borne human extinction refashions our understanding of humanity and its place in the world. The book challenges us to think how cosmological, aesthetic, ontological and political aspects of pandemic catastrophe are intertwined. The chapters examine the vital entanglement of epidemiological studies, popular culture, modes of scientific visualisation, and pandemic preparedness campaigns. This volume will be relevant for scholars and advanced students of anthropology as well as global health, and for many others interested in catastrophe, the ‘end of the world’ and the (post)apocalyptic.

Disasters, Vulnerability, and Narratives

Author : Kasia Mika
Publisher : Routledge
ISBN 13 : 1351403036
Total Pages : 234 pages
Book Rating : 4.3/5 (514 download)

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Book Synopsis Disasters, Vulnerability, and Narratives by : Kasia Mika

Download or read book Disasters, Vulnerability, and Narratives written by Kasia Mika and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2018-07-17 with total page 234 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book uses narrative responses to the 2010 Haiti earthquake as a starting point for an analysis of notions of disaster, vulnerability, reconstruction and recovery. The turn to a wide range of literary works enables a composite comparative analysis, which encompasses the social, political and individual dimensions of the earthquake. This book focuses on a vision of an open-ended future, otherwise than as a threat or fear. Mika turns to concepts of hinged chronologies, slow healing and remnant dwelling. Weaving theory with attentive close-readings, the book offers an open-ended framework for conceptualising post-disaster recovery and healing. These processes happen at different times and must entail the elimination of compound vulnerabilities that created the disaster in the first place. Challenging characterisations of the region as a continuous catastrophe this book works towards a bold vision of Haiti’s and the Caribbean’s futures. The study shows how narratives can extend some of the key concepts within discipline-bound approaches to disasters, while making an important contribution to the interface between disaster studies, postcolonial ecocriticism and Haitian Studies.

Aztec and Maya Apocalypses

Author : Mark Z. Christensen
Publisher : University of Oklahoma Press
ISBN 13 : 0806191341
Total Pages : 305 pages
Book Rating : 4.8/5 (61 download)

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Book Synopsis Aztec and Maya Apocalypses by : Mark Z. Christensen

Download or read book Aztec and Maya Apocalypses written by Mark Z. Christensen and published by University of Oklahoma Press. This book was released on 2022-07-14 with total page 305 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Second Coming of Christ, the resurrection of the dead, the Final Judgment: the Apocalypse is central to Christianity and has evolved throughout Christianity’s long history. Thus, when ecclesiastics brought the Apocalypse to native audiences in the Americas, both groups adapted it further, reflecting new political and social circumstances. The religious texts in Aztec and Maya Apocalypses, many translated for the first time, provide an intriguing picture of this process—revealing the influence of European, Aztec, and Maya worldviews on portrayals of Doomsday by Spanish priests and Indigenous authors alike. The Apocalypse and Christian eschatology played an important role in the conversion of the Indigenous population and often appeared in the texts and sermons composed for their consumption. Through these writings from the sixteenth to the early nineteenth century—priests’ “official” texts and Indigenous authors’ rendering of them—Mark Z. Christensen traces Maya and Nahua influences, both stylistic and substantive, while documenting how extensively Old World content and meaning were absorbed into Indigenous texts. Visions of world endings and beginnings were not new to the Indigenous cultures of America. Christensen shows how and why certain formulations, such as the Fifteen Signs of Doomsday, found receptive audiences among the Maya and the Aztec, with religious ramifications extending to the present day. These translated texts provide the opportunity to see firsthand the negotiations that ecclesiastics and natives engaged in when composing their eschatological treatises. With their insights into how various ecclesiastics, Nahuas, and Mayas preached, and even understood, Catholicism, they offer a uniquely detailed, deeply informed perspective on the process of forming colonial religion.

Writing on the Fault Line

Author : Martin Munro
Publisher : Oxford University Press
ISBN 13 : 1781381461
Total Pages : 264 pages
Book Rating : 4.7/5 (813 download)

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Book Synopsis Writing on the Fault Line by : Martin Munro

Download or read book Writing on the Fault Line written by Martin Munro and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2014 with total page 264 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: What are the effects of a catastrophic earthquake on a society, its culture and politics? Which of these effects are temporary, and which endure? Are the various effects immediately discernible, or do they manifest themselves over time? What roles do artists, and writers in particular have in witnessing, bearing testimony to, and gauging the effects of natural disasters? What is the worth of literature in a time of disaster? These are the fundamental questions addressed in this book, which examines the case of the Haitian earthquake of 12 January 2010, a uniquely destructive event in the recent history of cataclysmic disasters, in Haiti and the broader world. The book argues that Haitian literature since 2010 has played a primary role in recording, bearing testimony to, and engaging with the social and psychological effects of the disaster. It further shows that daring literary invention - what Edwidge Danticat calls dangerous creation - constitutes one of the most striking and important means of communicating the effects of such a disaster, and that close engagement with the creative imagination is one of the most privileged ways for the outsider in particular to begin to comprehend the experience of living in and through a time of catastrophe.

Caribbean Globalizations, 1492 to the Present Day

Author : Eva Sansavior
Publisher : Oxford University Press
ISBN 13 : 1781381518
Total Pages : 288 pages
Book Rating : 4.7/5 (813 download)

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Book Synopsis Caribbean Globalizations, 1492 to the Present Day by : Eva Sansavior

Download or read book Caribbean Globalizations, 1492 to the Present Day written by Eva Sansavior and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2015 with total page 288 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Prologue: Globalization, globality, globe-stone / Patrick Chamoiseau -- Introduction / Eva Sansavior and Richard Scholar -- The archipelago goes global: late Glissant and the early modern isolario / Richard Scholar -- How globalization invented Indians in the Caribbean / Patricia Seed -- Precocious modernity: environmental change in the early Caribbean / Philip D. Morgan -- 'Slaves' in my family: French modes of servitude in the New World / Christopher L. Miller -- Paradoxical encounters: the essay as a space of globalization in Montaigne's 'Des cannibales' and Maryse Conde's "O brave new world' / Eva Sansavior -- Tobacco: the commodification of the Caribbean and the origins of globalization / Guillaume Pigeard de Gurbert -- The amaranth paradigm: Amerindian indigenous glocality in the Caribbean / Judith Misrahi-Barak -- Aluminium: globalizing Caribbean mobilities, Caribbeanizing global mobilities / Mimi Sheller -- Race and modernity in Hispaniola: tropical matters and development perspectives / David Howard -- Local, national, regional, global: Glissant and the postcolonial manifesto / Charles Forsdick -- Tropical apocalypse: globalization and the Caribbean end times / Martin Munro

The Zombie in Contemporary French Caribbean Fiction

Author : Lucy Swanson
Publisher : Liverpool University Press
ISBN 13 : 1802076514
Total Pages : 208 pages
Book Rating : 4.8/5 (2 download)

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Book Synopsis The Zombie in Contemporary French Caribbean Fiction by : Lucy Swanson

Download or read book The Zombie in Contemporary French Caribbean Fiction written by Lucy Swanson and published by Liverpool University Press. This book was released on 2023-02-15 with total page 208 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Believed to have emerged in the French Caribbean based on African spirit beliefs, the zombie represents not merely the walking dead, but also a walking embodiment of the region’s history and culture. In Haiti today, the zombie serves as an enduring memory of enslavement: it is defined as a reanimated body robbed of part of its soul, forced to work in sugarcane fields. In Martinique and Guadeloupe, the zombie takes the form of a shape-shifting evil spirit, and represents the dangers posed to the maroon or “freedom runner.” The Zombie in Contemporary French Caribbean Fiction is the first book-length study of the literary zombie in recent fiction from the region. It examines how this symbol of the enslaved (and of the evil spirits that threaten them) is used to represent and critique new socio-political situations in the Caribbean. It also offers a comprehensive and focused examination of the ways contemporary authors from Haiti and the French Antilles contribute to the global zombie imaginary, identifying four “avatars” of the zombie—the slave, the trauma victim, the horde, and the popular zombie—that appear frequently in fiction and anthropology, exploring how works by celebrated and popular authors reimagine these archetypes.

Literary Landscapes of Time

Author : Jobst Welge
Publisher : Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG
ISBN 13 : 3110762293
Total Pages : 252 pages
Book Rating : 4.1/5 (17 download)

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Book Synopsis Literary Landscapes of Time by : Jobst Welge

Download or read book Literary Landscapes of Time written by Jobst Welge and published by Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG. This book was released on 2022-11-07 with total page 252 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The volume asks how the literatures of the Americas and the Caribbean present multiple or internally differentiated spaces and how these are distinguished or traversed by different temporalities. The historical and (post)colonial experiences of these areas turns them into especially fertile ground for the exploration of the connections between landscape/geography and historical/temporal palimpsests as well as the specificities of literary form. The contributions are dedicated to individual, yet conceptually interconnected studies of staggered, multiple, non-simultaneous temporalities in modern and contemporary literature. The volume adopts a comparative perspective throughout and intends to foster the dialogue between the study of Latin/American and Caribbean literatures—in Spanish, Portuguese, French, and English. Therefore, the individual essays are not grouped according to geographical or linguistic areas, but follow a trajectory from spatiotemporal constellations of the 19th century to ruined/catastrophic landscapes and the geopoetic inscriptions of time in regions. The essays should appeal to all readers interested in World Literature, Hemispheric Studies as well as temporal approaches to space and geography.

Black Women and Energies of Resistance in Nineteenth-Century Haitian and American Literature

Author : Mary Grace Albanese
Publisher : Cambridge University Press
ISBN 13 : 1009314246
Total Pages : 207 pages
Book Rating : 4.0/5 (93 download)

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Book Synopsis Black Women and Energies of Resistance in Nineteenth-Century Haitian and American Literature by : Mary Grace Albanese

Download or read book Black Women and Energies of Resistance in Nineteenth-Century Haitian and American Literature written by Mary Grace Albanese and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2023-11-30 with total page 207 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Black Women and Energies of Resistance in Nineteenth-Century Haitian and American Literature intervenes in traditional narratives of 19th-century American modernity by situating Black women at the center of an increasingly connected world. While traditional accounts of modernity have emphasized advancements in communication technologies, animal and fossil fuel extraction, and the rise of urban centers, Mary Grace Albanese proposes that women of African descent combated these often violent regimes through diasporic spiritual beliefs and practices, including spiritual possession, rootwork, midwifery, mesmerism, prophecy, and wandering. It shows how these energetic acts of resistance were carried out on scales large and small: from the constrained corners of the garden plot to the expansive circuits of global migration. By examining the concept of energy from narratives of technological progress, capital accrual and global expansion, this book uncovers new stories that center Black women at the heart of a pulsating, revolutionary world.

Raoul Peck

Author : Toni Pressley-Sanon
Publisher : Lexington Books
ISBN 13 : 0739198793
Total Pages : 301 pages
Book Rating : 4.7/5 (391 download)

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Book Synopsis Raoul Peck by : Toni Pressley-Sanon

Download or read book Raoul Peck written by Toni Pressley-Sanon and published by Lexington Books. This book was released on 2015-12-03 with total page 301 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This comprehensive collection of essays dedicated to the work of filmmaker Raoul Peck is the first of its kind. The essays, interview, and keynote addresses collected in Raoul Peck: Power, Politics, and the Cinematic Imagination focus on the ways in which power and politics traverse the work of Peck and are central to his cinematic vision. At the heart of this project is the wish to gather diverse interpretations of Raoul Peck’s films in a single volume. The essays included herein are written by scholars from different disciplines and are placed alongside Peck’s own articulations around the nature of power and politics. Raoul Peck: Power, Politics, and the Cinematic Imagination provides an introduction to Peck’s better-known films, interpretations of his rarely seen and recently released early films, and original analyses of his more recent films. It endeavors to explore the ways in which the dual themes of power and politics inform the work of Peck by taking a multidisciplinary approach to contextualizing his filmography. It culls contributions from scholars who write from a wide range of disciplines including history, film studies, literary studies, postcolonial studies, French and Francophone studies and African studies. The result is a volume that offers divergent perspectives and frames of expertise by which to understand Peck’s oeuvre that continues to expand and deepen.

Performance and Personhood in Caribbean Literature

Author : Jeannine Murray-Román
Publisher : University of Virginia Press
ISBN 13 : 081393849X
Total Pages : 256 pages
Book Rating : 4.8/5 (139 download)

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Book Synopsis Performance and Personhood in Caribbean Literature by : Jeannine Murray-Román

Download or read book Performance and Personhood in Caribbean Literature written by Jeannine Murray-Román and published by University of Virginia Press. This book was released on 2016-01-11 with total page 256 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Focusing on the literary representation of performance practices in anglophone, francophone, and hispanophone Caribbean literature, Jeannine Murray-Román shows how a shared regional aesthetic emerges from the descriptions of music, dance, and oral storytelling events. Because the historical circumstances that led to the development of performance traditions supersede the geopolitical and linguistic divisions of colonialism, the literary uses of these traditions resonate across the linguistic boundaries of the region. The author thus identifies the aesthetic that emerges from the act of writing about live arts and moving bodies as a practice that is grounded in the historically, geographically, and culturally specific features of the Caribbean itself. Working with twentieth- and twenty-first-century sources ranging from theatrical works and novels to blogs, Murray-Román examines the ways in which writers such as Jacques Stephen Alexis, Zoé Valdés, Rosario Ferré, Patrick Chamoiseau, and Marlon James experiment with textually compensating for the loss of the corporeality of live relationship in performance traditions. Through their exploration of the interaction of literature and performance, she argues, Caribbean writers themselves offer a mode of bridging the disjunction between cultural and philosophical approaches within Caribbean studies.

Idle Talk, Deadly Talk

Author : Ana Rodríguez Navas
Publisher : University of Virginia Press
ISBN 13 : 0813941636
Total Pages : 308 pages
Book Rating : 4.8/5 (139 download)

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Book Synopsis Idle Talk, Deadly Talk by : Ana Rodríguez Navas

Download or read book Idle Talk, Deadly Talk written by Ana Rodríguez Navas and published by University of Virginia Press. This book was released on 2018-10-22 with total page 308 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Chaucer called it "spiritual manslaughter"; Barthes and Benjamin deemed it dangerous linguistic nihilism. But gossip-long derided and dismissed by writers and intellectuals-is far from frivolous. In Idle Talk, Deadly Talk, Ana Rodríguez Navas reveals gossip to be an urgent, utilitarian, and deeply political practice-a means of staging the narrative tensions, and waging the narrative battles, that mark Caribbean politics and culture. From the calypso singer's superficially innocent rhymes to the vicious slanders published in Trujillo-era gossip columns, words have been weapons, elevating one person or group at the expense of another. Revising the overly gendered existing critical frame, Rodríguez Navas argues that gossip is a fundamentally adversarial practice. Just as whispers and hearsay corrosively define and surveil identities, they also empower writers to skirt sanitized, monolithic historical accounts by weaving alternative versions of their nations' histories from this self-governing discursive material. Reading recent fiction from the Hispanic, Anglophone, and Francophone Caribbean and their diasporas, alongside poetry, song lyrics, journalism, memoirs, and political essays, Idle Talk, Deadly Talk maps gossip's place in the Caribbean and reveals its rich possibilities as both literary theme and narrative device. As a means for mediating contested narratives, both public and private, gossip emerges as a vital resource for scholars and writers grappling with the region's troubled history.

Cultural Mobilities Between Africa and the Caribbean

Author : Birgit Englert
Publisher : Routledge
ISBN 13 : 1000399079
Total Pages : 241 pages
Book Rating : 4.0/5 (3 download)

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Book Synopsis Cultural Mobilities Between Africa and the Caribbean by : Birgit Englert

Download or read book Cultural Mobilities Between Africa and the Caribbean written by Birgit Englert and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2021-06-17 with total page 241 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book investigates the cultural connections between Africa and the Caribbean, using the lens of Mobility Studies to tease out the shared experiences between these highly diverse parts of the world. Despite their heterogeneity in terms of cultures, languages, and political and economic histories, the connections between the African continent and the Caribbean are manifold, stretching back to the trans-Atlantic slave trade. The authors in this book look to the past as well as to the present, focusing on the manifold mobile connections between the regions’ subjects, objects, ideas, texts, images, sounds, and beliefs. In doing so, the book demonstrates that mobility extends beyond just the movement of people, and that we can also see mobility in objects and ideas, travelling either in a material sense or in imaginary terms, in physical as well as in virtual spaces. Bringing the transdisciplinary fields of African Studies, Caribbean Studies, and Mobility Studies into dialogue, this book will be of interest to students and scholars across the humanities and social sciences. The Open Access version of this book, available at http://www.taylorfrancis.com, has been made available under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial (CC-BY-NC) 4.0 license. Funded by Universität Wien.

Caribbean Jewish Crossings

Author : Sarah Phillips Casteel
Publisher : University of Virginia Press
ISBN 13 : 0813943302
Total Pages : 514 pages
Book Rating : 4.8/5 (139 download)

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Book Synopsis Caribbean Jewish Crossings by : Sarah Phillips Casteel

Download or read book Caribbean Jewish Crossings written by Sarah Phillips Casteel and published by University of Virginia Press. This book was released on 2019-10-28 with total page 514 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Caribbean Jewish Crossings is the first essay collection to consider the Caribbean's relationship to Jewishness through a literary lens. Although Caribbean novelists and poets regularly incorporate Jewish motifs in their work, scholars have neglected this strain in studies of Caribbean literature. The book takes a pan-Caribbean approach, with chapters addressing the Anglophone, Francophone, Hispanophone, and Dutch-speaking Caribbean. Part 1 traces the emergence of a Caribbean-Jewish literary culture in Suriname, St. Thomas, Jamaica, and Cuba from the late eighteenth century through the early twentieth century. Part 2 brings into focus Sephardic and crypto-Jewish motifs in contemporary Caribbean literature, while Part 3 turns to the question of colonialism and its relationship to Holocaust memory. The volume concludes with the compelling voices of contemporary Caribbean creative writers.

The Power of the Story

Author : Vincent Joos
Publisher : Berghahn Books
ISBN 13 : 1800739575
Total Pages : 299 pages
Book Rating : 4.8/5 (7 download)

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Book Synopsis The Power of the Story by : Vincent Joos

Download or read book The Power of the Story written by Vincent Joos and published by Berghahn Books. This book was released on 2023-04-14 with total page 299 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A cross-disciplinary volume that combines and puts into dialogue perspectives on disasters, this book includes contributions from anthropology, history, cultural studies, sociology, and literary studies. Offering a rich and diverse set of arguments and analyses on the ever-relevant theme of catastrophe in the circum-Caribbean, it will encourage debate and collaboration between scholars working on disasters from a range of disciplinary perspectives.

A Cultural History of Underdevelopment

Author : John Patrick Leary
Publisher : University of Virginia Press
ISBN 13 : 0813939178
Total Pages : 304 pages
Book Rating : 4.8/5 (139 download)

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Book Synopsis A Cultural History of Underdevelopment by : John Patrick Leary

Download or read book A Cultural History of Underdevelopment written by John Patrick Leary and published by University of Virginia Press. This book was released on 2016-11-10 with total page 304 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A Cultural History of Underdevelopment explores the changing place of Latin America in U.S. culture from the mid-nineteenth century to the recent U.S.-Cuba détente. In doing so, it uncovers the complex ways in which Americans have imagined the global geography of poverty and progress, as the hemispheric imperialism of the nineteenth century yielded to the Cold War discourse of "underdevelopment." John Patrick Leary examines representations of uneven development in Latin America across a variety of genres and media, from canonical fiction and poetry to cinema, photography, journalism, popular song, travel narratives, and development theory. For the United States, Latin America has figured variously as good neighbor and insurgent threat, as its possible future and a remnant of its past. By illuminating the conventional ways in which Americans have imagined their place in the hemisphere, the author shows how the popular image of the United States as a modern, exceptional nation has been produced by a century of encounters that travelers, writers, radicals, filmmakers, and others have had with Latin America. Drawing on authors such as James Weldon Johnson, Willa Cather, and Ernest Hemingway, Leary argues that Latin America has figured in U.S. culture not just as an exotic "other" but as the familiar reflection of the United States’ own regional, racial, class, and political inequalities.