Contemporary Latin American Cultural Studies is a collection of new essays by recognised experts from around the world on various aspects of the new discipline of Latin American cultural studies. Essays are grouped in five distinct but interconnected sections focusing respectively on: (I) the theory of Latin American cultural studies; (II) the icons of culture; (III) culture as a commodity; (IV) culture as a site of resistance; and (V) everyday cultural practices. The essays range across a wide gamut of theories about Latin American culture; some, for example, analyse the role that ideas about the nation - and national icons  have played in the formation of a sense of identity in Latin America, while others focus on the resonance underlying cultural practices as diverse as football in Argentina, TV in Uruguay, cinema in Brazil, and the 'bolero' and soaps of modern-day Mexico. Contemporary Latin American Cultural Studies has an introduction setting the ideas explored in each section in their proper context. The essays are written in jargon-free English (all Spanish terms have been translated into English), and are supplemented by a concluding section with suggestions for further reading.

Part 1 Latin America and cultural studies 1 Cultural studies and revolving doors 2 Cultural studies and literary criticism at the cross-roads of value 3 The place of literature in cultural studies 4 Adiós: a national allegory (some reflections on Latin American Cultural Studies) Part 2 Cultural icons 5 Contesting the cleric: the intellectual as icon in modern Spanish America 6 Cultural myths and Chicana literature: a field in dispute 7 Recontextualizing violence as founding myth: La sangre derramada by 8 Eva Perón: one woman, several masks Part 3 Culture as spectacle/commodity 9 The spectacle of identities: football in Latin America 10 Modernity, modernization and melodrama: the bolero in Mexico in the 1930s and 1940s 11 Stars: mapping the firmament 12 Los globalizados también lloran: Mexican telenovelas and the geographical imagination 13 Local(izing) images: MontevideoâEUR(TM)s televisual praxis 14 The young and the damned: street vision in Latin American cinema Part 4 Culture, hegemony and opposition 15 Identity, politics and mestizaje 16 Brazilian cinema: reflections on race and representation 17 Of silences and exclusions: nation and culture in nineteenth-century Colombia 18 Testimonio and its discontents 19 Nicomedes Santa Cruz and the vindication of Afro-Peruvian culture 20 Queering Latin American popular culture Part 5 Cultural practices 21 Food in Latin America 22 Capoeira culture: an impertinent non-Western art form 23 Mama Coca and the Revolution: Jorge SanjinésâEUR(TM)s double-take 24 Buenos Aires and the narration of urban spaces and practices References Index