Nicolás Guillén's "El gran zoo" (1967), illustrated by Fayad Jamís, was the first Hispanic bestiary to prominently feature humans in a space traditionally inhabited by beasts. Guillén's verses transform the bestiary from a didactic tool used for centuries to instruct and uniform society into a subversive text that openly denounces the…

In 1623, Hernando Ruiz de Alarcón, a parish priest in Atenango, Mexico, was commissioned by his archbishop to record Nahua beliefs and healing practices for the purpose of denouncing their superstitions and demonic magic. His "Treatise on the Heathen Superstitions That Today Live Among the Indians Native to This New Spain," 1629…

In this paper we analyze the semantic and pragmatic properties of a colloquial interrogative construction attested in European Spanish, which we label invariable "qué" questions (IQQs). In doing so, we contribute to the better understanding of a relatively understudied phenomenon in Spanish, given that IQQs have been mainly approached…

Study abroad (SA) provides a space and place for second language (L2) learners to be challenged in terms of their target language skills and intercultural awareness. In order to appropriately equip learners, a task-based approach seems ideal to identify learners' specific needs (Long 2015). The present study reports a multiphase needs analysis…

This article explores gaming manifestations of the US-centric Mexican threat narrative in the context of the so-called drug war, by analyzing Manichean representations of characters, settings, and language (English and Spanish). It argues that videogames construct the concept of the Mexican subject in direct opposition to the US subject--in a…

This article examines Octavio Paz's canonical study of Mexican identity, "El laberinto de la soledad", against the backdrop of the current political environment in the United States; it interrogates how we can make Paz's rich, ambitious text meaningful for today's undergraduates. How can we teach "El laberinto de la soledad" in…

Detailing the integration of Spanish language teaching in an authentic setting, this article contributes to empirical research on the positive value of community-engaged learning in foreign language pedagogy. "Reading to Play, Playing to Read" is an innovative model for community-engaged teaching that combines learning goals from…

This study explores which features of Spanish as a foreign language (SFL) pronunciation most impact raters' evaluations. Native Spanish speakers (NSSs) from regions with different pronunciation norms were polled: 147 evaluators from northern Mexico and 99 evaluators from central Argentina. These evaluations were contrasted with ratings from…

At the beginning of the twentieth century a new subgenre of poetry written in Spanish, but rooted in Japanese literary tradition, began to emerge in the works of Spain's vanguard and Generation of 1927 poets and among young modernist poets in Mexico and South America. Transmitted first through France and later directly from Japan, the popularity…

In the past two years, several Latin American nations have begun celebrating their bicentennials of independence, turning attention to questions of national identity and the legacy of independence in the twenty-first century. This reflection is sure to continue into the coming decade. This article offers a few practical suggestions for bringing…

Following observations and interviews with transnational children that have one or more years of school in the United States and are now in school in Mexico, it was determined that the Mexican public school system has no mechanism in place to offer them the support they need. Therefore, I collaborated with Mexican university students to seek…

Although Spanish mood has been taught through a framework of categorical rules, recently attempts have been made to clarify the exact nature of certain rules and to better understand the patterns of rule variability that exist outside the classroom. This article examines the intersection of mood with notions such as habituality, general truths,…

Traces history of Aztec language and culture to show how traces remain in modern Spanish and how they have contributed to other languages. (BK)

Continuation of the Mexican Section of Madaline Nichols'"A Bibliographical Guide to Materials on American Spanish," published in 1941 by Harvard University Press, Cambridge, Mass; and of Hensley C. Woodbridge's "An Annotated Bibliography of Mexican Spanish for 1940-1953," in "Kentucky Foreign Language Quarterly," v1…

Table 2, Correlation Coefficients, missing from the authors' article published in "Hispania" (v75 n2 1992), is presented. (LB)