In scholarship on language pedagogy, there is growing momentum for teaching Afrodescendant literature in language classrooms. Various teachers and scholars of languages and literatures have responded to the need for greater racial inclusion in language curricula by exploring approaches to teaching Afro-Hispanic literary texts (Villegas Rogers…

Hispanic Catholic liturgical ceremonies since the thirteenth century have drawn upon material-symbolic imagery of "Cristos articulados" [jointed Christ-figures] for staging episodes from the Passion of Christ during Holy Week, such as the "Veneration of the Cross," the "Holy Burial," the "Visit to the…

In Spanish language curricula, it is essential that we teach about "afrodescendientes" in Latin America and the Caribbean to present an inclusive representation of the diverse people, practices, and cultural products. Their perspectives and cultural products must be integrated in the curricula of Spanish undergraduate programs beyond the…

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…

Cristina Fernández Cubas's short story "La nueva vida" ("La habitación de Nona" 2015) foregrounds the play between truth and fiction, past and present, and death and identity, where the widowed protagonist finds meaning not in philosophy, but in physics. Widowed in 2007 at age 62, Fernández Cubas focalized this story through…

This essay examines the state of Digital Humanities work in the subfield of literature from the Spanish speaking world. It provides a case study of a multiyear digital mapping project conducted with undergraduate students at a highly selective liberal arts college. This project serves as a means of examining the digital state of the field and…

This article examines the life and work of Mary J. Serrano (1840-1923), a successful translator and popularizer of Spanish literature in late nineteenth-century United States. It provides a short biography of Serrano and focuses on her work for the Spanish Legation in in Washington D.C. during the Cuban War of Independence (1895-98), a period of…

A rise in antiracist reform sparked by summer 2020 events have prompted a reexamination of course material across all levels and subjects in schools. This article will focus primarily on Desirée Bela-Lobedde's "Ser mujer negra en España" (2018), and demonstrate how fragments from her culturally rich autobiography, with the support of…

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…

On the eighth of October, 1622, Lope de Vega finished "La nueva victoria de don Gonzalo de Córdoba." This "comedia" recounts a Spanish victory in the Battle of Fleurus, one of several military triumphs that encouraged hope and excitement during the early years of Philip IV's reign. The battle had occurred in late August of…

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…

By reclaiming the power of self-definition and the use of the term "travesti" to designate their unique experience within the Latin American cultural, economic, and political context, "travesti" intellectuals have fought the dehumanization of their personhood. In her novel "Las malas," the Argentine author Camila Sosa…

Through her epistolary correspondence and her novel "Ifigenia" (1924), Teresa de la Parra (1889-1936) questions racial stratification systems reminiscent of colonial times and still present in twentieth-century Venezuela. Parra establishes the malleability of racial categories through a moderate racial discourse that intends to…

Over the last several years, faculty have engaged students and community members in a series of collaborative projects with the goal of addressing complex issues such as identity, language, and belonging. I posit that the work we have been doing constitutes a broader innovative humanities project centered on cultural studies. To demonstrate as…

Following several calls in recent scholarship for increased attention to the study of the Central American diaspora in the United States, this article offers readings of Honduran-born author Roberto Quesada's novels "Big Banana" (1999) and "Nunca entres por Miami" (2003). Written in New York City, where he has resided since…