This article charts the similarities between the first short story appearance in 1839 of what later became Cirilo Villaverde's well-known nineteenth-century novel, "Cecilia Valdés" (1882), and Anselmo Suárez y Romero's "Carlota Valdés" (1838). The study considers the circle of influence in Cuba for writers during this time…

In her 2010 novel "Sangra por la herida," the Cuban novelist, poet, and essayist Mirta Yáñez constructs a panoramic view of metropolitan Havana, following the model of Latin American fiction starting in the 1980s based on a revised version of the detective novel. "Sangra por la herida" functions best as a narrative that…

Historians have noted that male bureaucrats and natural resource experts tended to dominate early twentieth-century national and hemispheric conservationist movements in Latin America, but a constellation of female activists, notable among them Gabriela Mistral, strengthened conservationism in the cultural sphere. Capitalizing on her leadership in…

It is a charge commonly laid at history teachers that we, myopically, teach only the same-old same-old. Steven Driver has taken extreme steps to avoid this by focusing on a particular neglected event -- the American occupation of Nicaragua in the early twentieth century -- as part of his preparation of his students for A-level coursework. He…

The question of how to engage undergraduate students in global learning is even more imperative given recent shifts in the global landscape and in higher education. Utilizing the value rubrics established by the American Association of Colleges and Universities, this analysis considers the importance of the humanities in realizing integrative,…

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…

This essay explores how stories of Tecum, Maya K'iche' warrior, and the quetzal can serve as creative entry points to contextualize the racialization and ideological positioning in Guatemala of Maya migrant youth who are now in U.S. schools. As we work on radicalizing possibilities and re-imagining liberatory futures, our efforts lie in crafting…

Gabriel Garcia Marquez is always keen on presenting to the people the various facets of their history. His literary language acts as effective means for describing the critical historical aspects of Latin America because the legacy of colonialism had destroyed so many important traces of the native culture of that area. This has led him to search…

We argue for an interdisciplinary pedagogical approach that we call the Integration of Research and Education in the Classroom, which highlights and crosses disciplinary boundaries to challenge each field's assumptions, limitations, conceptual and interpretive purview. We use a set of examples that center on problematizing various aspects of the…

This article describes how different approaches to religion (institutional and cultural) lead to startlingly different conclusions when analyzing how religion shapes the republican citizen. Through a genealogical discourse analysis, I examine educational reports issued by Argentinean authorities in the early twentieth century that made the Jew out…

This article discusses the authors' experience implementing the use of the online platform Story Maps, which allows students to create digital geographic information systems (GIS) maps of past people, places, and events and combine them with text, images, and other multimedia, in three different undergraduate history courses. The authors found…

The present moment represents a high point in the efforts of Afro-Ecuadorians to challenge their systematic exclusion from mainstream institutions and resources. This article examines anti-blackness in and outside of schooling in Ecuador. In the first section, I show that anti-blackness is a fact in Ecuador. Since the colonial era, Black people in…

The hegemonic ideology of racial democracy and rural cultural norms of racial silence continue to inform racial identities and national racial discourse in Brazil, in this case within the Landless Rural Workers' Movement (MST), a left-wing movement for agrarian reform. In this article I engage in textual analysis of a textbook from the MST's youth…

The authors describe a month-long unit on Afro-Latin@ identity in which third grade students began with a discussion of complex questions with which many historians, anthropologists, and scholars struggle to make sense. The goal of this month-long unit was to have students adopt the lens of cultural anthropologists as they explored the historical…

This essay explores the career of the understudied writer Pedro Castera (1846-1906), who is regarded as one of the first practitioners of science fiction in Mexico. A man of many talents, Castera is one of the most eccentric and eclectic figures in the intellectual life of fin-de-siècle Mexico City. His career took many turns: While during…