Border Interrogations

The twelve chapters presented here by Vizcaya (colonial studies, Hofstra U.) and Doubleday (history, Hofstra U.) are united in their understanding of Spanish "borders" as historical and ideological construct that can be problematized and challenged but are otherwise diverse in topic and perspective. The papers discuss the artificial frontiers of the North African, yet Spanish, cities of Ceuta and Melilla; gender and border crossing in modern Spanish cinema; racism and Spanish opposition to multiculturalism; the art of Miquel Barcelo and Spanish-African solidarity; transgression of borders in Philippine novelist Jose Rizal's El Filibusterismo; indigenous rebellions in 17th century Mexico and the frontiers of empire; the staging of borders in Cervantes's Numancia; and border crossing and identity consciousness in the Jews of medieval Spain. Annotation c2008 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)

Benita Samperdro Vizcaya is Associate Professor of Colonial Studies in the Department of Romance Languages and Literatures at Hofstra University. Her research interests focus on issues of Spanish colonialism in both Africa and Latin America, specifically on processes of decolonization and postcolonial legacies. She has published extensively on empire, exile, colonial discourse and resistance, and most recently on topics relating to Equatorial Guinea, the only African state where Spanish remains the official language. She is currently working on a book manuscript entitled Spanish Colonialism, African Decolonizations, and the Politics of Place.

Simon Doubleday is Associate Professor of History at Hofstra University, and Executive Editor of the Journal of Medieval Iberian Studies. He is author of The Lara Family: Crown and Nobility in Medieval Spain (Harvard, 2001), and co-editor, with David Coleman, of In the Light of Medieval Spain. Islam, the West, and the Relevance of History (Palgrave, 2008). He is currently completing a post-empirical study of the thirteenth-century border-crossing Castilian courtesan Maria Perez, 'La Balteira.'