Latin American Textualities ― History, Materiality, and Digital Media

Textuality is the condition in which a text is created, edited, archived, published, disseminated, and consumed. “Texts,” therefore, encompass a broad variety of artifacts: traditional printed matter such as grammar books and newspaper articles; phonographs; graphic novels; ephemera such as fashion illustrations, catalogs, and postcards; and even virtual databases and cataloging systems.

Latin American Textualities is a wide-ranging, interdisciplinary look at textual history, textual artifacts, and digital textualities across Latin America from the colonial era to the present. Editors Heather J. Allen and Andrew R. Reynolds gathered a wide range of scholars to investigate the region’s textual scholarship. Contributors offer engaging examples of not just artifacts but also the contexts in which the texts are used. Topics include Guamán Poma’s library, the effect of sound recordings on writing in Argentina, Sudamericana Publishing House’s contribution to the Latin American literary boom, and Argentine science fiction. Latin American Textualities provides new paths to reading Latin American history, culture, and literatures.

Contributors:

Heather J. Allen
Catalina Andrango-Walker
Sam Carter
Sara Castro-Klarén
Edward King
Rebecca Kosick
Silvia Kurlat Ares
Walther Maradiegue
Clayton McCarl
José Enrique Navarro
Andrew R. Reynolds
George Antony Thomas
Zac Zimmer

Heather J. Allen is an assistant professor of Spanish at the University of Mississippi. Her research and teaching focus on early modern Spanish American historiography and the cultural history of print.

Andrew R. Reynolds is an associate professor of Spanish at West Texas A&M University. His research seeks to understand how textualities, images, and print impact cultural production and literary history in nineteenth- and twentieth-century Spanish America. Reynolds is the author of The Spanish American Cronica Modernista, Temporality and Material Culture: Modernismo’s Unstoppable Presses.