By the mid-twentieth century, Eastern European Jews had become one of Argentina's largest minorities. Some represented a wave of immigration begun two generations before; many settled in the province
In perhaps as few as one hundred years, the Inka Empire became the largest state ever formed by a native people anywhere in the Americas, dominating the western coast of South America by the early six
A growing number of Americans, many of them retirees, are migrating to Mexico's beach resorts, border towns, and picturesque heartland. While considerable attention has been paid to Mexicans who immig
The Texas Centennial of 1936, commemorated by statewide celebrations of independence from Mexico, proved to be a powerful catalyst for the formation of a distinctly Mexican American identity. Confront
Maggie Rivas-Rodriguez ’s edited volume Mexican Americans & World War II brought pivotal stories from the shadows, contributing to the growing acknowledgment of Mexican American patriotism as a me
Surrealism as a movement has always resisted the efforts of critics to confine it to any static definition--surrealists themselves have always preferred to speak of it in terms of dynamics, dialectics
Kate Breakey is internationally recognized for large-scale, richly hand-colored photographs, including her acclaimed series of luminous portraits of birds, flowers, animals, and insects. Since 1980,
No one has done more to introduce the world to the authentic, flavorful cuisines of Mexico than Diana Kennedy. Acclaimed as the Julia Child of Mexican cooking, Kennedy has been an intrepid, indefatiga
From Eudora Welty's memoir of childhood to May Sarton's reflections on her seventieth year, writers' journals offer an irresistible opportunity to join a creative thinker in musing on the events--whe
The events of 2003 in Texas were important to the political history of this country. Congressman Tom DeLay led a Republican effort to gerrymander the state's thirty-two congressional districts to defe
"A high school stadium in Texas is not simply a high school stadium in Texas but a shrine, a temple, an epicenter of small-town life more important than the Baptist church or the local barbecue joint.
"I hadn't, till I really started digging, gauged the fierce intensity of the need for myth in the human psyche, of any age, or sensed the variety of motives dictating that need," writes Peter Green in
Gonzalo Fernandez de Oviedo (1478–1557) wrote the first comprehensive history of Spanish America, the Historia general y natural de las Indias, a sprawling, constantly revised work in which Oviedo att
The female voice plays a more central role in Sufi ritual, especially in the singing of devotional poetry, than in almost any other area of Muslim culture. Female singers perform sufiana-kalam, or mys
Northeast of modern-day Mexico City stand the remnants of one of the world's largest preindustrial cities, Teotihuacan. Monumental in scale, Teotihuacan is organized along a three-mile-long thoroughfa
The future is not a fixed idea but a highly variable one that reflects the values of those who are imagining it. By studying the ways that visionaries imagined the future--particularly that of Americ
In recent decades, Chicana/o literary and cultural productions have dramatically shifted from a nationalist movement that emphasized unity to one that openly celebrates diverse experiences. Charting
In Aztec and colonial Central Mexico, every individual was destined for lifelong placement in a legally defined social stratum or estate. Social mobility became possible after independence from Spain
Compiled in 1582, Ballads of the Lords of New Spain is one of the two principal sources of Nahuatl song, as well as a poetical window into the mindset of the Aztec people some sixty years after the co
Living in 2300 BCE, Sumerian high priestess Enheduanna became the first author of historical record by signing her name to a collection of hymns written for forty-two temples throughout the southern h
Around 1542, descendants of the Aztec rulers of Mexico created accounts of the pre-Hispanic history of the city of Tetzcoco, Mexico, one of the imperial capitals of the Aztec Empire. Painted in iconi
"Finding one particular thing at one particular time, then letting a world accumulate around it, in rough contingency, nothing quite fitting or not fitting." This is how Dave Hickey describes the work
In this book, noted scholars Julio Ortega, Ricardo Gutierrez Mouat, Michael Palencia-Roth, Anibal Gonzalez, and Gonzalo Diaz-Migoyo offer English-speaking readers a new approach to Garcia Marquez's wo
Journalist, historian, anthropologist, art critic, and creative writer, Anita Brenner was one of Mexico's most discerning interpreters. Born to a Jewish immigrant family in Mexico a few years before
Only one surviving source provides a continuous narrative of Greek history from Xerxes' invasion to the Wars of the Successors following the death of Alexander the Great--the Bibliotheke, or "Library,
From 1974 to the present, the Institute of Classical Archaeology at the University of Texas at Austin has carried out archaeological excavations in the ancient territory (chora) of Metaponto, now loca
In this groundbreaking study based on archival research about Chicana and Chicano prisoners--known as Pintas and Pintos--as well as fresh interpretations of works by renowned Pinta and Pinto authors
Modern Texas, like Mexico, traces its beginning to sixteenth-century encounters between Europeans and Indians who contested control over a vast land. Unlike Mexico, however, Texas eventually received
The first comprehensive, book-length study of its kind, Conquistadores de la Calle presents the findings of nearly two years of ethnographic research on the streets of Guatemala City, toppling convent
She was a friend, lover, and confidante of charismatic Spanish American independence hero Simón Bolívar and, after her death, a nationalist icon in her own right. Yet authors generally have
In the early twentieth century, three women of color helped shape a new world of ethnographic discovery. Ella Cara Deloria, a Sioux woman from South Dakota, Zora Neale Hurston, an African American wo
Progressive former governor James Stephen Hogg moved his business headquarters to Houston in 1905. For seven decades, his children Will, Ima, and Mike Hogg used their political ties, social position,
"My sense in reading the assemblage of stories collected here is that the Western short story is still very much finding its way--which is, I think, as it should be. Only miracles--like [Annie Proulx
It's no overstatement to say that the state of Texas is a republic of barbecue. Whether it's brisket, sausage, ribs, or chicken, barbecue feeds friends while they catch up, soothes tensions at politi
Thousands of people die in drug-related deaths every year in Ciudad Ju?rez, Chihuahua, adjacent to El Paso, Texas. Ju?rez has become the most violent city in the Mexican drug war. Much of the cocaine
Mexico has a vast range of annual festivals; several commemorate national events, but most are religious or spiritual in inspiration. After the Spanish Conquest of 1521, Roman Catholic teachings fuse
American artist Julie Speed has attracted an enthusiastic following for her paintings, collages, constructions, and drawings that use a skewed form of realism to open vistas into psychologically comp
Roman tragedies were written for over three hundred years, but only fragments remain of plays that predate the works of Seneca in the mid-first century C.E., making it difficult to define the role of
In 1951, Israel was a young nation surrounded by hostile neighbors. Its tenuous grip on nationhood was made slipperier still by internal tensions among the various communities that had immigrated to t
Biological warfare is a menacing twenty-first-century issue, but its origins extend to antiquity. While the recorded use of toxins in warfare in some ancient populations is rarely disputed (the use of
