Teaching Central American Literature in a Global Context
- Editors: Gloria Elizabeth Chacón, Mónica Albizúrez Gil
- Pages: 364
- Published: 2022
- ISBN: 9781603295888 (Paperback)
- ISBN: 9781603295871 (Hardcover)
“One of the volume’s strengths is its wide variety of theoretical approaches such as feminism, postcolonialism, cultural studies, gender and queer studies, critical race theory, and ecocriticism, among others. . . . [T]his volume would be an invaluable resource for any instructor at the secondary or post-secondary level who teaches Central American culture as a part of their curriculum.”
—Hispania
Central America has a long history as a site of cultural and political exchange, from Mayan and Nahua trade networks to the effects of Spanish imperialism, capitalism, and globalization. In Teaching Central American Literature in a Global Context, instructors will find practical, interdisciplinary, and innovative pedagogical approaches to the cultures of Central America that are adaptable to various fields of study. The essays map out classroom lessons that encourage students to relate writings and films to their own experience of global interconnectedness and to read critically the history that binds Central America to the United States, Mexico, and the Caribbean. In the context of debates about immigration and a growing Central American presence in the United States, this book provides vital resources about the region’s cultural production and covers trends in Central American literary studies including Mayan and other Indigenous literatures, modernismo, Jewish and Afro-descendant literatures, nineteenth- and twentieth-century literature, and contemporary texts and films.
Introduction (1)
Part I: Locating Central American Literature
Central America in Two Negatives (25)
Gómez Carrillo’s Early Writings: Cosmopolitan Desire and Impressionistic Criticism (37)
Contradictions and Ambivalence of the Nicaraguan Vanguardistas (47)
Part II: Visual Technologies and Understanding Central America
Reading Central America through Google Maps and the Novels of Horacio Castellanos Moya (61)
A Cinema Not in Ruins: Gender and History in Two Nicaraguan Short Films (71)
Conceptualizing and Problematizing Space: Central American Literature and Culture in the Isthmus (81)
Peace and Reconciliation: Decoding Belonging in Guatemalan Photography (91)
Many Central Americas: Approaches to the Films Ixcanul and El Regreso (101)
Part III: Mayan Literatures beyond the Local
The Popol Wuj and Central American Literature: Narratives of Resistance and Cultural Continuity (115)
Teaching Indigenous Literatures Comparatively (127)
Gaspar Pedro González’s Return of the Maya in the Age of Family Separation at the Border (138)
Introducing Mayan Poetry from Central America in a Canadian Context (148)
Part IV: Black and Jewish Literatures from the Isthmus
Black Power in Central American Writing (161)
Black Central American Literature and Quince Duncan (172)
Jewish Guatemalan Fiction in a Global Context (180)
Part V: Representations of Violence
Disaffection, Alienation, and Survival in the Literature of Postwar Central America (193)
Learning from Senselessness: The Act of Reading in Horacio Castellanos Moya’s Insensatez (204)
Performing Violence: Regina José Galindo and Guatemala (215)
Teaching Central American and US Central American Texts in Universities and in Prisons (225)
Toward Epistemic Justice: An Intersectional Approach to Teaching Trans–Central American Literature (236)
Part VI: Diasporas, Memory, and Deterritorialization
Reading the Northern Triangle as a Gendered Literary Space (251)
Migration and Diaspora: Central American Literature beyond the Isthmus (262)
Rethinking Refugeeness in Diasporic Documentaries (275)
Documenting the Salvadoran Diaspora: Countering the Central American Threat Narrative (286)
Part VII: Environmental and Social Justice
Environmental Humanities Approaches to Central American Texts in Undergraduate Curricula (299)
#BertaVive: Teaching Environmental Justice through Central American Culture (315)
Learning about Archbishop Óscar Romero in the Special Collections Archives (326)
War, Human Experience, and Nature in Central American Literature (338)
“At a time of anxiety and dehumanizing discourse about migration in the United States, this volume addresses an urgent need for Central American literature to find points of entry into classrooms.”
—Nicole Caso, Bard College
