Berkeley, 1906

Now we are on a trip to Berkeley in 1906. (My grandmother graduated from what was then the University of California in 1912.) “The camera looks north near Berkeley Way along Oxford … the streetcar can turn right up Hearst Avenue. Note the small orchard seen as the streetcar turns into Euclid Avenue … the … More Berkeley, 1906

Américo Castro was against the idea of a Hispanic “race,” but…

If such a faith lasted longer in Spain than it did in the rest of Western Europe, this is partly because Franco’s triumph allowed Falangist historians to continue celebrating the achievements of the “raza hispanica” for many years. But it should be added that the “faith…in biological continuity”of Spanish fascists had its own distinctive flavor. … More Américo Castro was against the idea of a Hispanic “race,” but…

An unplanned child

Cecilia Valdés in New Orleans This paper considers some New Orleans sources, parallels and intertexts of Cirilo Villaverde’s Cecilia Valdés o la loma del Ángel: novela de costumbres cubanas (Havana, 1839-New York, 1882) and the fact that Cuba’s national novel was written over thirty years’ residence in the United States. Like José Martí, Benito Juárez, … More An unplanned child

My egalitarian bias keeps me from seeing this.

If race is constitutive of the modern state, as Goldberg demonstrates (2002), or of modernity itself, as da Silva argues (2007), the liberal assumption that inequality can be addressed within the framework of the nation does not hold. How might this perception change our understanding of these and other texts that have been read as … More My egalitarian bias keeps me from seeing this.

Planning

1) What do you think of going to a conference that would put you out of class for an entire week? The conference is W-F and I would have to travel on the Tuesday, which means missing four weekdays. On the one hand, it is research. On the other, that is a week of class. … More Planning

A hermeneutical problem

Actually it is a downright Gadamerian problem. A second look at this 19th century corpus may not support the romanticized readings it elicited after mestizaje was embraced as national ideology decades after its first publication. It is Gadamerian because the problem is what the readers bring; their assumptions, predilections, blind spots. Axé.