The volume Celebrations and Connections in Hispanic Literature is itself a celebration of a tradition of scholarly dialogue in a relaxed, festive atmosphere. The articles included here began as papers presented at the 25th Anniversary Edition of the Biennial Louisiana Conference on Hispanic Languages and Literatures, held in Baton Rouge Louisiana, February 23-24, 2006. Each of the authors responds in innovative ways to the idea of connecting texts, contexts, and genres, as well as to the disconnect that is often present between what we perceive as Hispanic identity and the experience of those left on the margin. Topics include Celebrating and Rewriting Difference: (De)colonized Identities, Word and Image in the Spanish Golden Age, and Latin American Literature and Politics, among others. The collection is demonstrative of current trends in Hispanic literary and cultural criticism, which are increasingly less bound by traditional regional and temporal constructs. While each author's research is rooted in a specific socio-historic context, their combined contributions to the present volume provide a far-reaching perspective that expands the notion of text to go beyond the literary and engage a multitude of disciplines. ait emphasizes the often illuminating connections among literary and cultural texts which can be drawn when one conceives of Hispanism and its literary and cultural fields as shaped by trends and issues, rather than divided by periods and regions (...) What strikes me most is the newness of each piece. While each is very well informed, none rehearses old historical or theoretical ground more than is absolutely necessary, but rather presents either a new or overlooked text or offers a new approach. Leslie Bary, University of Louisiana, Lafayette An impressive array of well-established and younger scholars has produced a volume whose scope is the entire Hispanic world extending from the Golden Age to the contemporary era. (...) This volume will be of interest to all scholars and critics of Hispanic literature as well as to historians and political scientists. Many of the essays challenge traditional assumptions about the colonization of the Hispanic world as well as the motivations for the revolutions for independence whose influence is still strongly alive in contemporary treatments of fundamental questions of national identity, race, class, and gender. C. Chris Soufas, Jr., Tulane University
About the Author: Andrea E. Morris is assistant professor of Spanish at Louisiana State University. Her teaching and research focus on the relationship between cultural practices and literary expression in the 20th century Hispanic Caribbean. Her publications include The Testimony of the Displaced: Rachel's Song and the Performance of Race and Gender (Afro-Hispanic Review) and Enterrando el cuerpo de la madre patria en Yania Tierra (Letras Femeninas). Morris is currently working on a book manuscript entitled Creative Difference(s): Identities in Conflict in Post-Revolutionary Cuban Narrative and Film. Margaret Parker is Professor of Spanish at Louisiana State University. Her areas of research are medieval Castilian literature and the representation of women in Hispanic literature. Two recent publications are Leading Ladies: Mujeres en la literatura hispana y las artes, co-edited with Yvonne Fuentes (LSU Press, 2006) and Spain is Different: the Untold Story of the Translatio of the Passio of St. Catherine of Alexandria, in Translatio or the Transmission of Culture in the Middle Ages and Renaissance (Arizona Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies, 2006.)