Mapping Colonial Spanish America is the first book-length investigation of the discursive and cultural production of space in colonial Spanish America from the fifteenth to the eighteenth centuries. Engaging with many canonical and non-canonical authors, the essays in this volume work together to inquire into the spatial configurations of colonial Spanish America and its inhabitants to provide new perspectives on issues of identity, race, gender, politics, and the construction of urban and rural geographies. The book is divided into five sections: textual and spatial configurations of alterity; the memory of space and the articulation of identity; the economy of geographical representation; gender and the politics of location; and the foundation of the colonial city. It thus shows how space offers a critical perspective from which to examine colonial discourse, culture and history, which representing a significant tool to interrogate colonial power and to understand the mechanisms of control involved in the process of mapping, living, or appropriating places and territories. Mapping Colonial Spanish America suggests significant new questions and directions in which the phenomenon of spatiality in Spanish America can be analyzed and interpreted.
About the Author: Santa Arias teaches in the Department of Modern languages and Linguistics at Florida State University. She is the author of Retórica, historia y polémica: Bartolomé de las Casas y l tradición intelectual renacentista (2002). Dr. Arias has published in the field of Latin American literature in Cuadernos americanos, Texto crítico, Revista de estudios hispánicos, Confluencia, and Colonial Latin American Review. Her current work examines the role of Catholic, African and Amerindian spiritualities in the construction of Latin American cultural identity. Mariselle Meléndez is an associate professor of Spanish at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, where she is also affiliated with the Latina/Latino Studies Program. Her research focuses on issues of race, gender, and sexuality in colonial Spanish America with special interest in the eighteenth century. Dr. Melendez is the author of Raza, género e hibridez en El lazarillo de ciegos camiantes (1999), and her articles have appeared in Revista de estudios hispánicos, Latin American Literary Review, Revista iberoamericana, Revista de crítica literaria latinoamericana, and Dieciocho/Hispanic Enlightenment.