Traditionally women have found recourse in artistic means to interrogate change and upheaval. This volume explores the experiences of women from Spain, Portugal and Latin America in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries who themselves have crossed cultural boundaries or have described this experience in their literature and film. Areas investigated in this collection of essays include the experience of the exiled or the immigrant and their personal or collective response to displacement and adaptation: the transcultural potential of cyberspace for women, how patterns and styles of the fashion industry have crossed borders, how women have crossed canonical cultural boundaries in search of identity and meaning, how global cultural influences have manifested in Hispanic and Lusophone cultural practices and production by or about women, and the challenging question of whether canine writing can be considered a branch of feminist theory. Common to most of the essays are the central issues of identity, values, conflict and interconnectedness and an analysis of the patterns that result from the transcultural encounter of these aspects.
About the Author: Patricia O'Byrne is Lecturer in the School of Applied Language and Intercultural Studies at Dublin City University, where she lectures on the comparative literature programme and contributes to a range of undergraduate literature, film and intercultural modules. Her recent publications include Testimonial Literature and Spanish Women Novelists (Romance Studies, 2008) and Popular fiction in post-war Spain: the soothing subversive novela rosa (Journal of Romance Studies, 2008). Gabrielle Carty is Lecturer in the School of Applied Language and Intercultural Studies at Dublin City University, where she contributes to a range of undergraduate and postgraduate modules in translation, culture and film. She holds a Masters in Italian film from the University of Reading and a PhD in Spanish film from Queen Mary, University of London. Her research interests are Spanish film, star theory and the role of women in comedy and she has published in the area of contemporary Spanish film. Niamh Thornton is Lecturer in Spanish and Film studies at the University of Ulster, Coleraine. A specialist in Latin America with a particular focus on Mexico, her research interests include literature, film and cyberculture. Her publications include Women and the War Story in Mexico (Edwin Mellen, 2005), a co-edited volume with Par Kumaraswami entitled Revolucionarias: Conflict and Gender in Latin American Narratives by Women (Peter Lang, 2007), and several chapters and articles. She is currently completing a monograph on conflict in Mexican film.