Building Nineteenth-Century Latin America - by William Garrett Acree & Juan Carlos González Espitia (Hardcover)

Book Synopsis

How did culture and identity take root as the new nations and state institutions were being fashioned across Latin America after the wars of independence? These original essays tease out the power of print and visual cultures, examine the impact of carnival, delve into religion and war, and study the complex histories of gender identities and disease.

Review Quotes

"Nicely researched and written; eloquent narrative, informative notes, and illustrations...Highly recommended."
--Choice

"Nineteenth Century Studies have taught us to reject an idea of nation-formation as a single, organic, and continuous process. The great achievement of this volume is to have reassembled the diversity of approaches and themes that make up the field today. This is the nineteenth century as panorama: a vast tableau with multiple clusters of action, rather than focused on a single center capturing our gaze."
--Jens Andermann, Birkbeck College, London, author of The Optic of the State: Visuality and Power in Argentina and Brazil

"Taken as a whole, this anthology presents a nuanced examination of the complex process of nation building."
--The Americas

About the Author

William G. Acree Jr. is Associate Professor of Spanish at Washington University in St. Louis. He is author of Everyday Reading: Print Culture and Collective Identity in the Rio de la Plata, 1780-1910, winner of the 2013 LASA Southern Cone Studies Section Book Prize in the Humanities.

Juan Carlos González Espitia is Assistant Professor of Spanish at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.