The Pan American Imagination: Contested Visions of the Hemisphere in Twentieth-Century Literature

by Stephen M. Park

Overview

In the history of the early twentieth-century Americas, visions of hemispheric unity flourished, and the notion of a transnational American identity was embraced by artists, intellectuals, and government institutions. In The Pan American Imagination, Stephen Park explores the work of several Pan American modernists who challenged the body of knowledge being produced about Latin America, crossing the disciplinary boundaries of academia as well as the formal boundaries of artistic expression—from literary texts and travel writing to photography, painting, and dance. Park invests in an interdisciplinary approach, which he frames as a politically resistant intellectual practice, using it not only to examine the historical phenomenon of Pan Americanism but also to explore the implications for current transnational scholarship.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780813936673
Publisher:	University of Virginia Press
Publication date:	12/15/2014
Series:	New World Studies
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	288
File size:	5 MB
Age Range:	18 Years

About the Author

Stephen M. Park is Assistant Professor of English at the University of Texas at Brownsville.

Table of Contents

List of Illustrations ix

Acknowledgments xi

Introduction: A History of an Idea and Its Institutions 1

Hemispheric Identity and the Uses of Indigenous Culture

1 Mesoamerican Modernism: William Carlos Williams and the Archaeological Imagination 19

2 Hemispheric Mythologies: Rethinking the History of the Americas through Simón Bolívar and Quetzalcoatl 55

Cuba, Race, and Modernity

3 Academic Discourse at Havana: Pan American Eugenics and Transnational Capital in Alejo Carpentier's ¡Écue-Yamba-Ó! 91

4 Pan American Progress: The Crime of Cuba, Economic Development, and Representations of the "South" 126

Women, Migration, and Memories of Pan Americanism

5 Pan Americanism Revisited: Hemispheric Feminism and Ana Castillo's The Mixqutahuala Letters 159

6 Decolonizing the Dance: Katherine Dunham's Transnational Approach to Anthropology and Performance in Haiti 190

Epilogue: Singularity, Multiplicity, and Pan American Unity 221

Notes 233

Bibliography 253

Index 267

Editorial Reviews

The Pan American Imagination is an insightful book that contributes unique, critical, and sound observations to the fields of American studies, intellectual history, and Latin American and Caribbean studies. It is well written, engaging, intellectually stimulating, and theoretically relevant to contemporary academic discourse on American identity, representation, and knowledge systems within the transnational arena.

Millery Polyné

The Pan American Imagination is an exciting and timely contribution to hemispheric studies. Its beautifully layered readings of visual, fictional, and historical texts break apart old canons and outline new currents of twentieth-century transnationalist thought.

Kirsten Silva Gruesz

The Pan American Imagination is a rich and wide-ranging study of hemispheric modernism—one that also has much to tell us about transnational American studies today. Stephen Park offers here a model of truly interdisciplinary scholarship.

Anna Brickhouse

" The Pan American Imagination is an insightful book that contributes unique, critical, and sound observations to the fields of American studies, intellectual history, and Latin American and Caribbean studies. It is well written, engaging, intellectually stimulating, and theoretically relevant to contemporary academic discourse on American identity, representation, and knowledge systems within the transnational arena. "—Millery Polyné, NYU Gallatin School of Individualized Study, author of From Douglass to Duvalier: U.S. African Americans, Haiti, and Pan Americanism, 1870–1964

" The Pan American Imagination is an exciting and timely contribution to hemispheric studies. Its beautifully layered readings of visual, fictional, and historical texts break apart old canons and outline new currents of twentieth-century transnationalist thought. "—Kirsten Silva Gruesz, University of California, Santa Cruz, author of Ambassadors of Culture: The Transamerican Origins of Latino Writing

" The Pan American Imagination is a rich and wide-ranging study of hemispheric modernism—one that also has much to tell us about transnational American studies today. Stephen Park offers here a model of truly interdisciplinary scholarship. "—Anna Brickhouse, University of Virginia, author of Transamerican Literary Relations and the Nineteenth-Century Public Sphere

From the Publisher

The Pan American Imagination is an insightful book that contributes unique, critical, and sound observations to the fields of American studies, intellectual history, and Latin American and Caribbean studies. It is well written, engaging, intellectually stimulating, and theoretically relevant to contemporary academic discourse on American identity, representation, and knowledge systems within the transnational arena.

Millery Polyné

The Pan American Imagination is an insightful book that contributes unique, critical, and sound observations to the fields of American studies, intellectual history, and Latin American and Caribbean studies. It is well written, engaging, intellectually stimulating, and theoretically relevant to contemporary academic discourse on American identity, representation, and knowledge systems within the transnational arena.

Millery Polynee;