2018 Outstanding Academic Title, given by CHOICE Magazine
Introduces key terms, concepts, debates, and histories for Latinx Studies
Keywords for Latina/o Studies is a generative text that enhances the ongoing dialogue within a rapidly growing and changing field. The keywords included in this collection represent established and emergent terms, categories, and concepts that undergird Latina/o studies; they delineate the shifting contours of a field best thought of as an intellectual imaginary and experiential project of social and cultural identities within the US academy.
Bringing together 63 essays, from humanists, historians, anthropologists, sociologists, among others, each focused on a single term, the volume reveals the broad range of the field while also illuminating the tensions and contestations surrounding issues of language, politics, and histories of colonization, specific to this area of study. From “borderlands” to “migration,” from “citizenship” to “mestizaje,” this accessible volume will be informative for those who are new to Latina/o studies, providing them with a mapping of the current debates and a trajectory of the development of the field, as well as being a valuable resource for scholars to expand their knowledge and critical engagement with the dynamic transformations in the field.
Deborah R. Vargas is Associate Professor and Henry Rutgers Term Chair in Comparative Sexuality, Gender, and Race in the Department of Women’s and Gender Studies at Rutgers University. Vargas is the author of Dissonant Divas in Chicana Music: The Limits of La Onda (2012). Vargas’s publications have appeared in journals including Aztlan: Journal for Chicano Studies; Women and Performance: Journal of Feminist Theory; American Quarterly.
Lawrence La Fountain-Stokes is Associate Professor of American Culture, Romance Languages and Literatures, and Women’s Studies at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, and the former director of the Latina/o Studies Program. His books include Queer Ricans: Cultures and Sexualities in the Diaspora (2009) and Abolición del pato (2013).
Nancy Raquel Mirabal is Associate Professor of American Studies and the Director of the U.S. Latina/o Studies Program at the University of Maryland, College Park. Mirabal is the author of Suspect Freedoms: The Racial and Sexual Politics of Cubanidad in New York, 1823-1957; first editor of Technofuturos: Critical Interventions in Latina/o Studies and co-editor of Keywords for Latina/o Studies. Her publications have appeared in the Latino Studies Journal, The Public Historian, Cultural Dynamics, and Callaloo.
