This volume provides an innovative and timely approach to a fast growing, yet still under-studied field in Latin American cultural production: digital online culture. It focuses on the transformations or continuations that cultural products and practices such as hypermedia fictions, net.art and online performance art, as well as blogs, films, databases and other genre-defying web-based projects, perform with respect to Latin American(ist) discourses, as well as their often contestatory positioning with respect to Western hegemonic discourses as they circulate online. The intellectual rationale for the volume is located at the crossroads of two, equally important, theoretical strands: theories of digital culture, in their majority the product of the anglophone academy; and contemporary debates on Latin American identity and culture.

This volume explores one of the central issues that has been debated in internet studies in recent years: locality, and the extent to which cultural production online can be embedded in a specific place. The particular focus of the book is on the practices of net artists in Latin America, and how their work interrogates some of the central place-based concerns of Latin(o) American identity through their on- and offline cultural practice. Six particular works by artists of different countries in Latin America and within Latina/o communities in the US are studied in detail, with one each from Uruguay, Chile, Argentina, Colombia, the US-Mexico border, and the US. Each chapter explores how each artist represents place in their works, and, in particular how traditional place-based affiliations, or notions of territorial identity, end up reproduced, re-affirmed, or even transformed online. At the same time, the book explores how these net.artists make use of new media technologies to express alternative viewpoints about the locations they represent, and use the internet as a space for the recuperation of cultural memory.

This volume provides an innovative and timely approach to a fast growing, yet still under-studied field in Latin American cultural production: digital online culture. It focuses on the transformations or continuations that cultural products and practices such as hypermedia fictions, net.art and online performance art, as well as blogs, films, databases and other genre-defying web-based projects, perform with respect to Latin American(ist) discourses, as well as their often contestatory positioning with respect to Western hegemonic discourses as they circulate online. The intellectual rationale for the volume is located at the crossroads of two, equally important, theoretical strands: theories of digital culture, in their majority the product of the anglophone academy; and contemporary debates on Latin American identity and culture.

In this important new book Jorge Larrain examines the trajectories of modernity and identity in Latin America and their reciprocal relationships. Drawing on a large body of work across a vast historical and geographical range, he offers an innovative and wide-ranging account of the cultural transformations and processes of modernization that have occurred in Latin America since colonial times. The book begins with a theoretical discussion of the concepts of modernity and identity. In contrast to theories which present modernity and identity in Latin America as mutually excluding phenomena, the book shows their continuity and interconnection. It also traces historically the respects in which the Latin American trajectory to modernity differs from or converges with other trajectories, using this as a basis to explore specific elements of Latin America's culture and modernity today. The originality of Larrain's approach lies in the wide coverage and combination of sources drawn from the social sciences, history and literature. The volume relates social commentaries, literary works and media developments to the periods covered, to the changing social end economic structure, and to changes in the prevailing ideologies. This book will appeal to second and third-year undergraduates and Masters level students doing courses in sociology, cultural studies and Latin American history, politics and literature. .

A hemispheric view of the practice of digital humanities in the Spanish- and Portuguese-speaking Americas As digital media and technologies transform the study of the humanities around the world, this volume provides the first hemispheric view of the practice of digital humanities in the Spanish- and Portuguese-speaking Americas. These essays examine how participation and research in new media have helped configure identities and collectivities in the region. Featuring case studies from throughout Latin America, including the United States Latinx community, contributors analyze documentary films, television series, and social media to show how digital technologies create hybrid virtual spaces and facilitate connections across borders. They investigate how Latinx bloggers and online activists navigate governmental restrictions in order to connect with the global online community. These essays also incorporate perspectives of race, gender, and class that challenge the assumption that technology is a democratizing force. Digital Humanities in Latin America illuminates the cultural, political, and social implications of the ways Latinx communities engage with new technologies. In doing so, it connects digital humanities research taking place in Latin America with that of the Anglophone world. Contributors: Paul Alonso | Morgan Ames | Eduard Arriaga | Anita Say Chan | Ricardo Dominguez | Orlando Luis Pardo Lazo | Héctor Fernández L’Hoeste | Jennifer M. Lozano | Ana Lígia Silva Medeiros | Gimena del Río Riande | Juan Carlos Rodríguez | Isabel Galina Russell | Angharad Valdivia | Anastasia Valecce | Cristina Venegas A volume in the series Reframing Media, Technology, and Culture in Latin/o America, edited by Héctor Fernández L’Hoeste and Juan Carlos Rodríguez

Online Activism in Latin America examines the innovative ways in which Latin American citizens, and Latin@s in the U.S., use the Internet to advocate for causes that they consider just. The contributions to the volume analyze citizen-launched websites, interactive platforms, postings, and group initiatives that support a wide variety of causes, ranging from human rights to disability issues, indigenous groups’ struggles, environmental protection, art, poetry and activism, migrancy, and citizen participation in electoral and political processes. This collection bears witness to the early stages of a very unique and groundbreaking form of civil activism culture now growing in Latin America.

This volume explores one of the central issues that has been debated in internet studies in recent years: locality, and the extent to which cultural production online can be embedded in a specific place. The particular focus of the book is on the practices of net artists in Latin America, and how their work interrogates some of the central place-based concerns of Latin(o) American identity through their on- and offline cultural practice. Six particular works by artists of different countries in Latin America and within Latina/o communities in the US are studied in detail, with one each from Uruguay, Chile, Argentina, Colombia, the US-Mexico border, and the US. Each chapter explores how each artist represents place in their works, and, in particular how traditional place-based affiliations, or notions of territorial identity, end up reproduced, re-affirmed, or even transformed online. At the same time, the book explores how these net.artists make use of new media technologies to express alternative viewpoints about the locations they represent, and use the internet as a space for the recuperation of cultural memory.