An exploration of the concept of utopia in Latin America from the earliest accounts of the New World to current cultural production, the carefully selected essays in this volume represent the latest research on the topic by some of the most important Latin Americanists working in North American academia today.

In an age in which fears about the future predominate (in the form of dystopias, ecological catastrophes, and terrifying Sci-Fi scenarios), utopia is reappearing as the bearer of hope for the fate of humanity. Latin America has historically been a fertile ground where utopian projects, movements, and experiments could take root and thrive, and this constitutes one of the region's major contributions to world history. Each of the thirteen authors who participate to this collective volume address a particular case or specific aspect of Latin American utopianism from colonial times to the present day. The relationship between utopia and America-Latin America in particular-has been a constant throughout the ages and helps to clarify both the concept of Utopia and of Latin America. The one cannot be understood without the other, from the book of Thomas More in 1516 to the present. Myths and legends of utopian content already proliferated at the time of the voyages of exploration, spurring on the conquistadors, while the knowledge gap about lands awaiting discovery was filled with stories about utopias. The America that the Spanish and Portuguese discovered became, from the sixteenth century onwards, a space in which it was possible to imagine the widest variety of forms of human coexistence. Utopias in Latin America reconsiders the sense and understanding of utopias in various historical frames: the discovery of indigenous cultures and their natural environments; the foundation of new towns and cities in a vast colonial territory considered as empty space in which it was possible to start afresh; the experimental communities of nineteenth-century utopian socialists and European exiled intellectuals; and the innovative formulae that attempts to get beyond twentieth-century capitalism. (Series: Sussex Latin American Studies) [Subject: Comparative Studies, History, Latin American Studies, Sociology]

The author examines the role of comedy in the novels of four key postmodern Spanish-American writers: Gustavo Sainz, Alfredo Bryce Echenique, Jaime Bayly and Fernando Vallejo.

Latin America has historically been a fertile ground where utopian projects, movements, and experiments could take root and thrive. Each of the thirteen authors in this collective volume address a particular case or specific aspect of Latin American utopianism from colonial times to the present day. The America that the Spanish and Portuguese discovered became, from the sixteenth century onwards, a space in which it was possible to imagine the widest variety of forms of human coexistence. Utopias in Latin America reconsiders the sense and understanding of utopias in various historical frames: the discovery of indigenous cultures and their natural environments; the foundation of new towns and cities in a vast colonial territory; the experimental communities of nineteenth-century utopian socialists and European exiled intellectuals; and the innovative formulae that attempts to get beyond twentieth-century capitalism.

In the twentieth century, avant-garde artists from Mexico, Central and South America, and the Caribbean created extraordinary and highly innovative paintings, sculptures, assemblages, mixed-media works, and installations. This innovative book presents more than 250 works by some seventy of these artists (including Gego, Joaquin Torres-Garcia, Xul Solar, and Jose Clemente Orozco) and artists' groups, along with interpretive essays by leading authorities and newly translated manifestoes and other theoretical documents written by the artists. Together the images and texts showcase the astonishing artistic achievements of the Latin American avant-garde. The book focuses on two decisive periods: the return from Europe in the 1920s of Latin American avant-garde pioneers; and the expansion of avant-garde activities throughout Latin America after World War II as artists expressed their independence from developments in Europe and the United States. As the authors explain, during these periods Latin American art was fueled by the belief that artistic creations could present a form of utopia - an inversion of the original premise that drove the European avant-garde - and serve as a model for

This book offers an innovative examination of the utopian impulse through performance as a proposition of practical engagement in the contemporary Americas. The volume compiles unique multidisciplinary and exploratory texts, applying diverse critical and artistic approaches. Its contributors reconceptualize utopia as a creative and theoretical method based on a commitment to sociopolitical transformation. Chapters are organized around notions of mapping utopias, indigenizing practices, political manifestations, and the construction of social identities.

Utopia and the Dialectic in Latin American Liberation examines the concept of utopia in Latin American thought and practice, and asks where there is a resonance with the dialectic as Hegel developed it. Within this context, emancipatory Latin American social movements are discussed.