Crime fiction written by women in Spain and Latin America since the late 1980s has been successful in shifting attention to crimes often overlooked by their male counterparts, such as rape and sexual battery, domestic violence, child pornography, pederasty, and incest. In the twenty-first century, social, economic, and political issues, including institutional corruption, class inequality, criminalized oppression of immigrant women, crass capitalist market forces, and mediatized political and religious bodies, have at their core a gendered dimension. The conventions of the original noir, or novela negra, genre have evolved, such that some women authors challenge the noir formulas by foregrounding gender concerns while others imagine new models of crime fiction that depart drastically from the old paradigms. This volume, highlighting such evolution in the crime fiction genre, will be of interest to students, teachers, and scholars of crime fiction in Latin America and Spain, to those interested in crime fiction by women, and to readers familiar with the sub-genres of crime fiction, which include noir, the thriller, the police procedural, and the “cozy” novel.

This collection of essays expands our understanding and appreciation of the body of work by established female authors of Spanish crime fiction series by analyzing recent narratives that, in some cases, contribute in novel ways to the ongoing reformulation of the genre and, in others, provide readers with a temporary hiatus from it. The studies offer students and scholars of crime fiction new perspectives on the works of well-known authors, as well as analyses of their often less-known narratives that may not fit within the genre. Readers will engage in an exploration of gender dynamics and sexuality, a variety of psychological and social issues, and the consequences of the indiscriminate consumption of media and abuse of the environment and animals in narratives that exhibit the versatility of these outstanding authors. The volume will appeal to a wide audience of literary and cultural studies critics, as well as crime fiction enthusiasts and newcomers to this popular genre.

With its focus on recent detective series featuring female investigators, this collection analyzes the authors’ treatment of current social, political and economic problems in Spain and beyond, in addition to exploring interrelations between gender, globalization, the environment and technology. The contributions here reveal the varied ways in which the use of a series allows for a deeper consideration of such issues, in addition to permitting the more extensive development of the protagonist investigator and her reactions to, and methods of, dealing with personal and professional challenges of the twenty-first century. In these stories, the authors employ strategies that break with long-standing conventions, developing crime fiction in unexpected ways, incorporating elements of science fiction, the supernatural, and the historical novel, as well as varied geographical settings (small towns, provincial cities, and rural communities) beyond the urban environment, all of which contributes to the reinvigoration of the genre.

This book examines postmodern parody in Latin American literature as the intersection between ideology construction and deconstruction. Parody’s chief task is to deconstruct and criticize the ideologies behind previous texts. During this process, new ideologies are inevitably constructed. However, postmodernism simultaneously recognizes the partiality of all ideologies and rejects their enthronement as absolute truth. This raises the question of how postmodern parody deals with the paradox inherent in its own existence on the threshold between ideology construction/deconstruction and the rejection of ideology. This book explores the relationship between parody and ideology, as well as this paradox of postmodern parody in works written by writers ranging from early twentieth-century poets to the most recent novel by the Nobel Prize-winning Mario Vargas Llosa. The analyses include such authors as Cristina Peri Rossi, Manuel Puig, Luisa Valenzuela, Enrique Sánchez, Roberto Bolaño, Claudia Piñeiro, Margarita Mateo Palmer, Boris Salazar and Rosario Ferré.

Offering in-depth analyses of fifteen different queer films from the Iberian Peninsula, this collection shows how a diverse group of filmmakers from regions including Catalonia, Portugal, Castile, Galicia, and the Basque Country have produced films that challenge the region's conservative religious values and gender norms, while intervening in vital debates about politics, history, and nation.

Chronicling sixteenth-century Spain to the present day, Beyond Human aims to decentre the human and acknowledge the material historicity of more-than-human nature. The book explores key questions relating to ecological equity, justice, and responsibility within and beyond Spain in the Anthropocene. Examining relations between Iberian cultural practices, historical developments, and ecological processes, Maryanne L. Leone, Shanna Lino, and the contributors to this volume reveal the structures that uphold and dismantle the non-human–human dichotomy and nature-culture divide. The book critiques works from the Golden Age to the twenty-first century in a wide range of genres, including comedia, royal treatises, agricultural reports, paintings, satirical essays, horror fiction and film, young adult and speculative literature, poetry, graphic novels, and television series. The authors contend that Spanish cultural studies must expose the material historicity that entangles today’s ecological crises and ecosocial injustices with previous, future, and contemporary entities. The book argues that this will require the simultaneous decentring of the human and of the Anthropocene as an ecocritical framework. By standardizing ecosocial analysis and widening avenues for ecopedagogical approaches, Beyond Human participates in the ecocentric transformation of Hispanic cultural studies.

For over two decades, Clues has included the best scholarship on mystery and detective fiction. With a combination of academic essays and nonfiction book reviews, it covers all aspects of mystery and detective fiction material in print, television and movies. As the only American scholarly journal on mystery fiction, Clues is essential reading for literature and film students and researchers; popular culture aficionados; librarians; and mystery authors, fans and critics around the globe.

Ethics, or the systematized set of inquiries and responses to the question “what should I do?” has infused the history of human narrative for more than two centuries. One of the foremost theorists of ethics during the twentieth century, Emmanuel Levinas (1906-1995) radicalized the discipline of philosophy by arguing that “the ethical” is the foundational moment for human subjectivity, and that human subjectivity underlies all of Western philosophy. Levinas’s voice is crucial to the resurging global attention to ethics because he grapples with the quintessential problem of alterity or “otherness,” which he conceptualizes as the articulation of, and prior responsibility to, difference in relation to the competing movement toward sameness. Academicians and journalists in Spain and abroad have recently fastened on an emerging cluster of peninsular writers who, they argue, pertain to a discernible literary generation, provisionally referred to as Generación X. These writers are distinct from their predecessors; they and their literary texts are closely related to the specific socio-political and historical circumstances in Spain and their novels relate stories of more and less proximity, more and less responsibility, and more and less temporality. In short, they trace the temporal movement of alterity through narrative. Published by Bucknell University Press. Distributed worldwide by Rutgers University Press.

Argentina Noir offers a guide to Argentine crime fiction, with a focus on works published since the year 2000. It argues that the novela negra, or crime novel, has become the favored genre for many writers to address the social malaise brought about by changes linked to globalization and market-driven economic policies. Cynthia Schmidt-Cruz presents close readings and original interpretations of eleven novels, all set in or around Buenos Aires, and explores the ways these texts adapt major motifs, figures, and literary techniques in Hispanic crime fiction in order to give voice to wide-ranging social critiques. Schmidt-Cruz addresses such topics as organized crime and institutional complicity, corruption during the presidency of Carlos Menem (1989–1999), terrorist attacks on Jewish institutions in Buenos Aires and the mysterious death of Alberto Nisman, and the winners and the losers of neoliberal structural changes. With a solid underpinning in sociological studies and criticism of the genre and its historical context, Argentina Noir reveals how these novels are renovating the genre to engage pressing issues confronting not only Argentina but also countries throughout Latin America and around the globe.

Teaching Gender through Latin American, Latino, and Iberian Texts and Cultures provides a dynamic exploration of the subject of teaching gender and feminism through the fundamental corpus encompassing Latin American, Iberian and Latino authors and cultures from the Middle Ages to the 21st century. The four editors have created a collaborative forum for both experienced and new voices to share multiple theoretical and practical approaches to the topic. The volume is the first to bring so many areas of study and perspectives together and will serve as a tool for reassessing what it means to teach gender in our fields while providing theoretical and concrete examples of pedagogical strategies, case studies relating to in-class experiences, and suggestions for approaching gender issues that readers can experiment with in their own classrooms. The book will engage students and educators around the topic of gender within the fields of Latin American, Latino and Iberian studies, Gender and Women’s studies, Cultural Studies, English, Education, Comparative Literature, Ethnic studies and Language and Culture for Specific Purposes within Higher Education programs. “Teaching Gender through Latin American, Latino, and Iberian Texts and Cultures makes a compelling case for the central role of feminist inquiry in higher education today ... Startlingly honest and deeply informed, the essays lead us through classroom experiences in a wide variety of institutional and disciplinary settings. Read together, these essays articulate a vision for twenty-first century feminist pedagogies that embrace a rich diversity of theory, methodology, and modality.” – Lisa Vollendorf, Professor of Spanish and Dean of Humanities and the Arts, San José State University. Author of The Lives of Women: A New History of Inquisitional Spain “What is it like to teach feminism and gender through Latin American, Iberian, and Latino texts? This rich collection of texts ... provides a series of insightful and exhaustive answers to this question ... An essential book for teachers of Latin American, Iberian and Latino/a texts, this volume will also spark new debates among scholars in Gender Studies.” – Mónica Szurmuk, Researcher at the National Scientific and Technical Research Council of Argentina. Author of Mujeres en viaje and co-editor of the Cambridge History of Latin American Women’s Literature