Search results for ""Author Frances Negrón-Muntaner""

The year 1998 represents the hundredth anniversary of the U.S. invasion of Puerto Rico. Since that time, the “Puerto Rican archipelago” has come to extend from the island itself, up the Eastern seaboard, and as far west as California and Hawai’i. Puerto Rican Jam considers the issues unique to Puerto Rican culture and politics, issues often encapsulated in concerns about ethnicity, race, gender, and language. Discussions of Puerto Rican cultural politics usually fall into one of two categories, nationalist or colonialist. Puerto Rican Jam moves beyond this narrow dichotomy, elaborating alternatives to dominant postcolonial theories, and includes essays written from the perspectives of groups that are not usually represented, such as gays and lesbians, youth, blacks, and women. The essays propose different ways of conceptualizing the U.S.-Puerto Rican colonial relationship, thus opening new spaces for political, social, economic, and cultural agency for Puerto Ricans on both the island and the continent. Among the topics discussed are the limitations of nationalism as a transformative and democratizing political discourse, the contradictory impact of American colonialism, language politics, and the 1928 U.S. congressional hearings on women’s suffrage in Puerto Rico.A groundbreaking contribution to the study of colonialism, Puerto Rican Jam represents an important engagement with issues raised by American expansionism in the Caribbean. Contributors: Jaime E. Benson-Arias, U of Puerto Rico, Mayagüez; Arlene Dávila, Syracuse U; Chloé S. Georas, SUNY, Binghamton; Manuel Guzmán, CUNY Graduate Center; Gladys M. Jiménez-Muñoz, SUNY, Oneonta; Agustín Lao, SUNY, Binghamton; Yolanda Martínez-San Miguel, U of Puerto Rico; Mariano Négron-Portillo, U of Puerto Rico; José Quiroga, George Washington U; Raquel Z. Rivera, CUNY Graduate Center; Alberto Sandoval Sánchez, Mount Holyoke College; Kelvin A. Santiago-Valles, SUNY, Binghamton. Frances Negrón-Muntaner is a doctoral candidate in comparative literature at Rutgers University, as well as a poet and filmmaker. Ramón Grosfoguel is assistant professor of sociology at the State University of New York, Binghamton.

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Boricua Pop is the first book solely devoted to Puerto Rican visibility, cultural impact, and identity formation in the U.S. and at home. Frances Negrón-Muntaner explores everything from the beloved American musical West Side Story to the phenomenon of singer/actress/ fashion designer Jennifer Lopez, from the faux historical chronicle Seva to the creation of Puerto Rican Barbie, from novelist Rosario Ferré to performer Holly Woodlawn, and from painter provocateur Andy Warhol to the seemingly overnight success story of Ricky Martin. Negrón-Muntaner traces some of the many possible itineraries of exchange between American and Puerto Rican cultures, including the commodification of Puerto Rican cultural practices such as voguing, graffiti, and the Latinization of pop music. Drawing from literature, film, painting, and popular culture, and including both the normative and the odd, the canonized authors and the misfits, the island and its diaspora, Boricua Pop is a fascinating blend of low life and high culture: a highly original, challenging, and lucid new work by one of our most talented cultural critics.

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