So you all know the term "orientalism," right? Invented by Edward Said to indicate the western European set of ideas and images and metaphors and stories about the Middle East which supported formal and informal colonialism between the mid-nineteenth and the mid-twentieth century, right? A very handy term - once you know what it is, you start to ( Read more... )

I've been revising my lecture notes on Central America during the Cold War, and that brought Carolyn Forché to mind. So this is her poem, which I will put behind a cut-tag. You are warned: it's gory and upsetting. Like Central American history, actually.

( The Colonel )

So I know that an English-language translation of Beatriz Sarlo's Una modernidad periférica exists. I've assigned it in my graduate classes before, I'm pretty certain. It's just that I always tell them to read it in the original if they can and they always can. But this semester I have a student who can't read Spanish taking my seminar, and she ( Read more... )