Long recognized and highly respected as a key figure whose scholarship in Latin American literary criticism, popular culture, and cultural politics has helped to shape the field of Latin American studies as we know it today, Jean Franco is the author of several major books that are an important and essential component of any serious Latin Americanist’s library. However, until 1999, her many scholarly articles, however, remained scattered among various periodicals and journals throughout Latin America, the United States, and Europe until 1999.
In Critical Passions, Mary Louise Pratt and Kathleen Newman have for the first time collected (and translated from Spanish to English when necessary) in one single volume, 32 essays Franco published between 1971 and 1997. Rather than merely listing the articles, the editors have grouped them into four interrelated categories: feminism and the critique of authoritarianism (part 1); mass and popular culture (part 2); Latin American...