This collection of essays that, with one exception, were digitally published in the fall of 2009 in a special edition of the journal A Contracorriente sets out to bridge the disciplinary boundaries that have kept historians, literary scholars, and cultural critics of nineteenth-century Latin America largely isolated from each other. Ana Peluffo’s introduction and Graciela Montaldo’s contribution are sequenced well, together providing a valuable overview of the ways scholars have discovered the heterogeneous gendered dimensions of Benedict Anderson’s Imagined Communities (1983), explored a polyvalent eroticism that goes beyond Doris Sommer’s Foundational Fictions (1991), feminized the canon, and deepened our readings of transcultural narratives, all the while disrupting the comfortable binaries that have shaped our reading of the period. An elite-popular culture conflict distinctive of the nineteenth century resulted in archival blinders that have made studying the period’s popular culture a major challenge. William G. Acree Jr.’s call to seek out...

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