Publications
The Institute for the Study of the Americas publishes in the disciplines of history, politics, economics, sociology, anthropology, geography and environment, development, culture and literature, and on the countries and regions of Latin America, the United States, Canada and the Caribbean.
As well as its in-house series, the Institute also pubishes a Lecture Series featuring key speakers at the Institute, and edits the 'Studies of the Americas' series published by Palgrave Macmillan.
See below for a list of new and forthcoming titles. All titles can be searched or browsed by author, title, discipline or keyword using the 'search for a title' button.
The majority of publications may be ordered through the Institute (via the order form at left) or from Amazon. A link to the relevant Amazon purchase page is available through the publications search function.
The Institute welcomes publication proposals on relevant topics, and is particularly interested in exploring co-publication opportunities.
See also the ISA Staff pages for details about staff publications.
Caribbean
Literature After Independence. The Case of Earl Lovelace
edited by Bill Schwarz
Trinidad, historically located at the crossroads of the Americas, has produced
an incomparable national literature, fashioning literary genres that have
informed the Caribbean region as a whole. One of the greatest contemporary
Trinidadian writers is Earl Lovelace, whose novelistic performative epics
combine the rhythms of steelband and calypso with the narrative complexity
of Faulkner. Lovelace was an early enthusiast for Black Power and remains
an indefatigable critic of the inequalities bequeathed by the post-Independence
state. Embracing an aesthetic which seeks out the darkness of the nation
– the traces of Africa, the passions of the black dispossessed, the
liturgies of the Shouter churches – he strives to imagine a society
which might at last break free from its colonial past, dramatizing the political
and psychic struggles of the poor for selfhood. Forthcoming March 2008. More details
America's
Americans: Population Issues in U.S. Society and Politics
edited by Philip Davies and Iwan Morgan
This book examines the social, cultural, economic and political effects
of modern demographic change in the United States. The specialist contributors
from the US and the UK draw on new research to analyse a wide range of issues
pertaining to the diversity of American society. Among the subjects considered
in this study are: Latino immigrant incorporation; racial and ethnic integration
in metropolitan contexts; population and self-determination issues pertaining
to Native Americans; public policy issues relating to immigration; the growth
of the US prison population; the changing nature of poverty in the US; the
politics of demographic and social change at national and local levels;
and the historical change in the labor force participation of women.
More details
Cultures
of the Lusophone Black Atlantic
edited by Nancy Priscilla Naro, Roger Sansi-Roca and David H. Treece
This book addresses the Lusophone Black Atlantic as a space of historical
and cultural production between Portugal, Brazil, and Africa. The authors
demonstrate how this space is not just the result of the imposition of a
Portuguese imperial project, but that it has been shaped by diverse colonial
cultures. The Lusophone context offers a unique perspective on the history
of the Atlantic.
More details
The Role of Mexico's Plural in Latin American Literary and Political
Culture
by John King
The Mexican magazine Plural (1971-1976) is a privileged vantage
point from which to assess the developments that transformed Mexican and
Latin American literary and political culture in the 1970s. Edited by the
Nobel prize winner Octavio Paz at a time in which he was reassessing his
political and nationalistic commitments, it featured the editorial partnership
of a heterogeneous group of Mexican writers. The book offers a detailed
analysis of a vitally important moment in Mexican cultural and political
history, in the aftermath of the 1968 massacre of students in Tlatelolco,
Mexico City, at a time when a new president was seeking to repair the fractured
relationship between intellectuals and the state. The most important figure
in the magazine was its editor Octavio Paz and the study offers a fresh
interpretation of the development of his political thought and artistic
concerns in arguably the most vital and productive period of his life.
More details
Democratization, Development, and Legality. Chile ,
1831-1973
by Julio Faundez
This book traces the evolution of Chilean political and legal institutions
by looking at the process of democratization. As well as explaining the
strengths and weaknesses of the political regime, Faundez shows the impact
of legal institutions and legal ideology on the country's political development.
More details
The Hispanic World and American Intellectual Life, 1820-1880
by Ivn Jaksic
This book examines why several American literary and intellectual icons
found themselves to be pioneering scholars and lifelong students of the
Hispanic world. The author asserts that these gifted Americans focused on
the Hispanic world that they might shape their own countrys identity after
Independence and the War 1812, a crucial time for the young republic, and
that they found inspiration in a most unlikely place: the seat of the collapsing
Spanish empire.
More details
Football in the Americas: Ftbol, Futebol, Soccer
edited by Rory Miller and Liz Crolley
Football (soccer) has a long history in the Americas, but currently displays
many signs of crisis. In South America the combination of spectator violence,
poor business management, and the emigration of players is undermining professional
football. In the United States, in contrast, a professional league (Major
League Soccer) has taken root in the last decade, and the US womens team
has gained international success. Football has always provided its players
and its fans with identity and belonging, whether to the nation or to a
particular social group. It has been both a vehicle for the politically
ambitious and an arena in which citizens can make sense of national failings
and contest existing power structures. This volume explores many of these
themes. The fifteen essays range widely, with theoretical and empirical
contributions on the region as whole, as well as chapters specifically on
Argentina, Brazil, Peru, Mexico, and the United States.
More details
Bolivia: Revolution and the Power of History in the
Present. Essays
James Dunkerley
This volume brings together essays written over three decades on Bolivian
history and politics. Opening with a contemporary survey of the new government
of the MAS headed by Evo Morales, the chapters here review the neo-liberal
experiments of the 1980s and 1990s, the strategic and intellectual failures
of Che Guevaras guerrilla foco, the origins of the Revolution
of 1952, explanations for the dominance of the caudillos of the
19th century, and the extraordinary story of Francisco Burdett OConnor,
whose life combined liberation struggles on both sides of the Atlantic.
More details
American Civilization
Charles A. Jones
Far from being exceptional, the United States is the most American of nations,
sharing with its neighbors to the south an aspiration to realize liberalism
in a racialized society and distinguished from them chiefly by the greater
material capabilities it has been able to apply to this historic task. Sometimes
regarded as Western, the United States is separated from Western Europe
by distinctive levels and styles of religiosity, public violence, respect
for law and concern with materiality that, far from constituting a claim
to exceptionality, bind it firmly to the rest of the hemisphere, from which
it was separated only by the strange accident of historiography that created
a separate Latin America little more than a century ago. This book looks
forward to a truly American century.
More details
See other titles in the 'Studies of the Americas series with Palgrave Macmillan
Contesting Clio’s Craft: New Directions and Debates in Canadian History
Christopher Dummitt and Michael Dawson (eds.)
This book highlights the work of nine early career scholars who offer innovative thoughts on present and future approaches to the study of the Canadian past. Moving beyond the debates over political vs social history that have dominated the field since the 1970s, the essays in this collection suggest novel questions and approaches while delving into recently overlooked subjects.There is a particular emphasis here on international, transnational and comparative approaches to the past. Essays cover such topics as the Atlantic World, oral history, postcolonialism, public history,historical periodisation, Canada's place in the British Empire, French-English relations, as well as the art of history as a discipline and practice. A "must read" for Canadian historians, the book will also appeal to international scholars interested in these issues and curious about the contribution that Canadian history can make to the broader history of the Americas. Forthcoming Summer 2008.
The Contemporary Canadian Metropolis, Richard Dennis,
Ceri Morgan and Stephen Shaw (eds.)
Including contributions from established Canadian and British researchers and new scholars, this series of essays combines social science, architectural and cultural studies perspectives on the analysis of contemporary change in major Canadian cities, exploring connections and tensions between diversity and multiculturalism on the one hand and economic change, creativity and urban regeneration on the other.
Latin London: The Lives of Latin American Migrants in the Capital, Cathy McIlwaine
Joaquim Nabuco and the English Abolitionists: Correspondence 1880-1905, Leslie Bethell and Jose Murilo de Carvalho (eds.)
Essays, Malcolm Deas
In this series ISA publishes selected seminar and conference papers, and public lectures, delivered at the Institute or elsewhere by Institute staff or associates. See the expanded list.
Conversa de malandro or Brazilian jive talk: music, language, community, Lecture Paper no. 8, by David Treece
Party and Non-Party Actors in Latin American Electoral Politics, Lecture Paper no. 7, by Roberto Espndola (2007)
Nationalism
Unbecoming: George W. Bush, War and the American Democratic Tradition
(no. 6) by Richard Crockatt (2007)
London
and Latin America: 200 Years of Shared History
(no. 5) by James Dunkerley (2007)
Americas
Plural: Old Wine in New Bottles?
(no. 4) by James Dunkerley
'Our
people are paralyzed for want of leadership': Abraham Lincoln, Jefferson
Davis and the American Civil War
(no. 3) by Richard Carwardine
The
Hispanic World in the Historical Imagination
(no. 2) by Fernando Cervantes
Mexican
Foreign Policy at the Turn of the Century
(no. 1) by Ana Covarrubias