Author's Profile: Sophia A. McClennen <http://lilt.ilstu.edu/smexpos/> teaches Spanish and Latin American cultural studies in the Department of Foreign Languages at Illinois State University where she is also affiliated with the Program in Women's Studies. Her first book, The Dialectics of Exile: Nation, Time, Language, and Space in Hispanic Literatures, a comparative study of exile literature from Spain and Latin America, is forthcoming from Purdue University Press in the series Books in Comparative Cultural Studies in 2003. Her second book, Ariel Dorfman: An Aesthetics of Hope, is forthcoming from Duke University Press also in 2003. McClennen has published widely on comparative cultural studies and Latin America in journals such as Revista de estudios hispánicos (2002), The Review of Contemporary Fiction (2000), Cultural Logic (2000), Mediations (1999), and CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture (2000). McClennen serves on the advisory board of CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture and she has received recently a Fulbright grant to conduct research for a comparative study of gender and politics in Latin American cinema. E-mail: <smexpos@ilstu.edu>.

Comparative Literature and Latin American Studies: From Disarticulation to Dialogue

1. Because of the sheer breadth of these fields and because of their complex histories, any investigation into the critical intersection between Latin American Studies, cultural studies, and comparative literature must by necessity be partial, provisional, and heuristic. Such a project, imperfect as it must be, is worth undertaking today for a number of reasons. First, the recent revisions and reconfigurations of these fields suggest significant potential for critical collaboration. Second, understanding the intersections between these scholarly areas of inquiry helps overcome the pitfalls of disciplinary insularity. While the overlapping of these three areas is noteworthy in much scholarly work (for instance, "culture" is often favored over literature, demonstrating ways that cultural studies has affected both Latin American studies and comparative literature; or Latin America figures more prominently in comparative literature and cultural studies), without paying careful attention to the implications of such disciplinary promiscuity, these changes run the risk of failing to alter the traditions they seek to challenge. My third reason relates to the threatened state of humanities scholarship in US universities: if the humanities are to survive, then we must find a way to strengthen the ties across humanistic disciplines and also between the humanities and the social sciences. Collaborative scholarship and intellectual exchange will help challenge the academic division of labor that threatens the future of the humanities. What I am proposing, then, might be usefully applied to other cross-disciplinary collaborative frameworks.

2. Before beginning an overview of the current state of these fields, I would like to clarify my range of focus. The arguments that follow relate specifically to the case of Latin Americanists who study the literary, intellectual and cultural production of the region, leaving aside for the purposes of this study those who work in the social sciences. My principal interest is in tracing the historic disarticulation between humanistic studies of Latin America and the traditional practice of comparative literature while paying attention to the ways that cultural studies has influenced contemporary practice in both areas. The changing shape of these fields suggests that this is an opportune moment to investigate the role of Latin America in comparative literary and cultural studies. If we use the 2001 MLA Job List as an indicator of shifts in disciplinary configurations, we find many more positions in comparative literature for scholars working on non-Western cultures and Latin America than jobs requesting specialization in Europe or the United States. Moreover, job announcements for Latin Americanists increasingly emphasize desiderata in cultural studies and cross-cultural analysis. They also favor "generalists" with knowledge of a vast array of national cultures over scholars who focus on the culture of only one nation. A significant number of jobs request Latin Americanists who work in Inter-American Studies or Transatlantic Studies. According to the academic market, comparative approaches, cultural studies and Latin America make sense together. Román de la Campa has noted the increasing prominence of Latin Americanism in US research universities, and he points out that Latin American, Hispanic and Latino Studies continue to be central areas of growth in the nation's top research institutions, attracting both research dollars and students. He explains, in the introduction to his book Latin Americanism, that "current critical debates about gender representations, theoretical shifts, modes of periodization, and new comparative frameworks -- indeed, all the paradigms brought to bear on canonical literatures within the Euro-American academy -- now incorporate Latin American literature without exception" (1; my emphasis).

3. The comparative study of Latin America is further strengthened by a number of scholarly projects that overlap in comparative literature, cultural studies, and Latin American studies. A significant growth area in comparative approaches to Latin America is in Inter-American studies. In 2000 Djelal Kadir convened twenty-two scholars who founded the International American Studies Association, which will promote interdisciplinary dialogues about American culture and society, within the international scholarly community <http://iasa.la.psu.edu/charter.html>. Kadir is also editing a special issue of PMLA on America: The Idea, The Literature and he asks: "How has the idea of America been defined, appropriated, embodied, incorporated, and used for literary ends?" <http://www.acla.org/opps_ann_upark.html>. Earl E. Fitz's annotated bibliography on Inter-American Literature and Criticism online provides a rich resource for scholars working in this area <http://www.uiowa.edu/uiowapress/interamerican/>. In 2001, CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture published a special issue: Intercultural Negotiations in the Americas and Beyond, edited by Barbara Buchenau and Marietta Messmer with a number of articles by European scholars who work in Inter-American studies <http://clcwebjournal.lib.purdue.edu/clcweb01-2/contents01-2.html>. In addition to Inter-American studies, Transatlantic studies is a further cross-regional angle of comparison that has been gathering increased scholarly attention. A key center for this research is the Transatlantic project on cultural interactions between Europe, Latin America, and the United States organized and initiated by Julio Ortega and hosted by Brown University <http://www.brown.edu/Departments/Hispanic_Studies/Juliortega/Transatlantic.htm>. Treating Latin America as a region that requires the use of comparative methods, Mario J. Valdés and Kadir co-edited the Oxford Comparative History of Latin American Literary Cultures. According to the editors, the three-volume set "explore[s] a group of contingent, shifting problems which have arisen across national borders, geographic regions, time periods, linguistic systems, cultural traditions -- and which, therefore, must be treated comparatively" <http://www.chass.utoronto.ca/lithist/latin.html> (see also Valdés at <http://clcwebjournal.lib.purdue.edu/clcweb02-2/valdes02.html>. In 1998 Revista Iberoamericana published a special issue on O Brasil, a América Hispânica e o Caribe: Abordagens Comparativas (see Costigan and Bernucci), which includes articles by well-known Latin American comparatists like Tânia Franco Carvalhal, who works in Brazil  (see at <http://www.pitt.edu/~iili/lastri.html>). The journal issue focused on comparative approaches to studying Latin America, which emanate from the specific cultural context of the region. Richard Slatta, a Latin American historian, has recently called for greater use of comparative methods in studying frontier history and is editing a special issue of the Journal of the West. These examples demonstrate three key areas of comparative work on Latin America -- Inter-American, Transatlantic and Inter-Latin American -- and they represent only a sampling of recent scholarly endeavors that bridge comparative approaches and the study of Latin American culture.

4. These academic initiatives have been accompanied by structural changes to university organization in addition to adaptations in institutional priorities, which reflect greater dialogue between cultural studies, comparative literature and Latin American studies. In the Spring of 2001, Princeton created a new Department of Spanish and Portuguese Languages and Cultures indicating "that the department will enrich its curriculum with an increasing attention to the extraordinary plurality of high and popular cultures found in the Spanish- and Portuguese-speaking world" <http://www.princeton.edu/~spo/>. Other departments, like SUNY Albany's Languages, Literatures and Cultures <http://www.albany.edu/llc/>, have changed their names to reflect greater interest in culture. Additionally, numerous departments have dropped Languages and Literatures from their titles, designating themselves as departments of Romance Studies, as in the case of Duke <http://www.duke.edu/web/romance/>. Not only do we find changes in the names and foci of departments of foreign languages that teach Latin American literature and culture; departments of comparative literature have also been restructured to emphasize an interest in culture. The University of Minnesota's program in comparative literature is in the Department of Cultural Studies and Comparative Literature and includes a recently added major in Cinema and Media Culture <http://cscl.cla.umn.edu/>. The University of Pennsylvania's Department of Comparative Literature and Literary Theory offers an undergraduate major in comparative literature, culture, and theory <http://ccat.sas.upenn.edu/Complit/index.html>. Ohio State's Department of Comparative Studies offers undergraduate and graduate degrees that encourage "comparative perspectives on a wide range of cultural and historical discourses and practices: literary, aesthetic, folkloric, technological, scientific, religious, political, material" <http://comp-studies.ohio-state.edu/>. One of their specific areas of interest is in Latin American and Latino Studies. There are also a few programs that take a comparative and interdisciplinary approach to area studies. Duke University offers a major in Comparative Area Studies to students "interested in the interdisciplinary study of societies and cultures of a particular region of the world, complemented with a concentration in a second world area and comparative study of international issues" <http://www.duke.edu/web/CAS/>. One of their central regions of study is Latin America. Perhaps the program which signals the most innovative bridge between area studies and comparative literature is Columbia University's Center for Comparative Literature and Society <http://www.columbia.edu/cu/ccls/>, which was founded in 1998 "to promote a global perspective in the study of literature, culture and its social context" (see <http://www.columbia.edu/cu/ccls/>). The Center includes faculty and programs formerly affiliated with comparative literature, in addition to faculty from other disciplines: "we bring a literature-focused study of language and culture to the area studies as they rethink their mandate; and, conversely, we try to give substance and recognition to those directions in comparative literature that can benefit from the breadth of knowledge produced by a reshaped area studies." The Center acknowledges the need to innovate both area studies and comparative literature, while also recognizing the ways that both fields can productively engage in scholarly dialogue and exchange.

5. Despite these exciting developments, it remains the case that Latin America has historically been marginalized in comparative literary studies and dialogue between the fields has been minimal. Even though scholarship on Latin American literature has steadily risen since the 1960s, articles treating the region rarely appear in the most respected, traditional journals of comparative literary study. For instance, a five-year sample (from 1996-2000) of the comparative literature issue of MLN yielded only one article on a Latin American author. Surveys of well-respected comparative literature journals, such as Comparative Literature and Comparative Literature Studies, from the same time frame also produced few examples of comparative literary approaches to Latin American texts (recently, the fall 2001 issue of Comparative Literature on "Globalization and the Humanities" includes an article by Román de la Campa on the complexities of Latin American and Latino identities). Alternatively, students of Latin American literature and culture in Ph.D. programs are routinely expected to be familiar with the literary production of, at minimum, eight nations (and often as many as twenty) and many programs require students to study both Spain and Latin America, yet these students are rarely, if ever, expected to be familiar with comparative methods. As I will explain shortly, the lack of familiarity with comparative methods, especially those that treat the intersections between national cultural developments and those that cross national borders, weakens graduate student preparation and scholarship in Latin American literary/cultural studies. So, just as traditional comparative literature has often ignored Latin American culture, comparative methods and approaches have been virtually absent from curricular requirements in Latin American literature programs.

6. Susan Bassnett states that "comparative literature in one sense is dead" (47), Roberto González Echevarría asks whether "Comparative Literature as a discipline has survived" (see at <http://clcwebjournal.lib.purdue.edu/clcweb02-2/gonzalez-echevarria02.html>) and Steven Totosy calls directly for comparative literature to move towards comparative cultural studies (see at <http://clcwebjournal.lib.purdue.edu/clcweb99-3/totosy99.html>). Clearly, the comparative literature programs of the 1960s and 1970s have undergone significant revision and transformation. These changes were formally recognized in "The Bernheimer Report on Professional Standards" written for the ACLA in 1993, which called for a move away from Eurocentrism and an exclusive focus on the literary (see Bernheimer et al. <http://www.umass.edu/complit/aclanet/Bernheim.html>). In the introduction to the report Charles Bernheimer and his colleagues provide a brief evolution of the discipline in the US and they outline the major arguments of the two previous ACLA reports on standards: The Levin Report (1965, see at <http://www.umass.edu/complit/aclanet/Levin.html>) and the Greene Report (1976, see at <http://www.umass.edu/complit/aclanet/Green.html>). One of their key observations is that there has long been a disconnection between certain elitist notions of comparative literature and the actual practice of the discipline: "The anxieties about change articulated in the Greene report suggest that, already in 1976, the field was coming to look disturbingly foreign to some of its eminent authorities" (Bernheimer et al. <http://www.umass.edu/complit/aclanet/Bernheim.html>). In the introduction to Bernheimer's edited volume published in hard copy, which includes his report and a number of responses to it, Bernheimer suggests that comparative literature has been plagued perennially by anxiety over change, over defining comparison, over finding a common methodology, over selecting objects of study, etc. These "anxieties of comparison" make it extremely difficult to define the theory and practice of comparative literature (1-3). In fact, many have argued that the one defining characteristic of comparative literature is that it escapes definition. Notwithstanding, the scholarly positions taken in the volume, according to Bernheimer, clearly present two main camps. One the one side are those scholars who worry about the departure from the literary and are troubled by too much attention to historical and cultural context: "These critics argue that the work of comparison involves first and foremost a reflection on the aesthetic phenomenon of literariness in a cross-national context" (10). On the other side are those critics who support the arguments of the Bernheimer report, which calls for a multicultural studies perspective and a rejection of the discipline's historic Eurocentrism. Those who hold the latter position also accept the inherent "messiness" or "disorder" of comparison and contrast those scholars who are incessantly concerned with defining and containing the practice of comparative work. Clearly, the Bernheimer report was and still is quite polemical. What is most significant for those of us who engage in comparative study of culture from Latin America is that the Bernheimer report, appearing as the ACLA Report on Professional Standards, signifies an official articulation of a new phase of comparative studies. This new era, the "age of multiculturalism", where work is more global in perspective and more contextual in method, is, as I will argue, not new for many Latin Americanists. What is new, though, is the fact that the former margins now occupy a more visibly central space in the field.

7. As the study of comparative literature moves towards the study of culture in all of its forms as it appears all across the globe, it coincides with a similar trend in Latin Americanism. Scholars of the region have also shifted focus from the "great books" to culture and they increasingly consider Latin America in a global context (see Beverley; De la Campa; Larsen; Mignolo; Moreiras). John Beverley argues in favor of the subaltern studies approach to Latin American culture, since such an approach allows us to understand relations of power and how they are represented (Subalternity 1). In order to do this, though, we have to take a global perspective: "This critique cannot itself be contained within the territorial space the idea of Latin America designates" (3). His earlier book, Against Literature, specifically pointed to the need to abandon the "high" literature of Latin America and replace it with cultural texts produced from the margins. Such practices, perhaps best exemplified by scholarly interest in the testimonial, highlight a move from literary to cultural study (see Gugelberger). Graduate reading lists include, now more than ever, previously excluded literary and cultural forms -- like the testimonial, women's writing and film -- uneasily balanced with the traditional "canon." De la Campa suggests that, in addition to our
attention to new cultural forms, new methods are also necessary. Referring to the attention paid to the testimonial, he states: "What is still missing from the debate, in my view, is a comparative analysis, with perhaps some empirical work on reader reception, of how Rigoberta Menchú is read in different parts of Latin America itself" (Latin Americanism 23; see De la Campa 2002 also at <http://clcwebjournal.lib.purdue.edu/clcweb02-2/delacampa02.html>. As a further example, Neil Larsen's Reading North by South considers the ways that Latin American texts have been read and consumed by the US Academy. Alberto Moreiras's The Exhaustion of Difference argues for a radical deconstruction of Latin American studies by pointing to the epistemic systems and global developments that have shaped the field. Our attention is increasingly drawn to the ways that Latin American culture is affected by globalization and transnationalism. Latin Americanists have a long history of considering global relations of power as they play out on cultural terrain. Colonialism and neo-colonialism, exile and immigration, national sovereignty and foreign intervention have frequently been at the center of debates about Latin American cultural developments. Even so, subaltern and post-colonial studies as well as calls for comparative studies of globalization point to new critical epistemologies that have been used to frame extra-territorial considerations of Latin American culture.

8. In considering the interactions between Latin American studies and comparative literature, it is worth noting that the field of comparative literature is especially vibrant in Latin America. Long-standing programs, such as the Program in Literary Theory and Comparative Literature (founded in 1961 at the University of Saõ Paulo in Brazil) or ABRALIC: Brazil Comparative Literature Association (founded in 1985) are now accompanied by newer programs like the Association of Comparative Literature in Argentina established in 1992 (see Franco Carvalhal; Dornheim; Nitrini). Sandra Nitrini provides a history of comparative literature in Brazil in her article "Teoria literária e literatura comparada" (see at <http://www.usp.br/iea/revista/>). In Mexico, the Universidad Autónoma de México (UNAM) has had a graduate program in comparative literature dating back to 1989 <http://www.filos.unam.mx/POSGRADO/programa/letras.htm#1.2>. Bassnett explains that, simultaneous to a crisis of comparative literature in the West, the field has witnessed significant growth and development outside of Europe and the United States (see also Totosy for more on the development of comparative literature programs outside of the traditional US, French, and German centers, at <http://clcwebjournal.lib.purdue.edu/clcweb99-3/totosy99.html>). These programs tend to approach the study of comparative literature from a position that links questions of national identity and those of cultural value (Bassnett 9). Such post-colonial approaches stress "the politicization of literature and [reject] the formalist approach completely" (Bassnett 37). The affinities between this approach and the position of the Bernheimer Report should be obvious. Bassnett explains that Comparative Literature as it is practiced outside of its traditional center is a "political activity, part of a process of reconstructing and reasserting cultural and national identity in the post-colonial period" (Bassnett 39). Even though her comments here refer to the work of the Indian Comparative Literature Association, I believe that they are also applicable to comparative literature in Latin America. Zulma Palermo argues in her survey of comparativism in Argentina that comparative literature as it is presently practiced in Latin America can enable a reconsideration of a number of institutional paradigms which have affected the way that the region "conceives itself in these times of economic and commercial globalization, times when the peripheral societies return to a problematicization of their autonomy and identity from an 'alternative' theoretical position" (Palermo 212). Lisa Block de Behar recounts the history of comparative literature in Uruguay and she emphasizes the ways that Uruguayan literary study, beginning with the work of Carlos Real de Azúa at the end of the nineteenth century, has always depended on comparative methods. After many years of hard work, she was able in 1988 to host a Latin American comparative literature seminar, which led to the founding of AULICO: Uruguayan Association of Comparative Literature. The work of these Latin American scholars in comparative literature and the proliferation of programs, associations, and seminars dedicated to the topic adds a key dimension to our consideration of the connections between Latin America and comparative cultural study.

9. The strength of comparative approaches in Latin America, however, does not necessarily translate into the practice of Latin Americanism in the US. The exchange and interaction between Latin American scholars of Latin America and those in the US has a history of conflict and tension, as well as collaboration and dialogue. Moreiras attended the 1996 ABRALIC conference and he relates that the conference was fraught with divisions between advocates of literary studies and cultural studies, where cultural studies was considered to be a hegemonic approach imposed from an imperial center (6-8). Consequently, the growth of these programs should be read in the context of their complex intellectual terrain.

10. It seems clear, then, that these fields are in an important transition phase and that this is a moment of heightened critical intersection between them. I believe that greater interaction will strengthen the scholarship and training of Latin Americanists and comparatists provided that we are mindful of the historical marginalization of Latin America from comparative literature. Even though comparative study is in a process of change, many comparatists, especially Latin Americanists, are wary of associating themselves with the field because of its traditional legacy. This isolation was highlighted in the Bernheimer Report: "In this unstable and rapidly evolving socio-cultural environment, many of the scholars involved in rethinking the field of comparison have an increasingly uneasy relation to the practices called 'Comparative Literature.' They feel alienated because of the continued association of these practices, intellectually and institutionally, with standards that construct a discipline almost unrecognizable in the light of their actual methods and interests" (<http://www.umass.edu/complit/aclanet/Bernheim.html>). Such alienation and disaffection has led many scholars to pointedly deny any affiliation with comparative literature, despite the fact that their work often bears key identifying characteristics of comparative methods. For instance, a number of scholars I contacted in relation to this current project and whose work I considered exemplary patently rejected the idea that they worked in comparative literature and the following analysis outlines the well-founded skepticism towards comparative literature held by a number of Latin Americanists. After explaining briefly some of the central reasons why some Latin Americanists disregard comparative literature, I focus on a number of key areas where greater dialogue would benefit scholars working in these fields.

Comparative Literature's US-Eurocentrism

11. The US-Eurocentric history of comparative literature is well known and well documented (see, e.g., Bassnett; Chevrel;  Totosy <http://clcwebjournal.lib.purdue.edu/clcweb99-3/totosy99.html>). From C.L. Wrenn's statement in 1967 that the "only proper object of study for comparatists ... is 'European languages medieval or modern'" (Bassnett 20) to Henry Gifford's comment in 1969 that "whole continents are becoming articulate -- South America yesterday, Africa today" (78), comparative literature has a long history of dismissing the culture of the "peripheries" as unworthy of study. When we combine the traditional Eurocentrism of comparative literature with its early emphasis on major authors, great books and universal literature, i.e., the highest of high culture, we find the combination of elitism and cultural imperialism that has contributed to the stereotype of comparative literature as fundamentally incompatible with the study of post-colonial cultures, such as that of Latin America. It is worth considering the extent to which such problems over the privileging of US and European culture are more about comparative practices than comparative methods. As early as 1969 Owen Aldridge registered the critique of comparative literature's equation of World Literature with Western Literature: "These objections are valid, but they should be applied only to inadequate applications of the theory of world literature rather than the principle itself" (2-3). Certainly, Aldridge is raising a contentious point, since many scholars specifically consider the study of European literature to be at the heart of comparative methods. For Latin Americanists, Eurocentrism is not a problem limited to primary sources. Not only do we note the bias against "peripheral literatures" as objects of study, but we also object to the imprudent use of European/US theory as the sole critical base for understanding Latin American culture. Traditional comparative literature studies texts from Europe and the US and it has historically taught methods and theories that emanate solely from these areas as well.

The Cultural Colonization of Latin America

12. Comparative Literature has been repeatedly associated with cultural colonization. Arguments about universal literature, literary value, great books, master writers, etc., all serve to create cultural hierarchies, where texts from the US and Europe inevitably rise to the top (see Bassnett; González Echevarría <http://clcwebjournal.lib.purdue.edu/clcweb02-2/gonzalez-echevarria02.html>; Totosy <http://clcwebjournal.lib.purdue.edu/clcweb99-3/totosy99.html>). Bassnett explains that the question of universal value, at the heart of much work in comparative literature, reveals the colonialist viewpoint of many early comparatists (19). In this sense, the quest for literary universals and the desire to define World Literature (both common principles to traditional comparative literature) are gestures that only serve to reinforce cultural hegemony when the criteria for assessment always derive from a US-Eurocentric center. This critique of comparative literature moves beyond the issue of practice to method, since the comparative method of seeking compatible objects of study often implies assumptions about cultural value. As a consequence, canonized writers from the "peripheries" are often read in ways that either strip them of their cultural context or that consider their cultural context as a marker of lesser literary value. Such practices reveal the cultural colonialism of traditional comparative literature. Bassnett argues that: "Cultural colonialism was also a form of comparative literature, in that writers were imported by the colonizing group and native writers were evaluated negatively in comparison" (19). This practice, perhaps best termed "the poor imitation syndrome", explains the transference of literary movements onto the non-US-European "other" as a futile exercise that exposes the desire of the margins to be like the center. Such thinking is not limited to scholars and writers working in cultural "centers" but is found among writers working from the "peripheries" as well. Robert J. Clements, in Comparative Literature as Academic Discipline, refers to José Donoso's personal history of the Boom when he argues that only with the Boom are "Hispanicamerican writers no longer influenced by American [sic] and French authors" (103). Clements rests his analysis on a "native informant" who ratifies his argument that Latin American writing prior to the Boom was merely "poor imitation". Those authors that do produce a body of work that merits inclusion into the comparative literature canon, like Jorge Luis Borges, are often read with no regard for their cultural context. In contrast, Latin Americanists are more inclined to be familiar with the complexity of Borges's relationship to Argentine national culture, especially as it is expressed in his essay "The Argentine Writer and Tradition." A further problem with the inclusion of "newcomers" to the traditional canon, according to Rey Chow, is that in many contemporary cases the traditional Eurocentric canon is replaced with simply another set of texts that repeat the same hegemonic practices of seeking masterpieces and master narratives in accordance with a European privileging of the nation-state. A new practice of comparative literature "must question the very assumption that nation-states with national languages are the only possible cultural formations that produce 'literature' that is worth examining" (Chow 109). A progressive program of comparative cultural study will have to question not only problems of practice, but also problems of method, particularly those methods that are attached to questions of cultural value.

13. As we consider the conservatism and colonialist impulses of traditional Comparative Literature we should bear in mind that Latin American Studies, especially as it has been practiced in the US, has a similar history of cultural hegemony. The Latin American Studies Association (founded in 1966; <http://lasa.international.pitt.edu/>) and the American Comparative Literature Association (founded in 1960; <http://www.acla.org/>) reveal parallel moments in US academic developments after World War II. Latin American Studies has historically been dominated by the social sciences and has frequently been associated with conservative political agendas (see Mignolo; Moreiras; Morse). Walter Mignolo connects the rise of Latin American Studies with the increased global power of the US during the Cold War (194). Richard Morse, writing in 1964, suggested that many US Latin Americanists were unconscious of their own colonialist attitudes towards the region, and he claimed that their work often revealed a "subconscious hostility" towards their object of study (170). Mark T. Berger's Under Northern Eyes provides a history of Latin American studies in the US; he argues that: "The professional study of Latin America is embedded in a long tradition of viewing Latin America through northern eyes" where "most Latin American specialists, like US policy-makers, are estranged from Latin America" (19). Mignolo, Morse and Berger point out that Latin American Studies, like any academic practice in the US, reflects prevailing discourses of power. Moreiras also describes this tendency in Latinamericanism: "Latinamericanist knowledge aspires to a particular form of disciplinary power that it inherits from the imperial state apparatus" (32). This conservative, reactionary form of area studies is concerned with containing and controlling the flow of information about Latin America. Moreiras, however, also points to a second tendency where "Latinamericanism works primarily not as a machine of epistemic homogenization but potentially against it as a disruptive force" (87). In this version, Latinamericanism challenges traditional knowledge structures and homogenizing cultural forces. Like the progressive side of comparative literature described by Bernheimer, Latin American Studies also has a long history of politically oppositional practice of which Moreiras's "antirepresentational Latinamericanism" is a recent example. Larsen calls attention to the Marxist politics of Latin American Studies in the 1980s and he underscores the leftist approaches which ground many studies of Latin America (Reading 18-22).

14. In short, regardless of our training, in comparative literature or Latin American Studies or both, we cannot overlook the colonialist history of these disciplines. Any reassessment of our scholarship will have to address the unequal relations of power between the US, Europe and Latin America, in political, economic, cultural and academic terms. Gabriel García Márquez, in his 1982 acceptance speech for the Nobel, condemns the colonial impulse implicit in much foreign scholarship of Latin America: "The interpretation of our reality through patterns not our own, serves only to make us ever more unknown, ever less free, ever more solitary" (see at <http://www.nobel.se/literature/laureates/1982/marquez-lecture.html>).

The Problem of Language

15. When comparative literature originated in the nineteenth century at the peak of European nationalism, language and nation were tied together as important markers of culture. François Jost writes, in his very influential Introduction to Comparative Literature (1974), that in Europe since the seventeenth century the political and linguistic borders have tended to fuse and that language has been central to nation-building (5-8). Comparative literature served a strange dual impulse: On the one hand, it highlighted the existence of national culture, and on the other hand, it demonstrated that literature was transnational, thereby emphasizing the existence of what Goethe referred to as Weltliteratur, but which was actually European literature. Yet, in post-colonial contexts, language often serves not as a mark of national autonomy, but rather as a constant reminder of its troubled past. In fact, in 1492, as Christopher Colombus was setting off on his first voyage to the New World, Antonio de Nebrija presented the first grammar of the Spanish language to Queen Isabel. In his prologue he explains that creating order and structure for the language will help in Empire building: "una cosa hállo y: sáco por conclusión mui cierta: que siempre la lengua fue compañera del imperio" (one thing I find leads me to a certain conclusion: that language was always the companion of Empire; <http://ensayo.rom.uga.edu/antologia/XV/nebrija/>. The history of the Spanish language in Latin America is intricately tied to the history of Spanish rule. Richard Morse explains that: "In the New World the language-national genius equation was problematical ... This was particularly so in Spanish America, where nearly a score of countries shared the same mother tongue" (16). According to Morse, in post-Independence Spanish America, nation-building required an intellectual tradition detached from Spain that frustrated the question of national language: "Understandably, the intelligentsia of the new countries often preferred the term 'national language' to 'Spanish' or 'Castilian'" (17). Struggles to find linguistic autonomy in Spanish America return again and again to the problematic legacy of Spanish. Consequently, the disavowal of comparative work that treats Spanish-language literature from two Latin American nations as not meeting the requirements of "authentic" comparative literature merely serves to perpetuate colonialist epistemologies. Latin Americanists who practice comparative methods might regularly work on five or six different Spanish-speaking nations, but their work is less likely to be considered "officially" comparative than a scholar who studies Germany and France. The assumption that one must work across two languages in order to do comparative work not only belies the legacy of colonialist thinking that plagues comparative literature, but also holds particular consequences for Latin Americanists. Unlike Africa, Asia and the Middle East where literature is published in multiple languages, only in Latin America do we find twenty nations (including Puerto Rico and the US) producing culture in the "same" language. Additionally, Spanish, unlike French, has been marginalized as an imperial language as well. Walter Mignolo explains that: "Spanish language, in Latin America, was twice subaltern: it was no longer the Spanish of Spain, which itself became marginal to European modernity beginning in the seventeenth century" (306).

16. Most traditional textbooks of comparative literature do not actually require that students work across two languages. Instead, they call for work across two nations, which they often assume will mean two languages. Nevertheless, as Yves Chevrel points out: "The notions of literature, language, and culture are not identical or totally coincidental" (10). Chow agrees with Chevrel in her response to the Bernheimer report: "we could also, within comparative literature, teach students how to be comparative within 'single' languages" (114). Such a proposal is no small task when the language is used to produce culture across a broad variety of geographical locales, as in the case of Spanish (or English). Any comparative approach to Latin America will need to move beyond the reductive connections between nation and language and will need to reassess the problems of linguistic hegemony.

17. While I believe that the repudiation of Inter-Spanish American comparative work by traditional comparatists should come to an end, I do not want to diminish the importance of working across languages as an important part of our training and research. These are two separate issues: one is the colonialist legacy of undervaluing the comparison of Spanish language texts and the second is the need for comparatists to be trained polyglots who are sensitive to the linguistic varieties of global, especially in this case Latin American, culture. Mary Louise Pratt suggests that polyglossia should be comparative literature's "calling card" but, rather than learn only the language, she advocates that students also learn the culture: "Maybe we should link our endeavors to the need for deeply informed, culturally competent individuals in a globalizing world" ("Comparative" 62). Pratt's point resonates with particular force when considering Latin American culture and leads to another language problem for Latin Americanists. Latin America is itself a region of polyglossia and the hegemony of Spanish in US Latin American studies has often displaced Brazilian Portuguese and Amerindian languages. Our academic training rarely provides opportunities for students and scholars to gain even a minimal proficiency in indigenous languages and too few programs offer Portuguese. If we consider language learning to be at the heart of cultural knowledge, then we must recognize that Amerindian languages and Brazilian Portuguese should be central to our training and research. As Fitz argues, by engaging in comparative study between Brazilian and Spanish American texts, Latin American comparatists can avoid the problems of monolingualism (see Fitz at <http://clcwebjournal.lib.purdue.edu/clcweb02-2/fitz02.html>). What is more, familiarity with Brazilian literature provides a stronger comparative base for scholarship. For instance, Gregory Rabassa argued in 1978 that many scholars mistakenly consider Brazilian and Spanish American literature to track in parallel ways (119). Such unfamiliarity with Brazilian literature leads certain scholars to assume that Spanish American literature is the standard. A comparative approach to cultural study in the region would dispel such oversights. Regarding the importance of Amerindian languages and cultures, Mignolo contends that attention to subaltern languages is fundamental to any project interested in challenging colonialist epistemologies (261). "From the point of view of the Amerindian population, languages were critical in maintaining a sense of continuity from colonial times through the nation-building period, and up to the end of the twentieth century" (297). Consequently, polyglossia for Latin American comparatists might include Spanish, Brazilian Portuguese and Quechua as a productive array of linguistic proficiency. Nevertheless, few programs in either Latin American Literature or comparative literature are prepared to train students in these languages and cultures.

The Problem of Approach

18. A fourth reason for the lack of dialogue between comparative literature and Latin American studies is a problem of critical approach and cultural theory. Comparative literature's affinities with positivism and its theoretical dominance in US institutions by formalism and New Criticism are incompatible with the dominant critical paradigms for the study of Latin America, which favor study of culture in political, economic, and historical context. Bassnett points out that the ahistoricism and formalism of comparative literature was a gradual process that eventually led comparatists, through the example of René Wellek, to eschew any socio-economic or political aspects of literature (35-36). She maintains that "the crisis of comparative literature derives from a legacy of nineteenth-century Eurocentric positivism and from a refusal to consider the political implications of intercultural transfer, which are fundamental to any comparative activity" (159). Bernheimer also points to the legacy of formalist approaches in the practice of comparative literature ("Anxieties" 10-11). It is interesting to note, however, that there is also a long history of comparatists who have insisted that attention to socio-historical context is essential for comparative work and that this tradition lives on. Jan Brandt Corstius wrote in 1968 that a foundation of comparative literature was the study of literature in its political, social, economic, cultural, and formal context (6) and more recently Steven Totosy proposed the theory and method of the systemic and empirical approach where the notion of the systemic includes the historical, economic, cultural, political, etc., dimensions of a literature or of a text (see Totosy, Comparative Literature). Although much of the history of comparative literature is fraught with over-determined questions of cultural value, US-Eurocentrism, and the persistence of imperialistic knowledge structures, there are aspects of the comparative approach that help illuminate the cultural history of Latin America. Moreover, because Latin Americanists have not considered their work as inherently comparative, they have not fully utilized comparative methods. I would like briefly to point to five research areas that are strengthened by a combination of Latin American studies and a progressive revision of comparative literature that move toward comparative cultural studies.

Cultural Heritage

19. Comparative methods can provide useful critical approaches to the complex cultural heritage of the region. Latin America does not present us with one unified cultural history. Instead, we find a combination of indigenous, African, European and US influences, not to mention a variety of immigrant communities. Latin America has a rich and diverse indigenous culture with many regional variations. Spanish and Portuguese colonization, followed by US neo-colonization, coupled with the cultural imperialism of Europe, especially France and England, has meant that Latin American culture has been influenced in intricate ways by Europe and the US. Moreover, these influences have not been unidirectional; Latin American culture has also had an impact on the cultures of Europe and the US (see Brotherston and Sá <http://clcwebjournal.lib.purdue.edu/clcweb02-2/brotherston&sa0202.html>). Not only do cultural influences flow between the US/Europe and Latin America, but foreign culture is often manipulated, transformed and hybridized upon arrival in Latin America. Ángel Rama argues that Latin America does not simply passively absorb foreign cultural intervention (33). Unpacking these relationships requires careful attention to comparative approaches of understanding cultural influence. Referring to the legacy of the European literary tradition Kadir explains that "Spanish America's literary culture engages most often and most virulently with its ancestral other" (The Other Writing 8). In addition, we must factor in the cultural effects of slavery, migration, immigration and exile (Palermo 216). Comparative methods expose how these different cultural sources intersect, at times in conflict and at others in cooperation, within Latin America. One possibility is that comparative methods, inspired by anthropology and sociology -- such as that found in the work of Néstor García Canclini, Pratt, Fernando Ortiz, and Rama -- can be used to trace cultural influences and to identify cultural assimilation, dissimilation and transculturation. The strength of the comparative method in understanding Latin America's cultural heritage lies in the premise that cultural influences and movements track differently in different contexts. The comparative method of studying analogies, trends and influences provides useful tools for understanding the way a particular cultural form undergoes regional variations and displays a hybrid of cultural markers (see Jost). Such an approach, informed by post-colonial studies and comparative cultural studies, would yield more sophisticated readings of cultural hybridity in the region. For example using such a conceptual framework might help explain how the testimonial reveals a combination of complex narrative strategies. Doris Sommer's Proceed with Caution exemplifies this type of comparative work, as she argues for attention to the "rhetoric of particularism" that she tracks across a number of "minority" texts. Kadir's The Other Writing also provides a similar comparative model as he analyzes the tension between a number of "peripheral" texts that represent multifarious confrontations with the "mainstream."

Cultural Cartography

20. Many geographic parameters contribute to understanding the region designated as "Latin America." In the broadest sense, Latin America must be studied in relation to global history and across regions, as in the case of Inter-American, Transatlantic, or post-colonial studies. Another cultural map is that of the entire region of Latin America. The concept that all of the Spanish speaking countries of America plus the non-Spanish speaking countries in Central and South America (occasionally including the non-Spanish Caribbean) all have common cultural connections is fraught with problems (see Mignolo chapter 3; Berger). Mignolo reminds us that the term "Latin America" came about in the nineteenth century and was imposed from outside the region (132). Frank Tannenbaum claimed, in the 1960s, that the countries of Latin America were more diverse than those of Europe and he "insisted that 'lumping them together' was a 'matter of convenience for literary purposes rather than a methodologically permissible device'" (Berger 244-45). Berger explains that the notion of Latin America as a single unit has been a common tendency in academic study and that it has typically been employed from a "colonialist" perspective. Linda Hutcheon, Kadir, and Valdés, in "Collaborative Historiography: A Comparative Literary History of Latin America," recognize the problematical premise that it is possible to comparatively study an entire continent: "Mapping has always been a way to make something exist for imperial eyes" (2). Nevertheless, the notion of a unified region of Latin America served as a key conceptual category during the struggles for Independence, especially through the efforts of Simón Bolívar. Regional unity has been the source of a number of Latin American cultural movements, such as the Boom or the New Latin American Cinema. On the other hand, the notion of a unified Latin America has also been central to colonialism and neo-colonial politics, like the "Good Neighbor Policy." Hutcheon, Kadir, and Valdés maintain that "the continent's culture and cartography have both been created in reaction to outside pressures and engendered in proactive and reactive ways" (6). Since the concept of Latin America as a single unit has served as both a tool of cultural colonization and as a source of cultural empowerment, scholars working on the region need to constantly reevaluate the notion of "Latin America".

21. Narrowing our map further, within Latin America we tend to assume that culture tracks according to inter-Latin American regions -- such as Caribbean, Southern Cone, Central American, Andean, etc. It is generally accepted that each of these regions presents us with common cultural characteristics. In fact most Latin Americanists consider their area of study in regional terms, which relates to the way that the Latin American Studies Association (LASA) groups panels at their annual convention according to regional designations. Yet these regions should also be critiqued and investigated. They, too, are constructs that derive from discourses of power that employ universalizing tendencies and seek homogeneous cultural markers. For instance, what happens to Paraguay? Sometimes it is considered part of the Southern Cone and sometimes not. Paraguay is not included in the countries of focus for the LASA Southern Cone Studies Section <http://www.lvc.edu/languages/conosur/mission.html> and yet it is included in many other scholarly considerations of the region. The Caribbean poses a whole new set of problems, since it is multilingual and since its colonial legacies are so varied. Many Latin Americanists who study the Caribbean highlight only a few of the nations on the region. Clearly the regional designations are cartographic spaces that should be subject to scrutiny.

22. Narrowing still further from a conceptual map of inter-Latin American regions, the nation-state continues to be a site of supposed cultural commonality. We understand Latin American culture to develop along national lines. Chow writes that "comparative literature should remain the place where theory is used to put the very concept of the nation in crisis, and with that, the concept of the nation as the origin of a particular literature" (112). Pratt suggests that we should expand comparativeness to include comparisons within national cultures (60). Other axes of Latin American comparison do not conform to any of these spatial markers as in the case of indigenous studies, ethnic studies or the study of women's culture, etc. These practices might happen subnationally, as in the case of Chiapas, or transnationally, as in the case of Quechua culture. Rama characterizes culture as developing along Latin American, national and regional lines. He suggests that literature has many layers of geographic affiliation and that the common elements of culture often do not conform to national borders (58). Hutcheon, Kadir, and Valdés explain that their project focuses on "transnational zones of cultural interaction" since these cultural practices have been largely ignored (6). In each case comparative cultural work must be mindful of the geographic boundaries used to mark textual difference. Regional designations, such as Latin American, Andean, Peruvian, or indigenous, for example, chart a text's interpretive course. The text's context of reception is coded, at least in part, by its geographical affiliation, mapping the readers it will appeal to and the interpretive directions readings will take. We should be suspicious of the politics behind these types of cultural categorization. Moreover, these cognitive cultural maps are only guidelines and cultural developments may not always conform to these groupings. Comparative methods help disentangle all of these spatial markers that delineate patterns of cultural practice and they help us to critique these cartographic categories. Studying cultural developments in more than one context also helps draw attention to the values that we place on regional designations. Such a perspective helps explain why, for instance, a text by Borges might be understood as an example of Argentine, Southern Cone, Latin American, or universal literature depending on the context of reception and the politics of interpretation.

Translation Studies

23. A particularly strong point of recent comparative literary studies is in the area of translation studies (see Bassnett; Totosy, Comparative Literature). According to Chevrel, "One of the problems to which comparatists should devote more space in their studies is how to read or study a literary text in translation" (8). The Bernheimer Report recommends more use of translated texts in comparative literature classes in contrast with the Levin and Greene reports' condemnation of the practice: "While the necessity and unique benefits of a deep knowledge of foreign languages must continue to be stressed, the old hostilities toward translation should be mitigated. In fact, translation can well be seen as a paradigm for larger problems of understanding and interpretation across different discursive traditions" (see Bernheimer et al. <http://www.umass.edu/complit/aclanet/Bernheim.html>). As we know, the issue of whether to encourage or dissuade the use of translations in classrooms has been a hot point of contention for comparatists. Yet, the Bernheimer Report moves the issue beyond the question of whether translation will hinder the language acquisition of students: "Comparative Literature, it could be said, aims to explain both what is lost and what is gained in translations between the distinct value systems of different cultures, media, disciplines, and institutions" (see Bernheimer et al. <http://www.umass.edu/complit/aclanet/Bernheim.html>). In this sense, comparatists have increasingly recognized that their training enables them to study the practice of translation and its theoretical and cultural implications for understanding the development and dissemination of literatures. A leading example is found in the work of Itamar Even-Zohar who points to the complexities of translation as a cultural practice and the ways that translation is also about discursive and cultural power.

24. Most Latin Americanists agree that translation has been a powerful force in shaping the Latin American canon. It is well known that Rabassa's extraordinary translating skills had much to do with the literary importance of the Latin American Boom (see Larsen; De la Campa). We are all well versed in the story of La Malinche, the region's first translator and the lover of Hernán Cortés, who embodied the inseparable cultural markers of language and identity. Bassnett explains that Malinche "is a figure that represents the Janus-face of translation" since she is depicted as both victim and traitor (153). Given that translation has marked Latin American cultural identity since the moment of the conquest, translation studies is an area where greater collaboration between comparatists and Latin Americanists would be especially productive. Latin Americanists have repeatedly noted that once a text is translated into English and well reviewed in English-language newspapers, there is heightened interest in the text in its home country. Arguably, Latin Americanists cannot avoid the issue of translation and the effects that it has on cultural discourse. The connections between translation and book culture, an area of study for progressive comparatists, are also of significance for Latin Americanists. Scholars who work on US Latino culture are well aware of the ways that language, translation and book culture have all worked together to influence the development of the field. For example, Arte Público Press, affiliated with the University of Houston, was founded in 1979 in order to address the virtual absence of published Latino writers <http://www.arte.uh.edu/Arte_Publico_Press/arte_publico_press.html>. Their program "Recovering the US Hispanic Literary Heritage" is dedicated to publishing important Latino works in editions for the US mainstream. A further example of the intersections between translation studies, the culture of the book, and Latin American literature can be found in the work of Ariel Dorfman. Since Dorfman is often a co-translator of his works, I have found that on occasion he changes elements of the text in the process of translation (McClennen, "Ariel Dorfman" 106-19). These changes, especially noteworthy in his first novel, Moros en la costa (1973) translated as Hard Rain (1990), reflect Dorfman's newly imagined audience for the translated text as well as the shift in historical and cultural context between the original and the translation. Despite the rich potential for scholarship on these issues, we still find reluctance to consider translation as a serious area of research. Bassnett explains that comparative literature historically dismissed the study of the practice of translation (138). Nevertheless, the field is growing in both comparative literature and Latin American cultural studies. There is no question that dialogue and exchange between researchers in these fields would not only be useful, but necessary.

A Challenge to Exceptionalism

25. The exceptional quality of dominant Western culture can be challenged by the culture of the margins by showing that, in fact, the value placed on US-European culture is predicated on an illusion that all culture originates in the US or Europe. For instance José Carlos Mariátegui has been referred to as the Antonio Gramsci of the Americas (see at <http://csf.colorado.edu/mirrors/marxists.org/archive/mariateg/>). Yet both authors wrote at roughly the same time. Why is Gramsci not considered the Mariátegui of Europe? Progressive comparative methods can be used to explain and challenge this disparity. A founding principle of comparative literature holds that through the comparison of texts one can avoid reductive assumptions about cultural exceptionalism. And yet, comparative literature in its traditional practice was very exceptionalist, keeping careful guard of which texts and which authors were considered valuable enough to study. As Neil Larsen suggests, the inclusion of literature from the non-Western and post-colonial world upsets the hegemony of US-Eurocentric literature and theory (Reading 132). In this way, the arguments I have made about why comparative methods strengthen scholarship on Latin America and vice versa could be translated into similar arguments about Asian, African or Middle Eastern Studies. Similarly, comparative approaches strengthen research in Latin American Studies and enable scholars to avoid unfounded claims of Latin American exceptionalism. Richard Slatta argues that "international comparisons serve as an antidote to exceptionalism, nationalism and xenophobia" (n.p.). A comparative approach that analyzes more than one cultural example across more than one context helps scholars to point out cultural specificities and also illuminates cross-cultural trends. In the case of Latin America, comparative approaches help identify regional particularities as well as point out trans-regional cultural elements. As mentioned above, the practice of comparative literature in the post-colonial world has often served to reconstruct and reassert cultural and national identity (Bassnett 39). Consequently, as evidenced by the work of Palermo and Block de Behar, we note that comparative methods may facilitate claims that "peripheral" literatures and cultures are valuable contributions to "world" literature through their unique dialectics between universalism and local specificity.

The Interdisciplinary Approach

26. Both Latin American studies and comparative literature are grounded in a belief that interdisciplinarity strengthens scholarship. In 1974, Jost described the interdisciplinary study of literature in relation to other cultural domains as one of the four main areas of research in comparative literature (viii). Latin American scholars, like Rama, working in roughly the same time frame, have also argued for the need to study literature in historical and political context. Rama finds it troubling that two currents of literary study put the context of the literary text at odds with its formal study. He argues that the literary text must be studied with its social-cultural context and also within its literary intertext (19). While interdisciplinarity in comparative literature has often meant the comparison of literature with philosophy or other art forms, for scholars of literature working in Latin American Studies interdisciplinary work has increasingly meant the study of literature in terms of critical theory and historical-political contexts. Latin American interdisciplinary research, like that found in cultural studies, could serve to challenge the formalist, textualist and positivist tendencies in comparative literature. Dialogue across both fields, with added insight from cultural studies, would serve to create better methods of interdisciplinary research. In fact, the premise behind interdisciplinarity is that fields like comparative literature, cultural studies, and Latin American studies, which ostensibly, in and of themselves, constitute interdisciplinary approaches to research, are improved by greater scholarly engagement, collaboration, critique and intellectual challenge. As many have noted, successful research in such broad fields of study requires collaboration, such as research teams (see Hutcheon; Totosy at <http://clcwebjournal.lib.purdue.edu/clcweb99-3/totosy99.html>). Not only should we make greater efforts to be aware of developments in each field, but we should also begin to break down the tradition of individual scholarly research. According to Pratt, "Facing the crisis of accountability and expertise will have the overwhelmingly positive consequence, one hopes, of clarifying the need for collaborative work in literary studies. Developing global perspectives cannot mean that each person must try -- or claim -- to know the whole globe" ("Comparative" 63). Instead of begging off the need for global awareness by arguing that such scope is beyond one's capabilities, scholars should relinquish their single-author mentality (it is ironic that so many claim the death of the author, and yet in academia we continue to operate in a system where work is understood as the product of an individual creative mind.) Certainly the Oxford volume edited by Kadir and Valdés makes an important move in this direction.

27. Much Latin American studies scholarship is comparative. Arguably, because most Latin Americanists work across national boundaries their work is constantly considered within a comparative framework. Yet for some Latin Americanists comparative literature may appear so steeped in its conservative, imperialistic past that it is unable to be of much use. Nevertheless, the transformation of comparative literature away from traditional cultural practice and its growth as a field of study in areas like Latin America suggest that it has moved beyond its conservative past. Drawing on the comparative methods used in comparative literature as well as in other disciplines allows us to avoid what we might call a comparative subconscious, where scholarship displays elements of comparative analysis without direct attention to comparative methods. Alternatively, comparative literature has yet to fully embrace cultural works produced outside of the "mainstream," and this has crippled the applicability of research in comparative literature in a global context. Despite common concerns over nation, history, politics and cultural identity and common sources of critical theory Latin American studies and comparative literature remain largely epiphenomenal. While these fields will continue to produce valuable research separately, I hope to have suggested a number of productive areas for collaboration. I do not wish to suggest, however, that these fields merge into one totalizing machine of cultural analysis. Rather, I hope to have argued that mutual awareness and recognition of intellectual developments in these fields would help us to avoid insularity and mistaken claims of exceptionalism. Moreover, despite a lack of interaction and dialogue, the fields have developed in strikingly parallel ways and they have often been influenced by similar trends in criticism. Perhaps increased interaction would enable sophisticated reflection on our research goals and the methods we use to attain them.

Works Cited

Aldridge, A. Owen. "The Purpose and Perspectives of Comparative Literature." Comparative Literature: Matter and Method. Ed. A. Owen Aldridge. Urbana: U of Illinois P, 1969. 1-6.
Bassnett, Susan. Comparative Literature: A Critical Introduction. Oxford: Blackwell, 1993.
Berger, Mark T. Under Northern Eyes: Latin American Studies and US Hegemony in the Americas 1898-1990. Bloomington: Indiana UP, 1995.
Bernheimer, Charles, ed. Comparative Literature in the Age of Multiculturalism. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins UP, 1995.
Bernheimer, Charles, Jonathan Arac, Marianne Hirsch, Ann Rosalind Jones, Ronald Judy, Arnold Krupat, Dominick La Capra, Steve Nichols, and Sara Suleri. "American Comparative Literature Association Report on Professional Standards (Bernheimer Report, 1993)." ACLAnet (2002): <http://www.umass.edu/complit/aclanet/Bernheim.html>.
Bernheimer, Charles. "Introduction: The Anxieties of Comparison." Comparative Literature in the Age of Multiculturalism. Ed. Charles Bernheimer. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins UP, 1995. 1-17.
Beverley, John. Against Literature. Minneapolis: U of Minnesota P, 1993.
Beverley, John. Subalternity and Representation: Arguments in Cultural Theory. Durham: Duke UP, 1999.
Block de Behar, Lisa. "Uruguayan Comparative Literature: The Need for a Double Bet." Comparative Literature World Wide: Issues and Methods / La Littérature comparée dans le monde: Questions et méthodes. Ed. Tânia Franco Carvalhal. Porto Alegre: L&PM Editores, 1997. 149-72.
Brandt Corstius, Jan. Introduction to the Comparative Study of Literature. New York: Random House, 1968.
Brotherston, Gordon, and Lúcia de Sá. "First Peoples of the Americas and Literature." CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture: A WWWeb Journal 4.2 (2002): <http://clcwebjournal.lib.purdue.edu/clcweb02-2/brotherston&sa0202.html>.
Buchenau, Barbara, and Marietta Messmer, eds. Intercultural Negotiations in the Americas and Beyond. Thematic issue, CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture: A WWWeb Journal 3.2 (2001): <http://clcwebjournal.lib.purdue.edu/clcweb01-2/contents01-2.html>.
Carvalhal, Tânia Franco. "Dez Anos da ABRALIC (1986-1996): Elementos para Sua História." Organon 10.24 (1996): (n.p.).
Carvalhal, Tânia Franco. Literatura comparada. São Paulo: Editora Atica, 1986.
Chevrel, Yves. Comparative Literature Today: Methods and Perspectives. Trans. Farida Elizabeth Dahab. Kirksville: The Thomas Jefferson UP, 1995.
Chow, Rey. "In the Name of Comparative Literature." Comparative Literature in the Age of Multiculturalism. Ed. Charles Bernheimer. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins UP, 1995. 107-16.
Clements, Robert J. Comparative Literature as Academic Discipline: A Statement of Principles, Praxis, Standards. New York: Modern Language Association of America, 1978.
Costigan, Lúcia Helena, and Leopoldo M. Bernucci, eds. O Brasil, a América Hispânica e o Caribe: Abordagens Comparativas. Thematic issue, Revista Iberoamericana 182-83 (1998): <http://www.pitt.edu/~iili/lastri.html>.
De la Campa, Román. "Latin American Studies: Literary, Cultural, and Comparative Theory." CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture: A WWWeb Journal 4.2 (2002): <http://clcwebjournal.lib.purdue.edu/clcweb02-2/delacampa02.htm>.
De la Campa, Román. "Latin, Latino, American: Split States and Global Imaginaries." Comparative Literature 53.4 (2001): 373-88.
De la Campa, Román. Latin Americanism. Minneapolis: U of Minnesota P, 1999.
De Nebrija, Antonio. "Prólogo a la gramática de la lengua castellana." Gramática de la lengua castellana, 1492. <http://ensayo.rom.uga.edu/antologia/XV/nebrija/>.
Dornheim, Nicolás Jorge. "La literatura comparada en la Argentina." Boletín de literatura comparada 3.1-2 (1978): 17-47.
Even-Zohar, Itamar. Papers in Historical Poetics. Tel Aviv: The Porter Institute for Poetics and Semiotics, 1978.
Fitz, Earl E. "Spanish American and Brazilian Literature in Inter-American Perspective: The Comparative Approach." CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture: A WWWeb Journal 4.2 (2002): <http://clcwebjournal.lib.purdue.edu/clcweb02-2/fitz02.html>.
Fitz, Earl E. Inter-American Literature and Criticism: An Electronic Annotated Bibliography (2001): <http://www.uiowa.edu/uiowapress/interamerican/>.
Fitz, Earl E. Rediscovering the New World: Inter-American Literature in a Comparative Context. Iowa City: U of Iowa P, 1991.
García Canclini, Néstor. Culturas hibridas: estrategias para entrar y salir de la modernidad. Mexico City: Grijalbo, 1990.
García Márquez, Gabriel. "The Solitude of Latin America." Nobel Lecture. (8 December 1982): <http://www.nobel.se/literature/laureates/1982/marquez-lecture.html>.
Gifford, Henry. Comparative Literature. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1969.
González Echevarría, Roberto. "Latin American and Comparative Literature." CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture: A WWWeb Journal 4.2 (2002): <http://clcwebjournal.lib.purdue.edu/clcweb02-2/gonzalez-echevarria02.html>.
Greene, Thomas, Haskell Block, Nan Carpenter, Frederick Garber, François Jost, Walter Kaiser, Elizabeth Trahan, and Herbert Weisinger. "American Comparative Literature Association Report on Professional Standards (Second or Greene Report)." 1976. ACLAnet (2002): <http://www.umass.edu/complit/aclanet/Green.html>.
Gugelberger, Georg M., ed. The Real Thing: Testimonial Discourse and Latin America. Durham: Duke UP, 1996.
Hutcheon, Linda, Djelal Kadir, and Mario J. Valdés. Collaborative Historiography: A Comparative History of Latin America. Occasional Papers 35. New York: American Council of Learned Societies, 1996.
Jost, François. Introduction to Comparative Literature. Indianapolis: Pegasus, 1974.
Kadir, Djelal. "Call for Papers: 'America: The Idea, The Literature.'" American Comparative Literature Association (1998): <http://www.acla.org/opps_ann_upark.html>.
Kadir, Djelal. The Other Writing: Postcolonial Essays in Latin America' s Writing Culture. West Lafayette: Purdue UP, 1993.
Larsen, Neil. Determinations: Essays on Theory, Narrative and Nation in the Americas. London: Verso, 2001.
Larsen, Neil. Reading North by South: On Latin American Culture and Politics. Minneapolis: U of Minnesota P, 1995.
Levin, Harry, A.O. Aldridge, Chandler B. Beall, Haskell Block, Ralph Freedman, Horst Frenz, J.C. La Drière, Alain Renoir, and René Wellek. "American Comparative Literature Association Report on Professional Standards (First or Levin Report, 1965)." ACLAnet (2002): <http://www.umass.edu/complit/aclanet/Levin.html>.
McClennen, Sophia A. "Ariel Dorfman." The Review of Contemporary Fiction 20.3 (2000): 81-132.
McClennen, Sophia A. "Cultural Politics, Rhetoric, and the Essay: A Comparison of Emerson and Rodó." CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture: A WWWeb Journal 2.1 (2000): <http://clcwebjournal.lib.purdue.edu/clcweb00-1/mcclennen00.html>.
Mignolo, Walter. Local Histories/Global Designs: Coloniality, Subaltern Knowledges, and Border Thinking. Princeton: Princeton UP, 2000.
Moreiras, Alberto. The Exhaustion of Difference: The Politics of Latin American Cultural Studies. Durham: Duke UP, 2001.
Morse, Richard M. New World Soundings: Culture and Ideology in the Americas. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins UP, 1989.
Nitrini, Sandra. "Teoria literária e literatura comparada." Revista Estudos Avançados 22 (1994): <http://www.usp.br/iea/revista/>.
Ortiz, Fernando. Contrapunteo cubano del tabaco y azúcar. Caracas: Biblioteca Ayacucho, 1987.
Palermo, Zulma. "Cultural Articulation of the Comparative Literary Studies: The Argentinian Case." Comparative Literature World Wide: Issues and Methods / La Littérature comparée dans le monde: Questions et méthodes. Ed. Tânia Franco Carvalhal. Porto Alegre: L&PM Editores, 1997. 211-31.
Pratt, Mary Louise. "Comparative Literature and Global Citizenship." Comparative Literature in the Age of Multiculturalism. Ed. Charles Bernheimer. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins UP, 1995. 58-65.
Pratt, Mary Louise. Imperial Eyes: Studies in Travel Writing and Transculturation. London: Routledge, 1992.
Rabassa, Gregory. "A Comparative Look at the Literatures of Spanish America and Brazil: The Dangers of Deception." Proceedings of the Comparative American Symposium 10 (1978): 119-32.
Rama, Ángel. Transculturación narrativa en América Latina. Montevideo: Fundación Ángel Rama, 1989.
Slatta, Richard. "The Whys and Wherefores of Comparative Frontier History." Journal of the West 41.4 (2002): forthcoming.
Sommer, Doris. Proceed With Caution, When Engaged by Minority Writing in the Americas. Cambridge: Harvard UP, 1999.
Totosy de Zepetnek, Steven. Comparative Literature: Theory, Method, Application. Amsterdam: Rodopi, 1998.
Totosy de Zepetnek, Steven. "From Comparative Literature Today toward Comparative Cultural Studies." CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture: A WWWeb Journal 1.3 (1999): <http://clcwebjournal.lib.purdue.edu/clcweb99-3/totosy99.html>.
Valdés, Mario J. "A Historical Account of Difference: A Comparative History of the Literary Cultures of Latin America." CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture: A WWWeb Journal 4.2 (2002): <http://clcwebjournal.lib.purdue.edu/clcweb02-2/valdes02.html>.
Valdés, Mario J., and Djelal Kadir, eds. Oxford Comparative History of Latin American Literary Cultures (1996-): <http://www.chass.utoronto.ca/lithist/latin.html>.

to top of page