After Hispanic Studies
On the Democratization of Spanish-Language Cultural Study
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 3852145 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Jeffrey Herlihy-Mera (University of Puerto Rico System, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2015 |
| Volume | 13 |
| Issue | 3 |
| Pages | 177-193 |
| Publication date | 2015-07-03 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | No |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Comparative American Studies An International Journal (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 1477-5700 • E-ISSN: 1741-2676 |
| Publisher | Informa UK Limited (PUBLISHER • GB) |
| DOI | 10.1179/1477570015z.000000000105 |
| OpenAlex | W2228960746 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 2 |
| References cited | 3 |
This essay scrutinizes the professional demographics by subfield specializa-tion at several university cohorts to demonstrate the overwhelming overrepre-sentation of Peninsular themes (and thus a eurocentric register) in Span-ish-language cultural studies in the US. While Mexico has approximately three times more inhabitants than Spain, many departments do not have a single specialist on Mexico — but 97.7 percent of departments surveyed had multiple Peninsular specialists. Departments culturally engineer classrooms towards eurocentric aesthetics by over-hiring specialists in Peninsular fields, which concomitantly overrepresents those disciplines in pedagogy, publications, departmental norms, and nomenclatures. This hege-monic model presupposes a euro colonality/superiority, making classrooms a forum of social misrepresentation and nondemocratic portrayals of cultural goods like literature, film, art, idioms, and spoken accents in Spanish. The eu-rocentric model has notable outcomes in student behavior: undergraduates in such environments are much more likely to choose Spain over Latin America for study-abroad.This article argues that the traditional eurocentric hiring norms should transi-tion to a more democratic approach, so that the cultures and societies — and thus people of those societies — be treated in a more egalitarian fashion. A conviction to abandon Hispanic studies as privi-leged player in Spanish-language cultural study strives to undo the colonial controls that yet inform curricula, and gestures towards a new future. Detach-ing our faculties from the implied belief that European (Spanish) culture is preeminent requires a restructuring of both critical vocabularies and profes-sional norms. In the context of such comprehensive and perennial disciplinary eurocentrism, endorsing Latin-American studies as a privileged location is not only necessary, but decades overdue. If pedagogical canons are democratized for the long term, the myth of Spanish exceptionalism, upon which present canonic imbalances are maintained, will cease to be self-evident
Curriculum · Discipline · Eurocentrism · Misrepresentation · Pedagogy · Political science · Social science · Sociology · Anthropology · Gender Studies · History · Latin American and Latino Studies · Law · Spanish Literature and Culture Studies
| Unique citing works | 2 |
|---|---|
| Citations per year | 0,2 |
| Citation span | 2016 - 2025 (10) |
| Citation velocity | recent |
| Highly cited | No |
| Citation types | Neutral: 2 |