Looking South: The Evolution of Latin Americanist Scholarship in the United States, 1850-1975

by Helen Delpar

Overview

A comprehensive, ambitious, and valuable work on an increasingly important subject

In the Preface to her new study, Latin Americanist Helen Delpar writes, "Since the seventeenth century, Americans have turned their gaze toward the lands to the south, seeing in them fields for religious proselytization, economic enterprise, and military conquest." Delpar, consequently, aims her considerable gaze back at those Americans and the story behind their longtime fascination with Latin American culture. By visiting seminal works and the cultures from which they emerged, following the effects of changes in scholarly norms and political developments on the training of students, and evaluating generations of scholarship in texts, monographs, and journal articles, Delpar illuminates the growth of scholarly inquiry into Latin American history, anthropology, geography, political science, economics, sociology, and other social science disciplines.
 

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780817380120
Publisher:	University of Alabama Press
Publication date:	06/15/2009
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	304
File size:	858 KB

About the Author

Helen Delpar is Professor of History at The University of Alabama and author of  Red Against Blue: The Liberal Party in Colombian Politics, 1863–1899 andThe Enormous Vogue of Things Mexican: Cultural Relations between the United States and Mexico, 1920–1935.

Table of Contents

Contents Preface 000 1. Beginnings 000 Part I. Laying the Foundations 000 2. Early Historians 000 3. The Rise of Anthropology 000 4. Geography and the Other Social Sciences 000 5. Latin Americanists and the World of Policy Making 000 Part II. Maturity and Institutionalization 6. A Decade of Expansion, 19351945 000 7. Marking Time, 19451958 000 8. The Boom Years, 19581975 000 Conclusion 000 Notes 000 Select Bibliography 000 Index 000

Editorial Reviews

This is a very interesting and thorough survey that beautifully conveys the evolution of scholarship and teaching about Latin America in the United States.”
Marshall C. Eakin,  author of Brazil: The Once and Future Country

“Helen Delpar's book, Looking South, is a journey and an adventure—a trip through the dreams and reality of Latin America. In the book the reader encounters people, places, and ideas, often unexpectedly. Her work is historiography in an extended sense—history that encompasses all ideas, artifacts, and human development going back well into the past. Delpar follows a century and a quarter of the origins and transformation of U.S. interest in Latin America. Her work is informative, enlightening, and, at times, fascinating. Looking South clearly offers a reward for the modest effort required to read it. When I reached the end, my reward was that I better understood the people, ideas, and historical development of a field that I had worked in for over forty years.”—H-Net Reviews


"Delpar's book deserves credit for pointing scholars in the direction of work that still deserves more attention than it has received."—The Americas

From the Publisher