Interdisciplinary Essays on Darwinism in Hispanic Literature and Film: The Intersection of Science and the Humanities

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Pages:328
ISBN:0-7734-4747-4
978-0-7734-4747-9
Price:$219.95 + shipping
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The subject matter of the analyses in this work ranges from works by Spanish masters such as Miguel de Cervantes and Federico García Lorca, to the nineteenth-century Brazilian author Aluísio Azevedo, and the twenty-first-century Mexican director Alejandro González Iñárritu. In addition to treatments of specific works, there are general theoretical overviews by such well-known scholars as Joseph Carroll and David Barash, together with a concluding study detailing the current understanding of Darwin by both Anglo and Hispanic college students in the United States. Overall, this collection of essays shows how the insights of Darwin’s theories can serve to illuminate Hispanic culture and cultural production in new and even groundbreaking ways.

Reviews

“Darwin and his work have influenced the entire world, so this book by experts on the Darwinian influence in the Hispanic world, as reflected in the cultural artifacts of literature, folklore, myth and film, is especially appropriate and important. This is a provocative contribution to the fields of science and literature and Hispanic area and cultural studies. Scholars, serious students, and academic libraries will welcome it.” – Prof. James D. Anderson, Rutgers University

“. . . the articles in the volume speak vibrantly to each other, although frequently in registers and rhetoric derived from different fields. The field of literature and science studies sometimes prompts misguided invocations of scientific terminology or incomplete transpositions of scientific concepts into literary scholarship . . . These articles do not sin in this regard. The authors clearly state their backgrounds and motivations for their methodologies, and they do not overhype their conclusions. The result is a substantial contribution, not only to Hispanism as it has been more narrowly construed, but also to the wide-ranging interdisciplinary field of literature and science studies.” – Prof. Dale Pratt, Brigham Young University

Table of Contents

Foreword by Dr. Joseph Henry Vogel
Acknowledgements
Introduction
1. Magical Realism, Biological Reality, and the Hidden Biology of Fantasy, Secrecy, and Mystery - David Barrash
2. The Science Wars in a Long View: Putting the Human in its Place – Joseph Carroll
3. Case Study: The Trickster Genre and the Free Rider Problem – Michelle Scalise Sugiyama
4. Nature versus Nurture in La casa de Bernarda AlbaJerry Hoeg
5. Darwin, Sexual Selection, and the Spanish Novel in the Late Nineteenth Century – Travis Landry
6. Consilience of Human Evolution and a Seemingly Trivial Detail in the “The Story of the Captive” by Cervantes – Camilo Gomides
7. Toward a Natural History of the Soul: Cervantes, Don Quijote pt. 2, chs. 13-14, and the Culture of Limpieza de SangreKevin S. Larsen
8. The Selective Female: A Darwinian Interpretation of AluIsio Azevedo’s 0 cortiço – Ricardo Waizbort
9. José Marti and Evolution: An Analysis on Nation and Race – Adriana Novoa
10. Adaptive Functions of Origin Tales: Chican@ Culture and the Aztlán Myth – Jeff P. Turpin
11. Empathy and Conflicting Moral Norms: A Bio-Cultural Affective Analysis of BabelDavid Michelson
12. Conceptual Knowledge of Natural Selection: A comparison study between Mexican-American and Anglo-American college students – Maria R. Gutiérrez, Cruz C. Torres, and Roel R. Lopez
List of Tables
Selected Bibliography

Other Literature - Spanish Books