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  • Book cover of Some of the Papers Laid Before the Governor in Support of the Petition for the Commutation of the Sentence of William Foster to Imprisonment for Life

    Letters and other documents addressed to New York Governor John A. Dix asking that the sentence of William Foster be commuted from death to life in prison. In an incident that came to be known as the "car-hook" tragedy, Foster, while drunk, murdered Avery D. Putnam on a New York City trolley.

  • Book cover of On Our Backs...

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  • Book cover of Spanish Expeditions into Texas, 1689–1768

    Based on official Spanish expedition diaries, a fascinating account of the daily routes taken and the Indigenous tribes, terrain, and wildlife encountered. Mapping old trails has a romantic allure at least as great as the difficulty involved in doing it. In this book, William Foster produces the first highly accurate maps of the eleven Spanish expeditions from northeastern Mexico into what is now East Texas during the years 1689 to 1768. Foster draws upon the detailed diaries that each expedition kept of its route, cross-checking the journals among themselves and against previously unused eighteenth-century Spanish maps, modern detailed topographic maps, aerial photographs, and on-site inspections. From these sources emerges a clear picture of where the Spanish explorers actually passed through Texas. This information, which corrects many previous misinterpretations, will be widely valuable. Old names of rivers and landforms will be of interest to geographers. Anthropologists and archaeologists will find new information on encounters with some 139 named Indigenous tribes. Botanists and zoologists will see changes in the distribution of flora and fauna with increasing European habitation, and climatologists will learn more about the “Little Ice Age” along the Rio Grande. “Foster offers readers as accurate an estimate as could ever be hoped for for the eleven routes as whole.” —The Journal of American History “Foster does an excellent job sorting out his predecessors’ fallacious interpretations of the significance and location of certain routes.” —Colonial Latin American Historical Review “To have a single authoritative source of these early expeditions [is] enormously useful . . . Foster’s work [is] the most authoritative on the subject.” —David J. Weber, Southern Methodist University

  • Book cover of Queer Issues in Contemporary Latin American Cinema

    Viewing contemporary Latin American films through the lens of queer studies reveals that many filmmakers are exploring issues of gender identity and sexual difference, as well as the homophobia that attempts to defeat any challenge to the heterosexual norms of patriarchal culture. In this study of queer issues in Latin American cinema, David William Foster offers highly perceptive queer readings of fourteen key films to demonstrate how these cultural products promote the principles of an antiheterosexist stance while they simultaneously disclose how homophobia enforces the norms of heterosexuality. Foster examines each film in terms of the ideology of its narrative discourse, whether homoerotic desire or a critique of patriarchal heterosexism and its implications for Latin American social life and human rights. His analyses underscore the difficulties involved in constructing a coherent and convincing treatment of the complex issues involved in critiquing the patriarchy from perspectives associated with queer studies. The book will be essential reading for everyone working in queer studies and film studies. The films discussed in this book are: De eso no se habla (I Don't Want to Talk about It)El lugar sin límites (The Place without Limits)Aqueles dois (Those Two)Convivencia (Living Together)Conducta impropia (Improper Conduct)The Disappearance of García LorcaLa Virgen de los Sicarios (Our Lady of the Assassins)Doña Herlinda y su hijo (Doña Herlinda and Her Son)No se lo digas a nadie (Don't Tell Anyone)En el paraíso no existe el dolor (There Is No Suffering in Paradise)A intrusa (The Interloper)Plata quemada (Burnt Money)Afrodita (Aphrodite)Fresa y chocolate (Strawberry and Chocolate)

  • Book cover of History of the Communist Party of the United States
  • Book cover of Culture and Customs of Argentina

    Argentina, one of the most dynamic societies in Latin America, is known for its impressive level of cultural production. This examination of the social and cultural institutions of Argentine society contains a series of comprehensive and informative essays that focus on the most important forms of cultural production in terms of major works, major artists, and major venues. Students and interested readers will discover what is unique about Argentina's culture and customs in this thorough and engaging overview. The authors describe the issues that have dominated Argentine society and place everything in its proper context by including a chronology of major historic events. This volume also contains chapters on Religion, Social Customs, Broadcasting and Print Media, Cinema, Literature, Performing Arts, and Art (including Sculpture, Photography, Architecture, Painting).

  • Book cover of The Writer's Reference Guide to Spanish

    Writers and editors of Spanish have long needed an authoritative guide to written language usage, similar to The MLA Style Manual and The Chicago Manual of Style. And here it is! This reference guide provides comprehensive information on how the Spanish language is copyedited for publication. The book covers these major areas: Language basics: capitalization, word division, spelling, and punctuation. Language conventions: abbreviations, professional and personal titles, names of organizations, and nationalities. Bibliographic format, particularly how Spanish differs from English. Spanish language forms of classical authors' names. Literary and grammatical terminology. Linguistic terminology. Biblical names and allusions. A dictionary of grammatical doubts, including usage, grammatical constructions of particular words and phrases, verbal irregularities, and gender variations.

  • Book cover of Picturing the Barrio

    Mexican-American life, like that of nearly every contemporary community, has been extensively photographed. Yet there is surprisingly little scholarship on Chicano photography. Picturing the Barrio presents the first book-length examination on the topic. David William Foster analyzes the imagery of ten distinctive artists who offer a range of approaches to portraying Chicano life. The production of each artist is examined as an ideological interpretation of how Chicano experience is constructed and interpreted through the medium of photography, in sites ranging from the traditional barrio to large metropolitan societies. These photographers present artistic as well as documentary images of the socially invisible. They and their subjects grapple with definitions of identity, as well as ethnicity and gender. As such, this study deepens our understanding of the many interpretations of the "Chicano experience."

  • Book cover of Sexual Textualities

    Since the 1991 publication of his groundbreaking book Gay and Lesbian Themes in Latin American Writing, David William Foster has proposed a series of theoretical and critical principles for the analysis of Latin American culture from the perspectives of the queer. This book continues that project with a queer reading of literary and cultural aspects of Latin American texts. Moving beyond its predecessor, which provided an initial inventory of Latin American gay and lesbian writing, Sexual Textualities analyzes questions of gender representation in Latin American cultural productions to establish the interrelationships, tensions, and irresolvable conflicts between heterosexism and homoeroticism. The topics that Foster addresses include Eva Peron as a cultural/sexual icon, feminine pornography, Luis Humberto Hermosillo's classic gay film Doña Herlinda y su hijo, homoerotic writing and Chicano authors, Matias Montes Huidobro's Exilio and the representation of gay identity, representation of the body in Alejandra Pizarnik's poetry, and the crisis of masculinity in Argentine fiction from 1940 to 1960.

  • Book cover of The City as Photographic Text

    The City as Photographic Text offers the first comprehensive presentation of photography on São Paulo. But more than just a study of one city’s photographic legacy, this book is a manual for how to understand and talk about Latin American photography in general. Focusing on major figures and referencing widely available books of their work, David William Foster offers a unique analysis of how photographers have contributed to our understanding of the megalopolis São Paulo has become. Eschewing a conventional historical approach, Foster explores how best to interpret visual urban life. In turn, by focusing interest on the photographic text and the ways in which it creates an interpretive meaning for the city, rather than rehearsing the circumstances under which the photographs were taken, this study provides a model for productive comment on urban photography as a project of visual meaning with important artistic attributes. As a unique entry in the inventory of scholarly writing on São Paulo, The City as Photographic Text adds to our understanding of the enormous cultural significance this city holds as a world-class urban center.