Hybrid Americas: Contacts, Contrasts, and Confluences in New World Literatures and Cultures

The twenty-two essays in this collection examine a wide scope of past and present cultural interrelations and interdependences in the Americas. Exploring mutual gazes, separations, and linkages, this volume highlights regional, national, and transnational contacts in the New World; it raises awareness of the contrasts that separate American cultures; and it examines the confluences of New World issues, traditions, and practices. Contributing to the emerging field of Inter-American Studies, this collection increases our theoretical understanding of cultural hybridity and demonstrates that cultural hybridity is by no means a recent phenomenon in the Americas.