Hispanic Cultural Studies

What is Hispanic Cultural Studies?

The field of Hispanic Cultural Studies lies at the intersection of Spanish language and cultural studies: that is, this field preoccupies itself with the study of culture produced in Spanish or in a Hispanic context, which means a context where Spanish is spoken. Although field conventions vary with time, typically scholars of Hispanic Cultural Studies cover cultural production mostly from Spain and Spanish-speaking Latin American countries, but they also include production in other languages that coexist with Spanish, such as Nahuatl, Maya K’iche’, Kichwa, or Catalan. In the case of Spain, scholars cover cultural production from the emergence of Spanish language, around the 8th century, to this day, while specialists in Latin America also include Indigenous cultural production from before the colonization of the Americas. Some scholars in the field choose to specialize in more marginal regions of the Hispanic world, such as Equatorial Guinea. Scholars in this field study film, poetry, short stories, non-fictional prose, drama, novels, and other cultural products with the goal of critically analyzing and interpreting them. Our research “does not have extrinsic value, such as solving practical problems or investigating hypotheses, but value that is intrinsic to the discipline” (Carter 398). We study these texts and cultural products because we find that a deep understanding and knowledge of cultures is enriching and valuable in itself, even if it is not productive in a material way.

Written Products of This Field

Scholars of Hispanic cultural studies typically write academic books, academic journal articles, and conference presentations, although sometimes they also write texts for a wider, general audience in the press covering cultural news or reviewing recent cultural production. Good, credible scholars in this field develop a nuanced interpretation of an object based on their insightful analysis through close reading, use of textual evidence, the adequate sociohistorical contextualization of the object, and the mobilization of an appropriate theoretical frame. Scholars adapt their approach to each specific work and select the most appropriate analytical tools for each case. For example, scholar Doris Sommer explores a series of 19th-century Latin American novels (through close reading and textual evidence) that mark the beginning of a national literature in each given country (sociohistorical contextualization) through the idea of love and romance (theoretical frame).

Common Threshold Concepts in This Field

Some common threshold concepts in the field of Hispanic Cultural Studies are analysis, meaning, context, and form, as scholar Paul Corrigan has stated. Novice learners in this field are sometimes confused by the concept of analysis. When we approach a cultural product, like a short story, we do not merely summarize it or describe it, but rather we try to state what the text conveys and what specific strategies it sets in motion to convey that message. For example, Mexican artist José Clemente Orozco’s mural work Cortés y La Malinche depicts Spanish conqueror Hernán Cortés and Malintzin, his female Indigenous interpreter with whom he had a son, both naked and holding hands. Beyond the mere description of the image, one could claim that Orozco is depicting the beginning of the Mexican nation as the byproduct of the (sexual) union between the Spanish colonizers and the Indigenous population, which resulted in the symbolical birth of the mestizo people of Mexico. To approach our analysis, we often use close reading and some theoretical framework that serves as a lens through which we look at a given text. Some theoretical frameworks that are currently popular are decolonial studies, memory studies, gender and sexuality studies, migration and diaspora studies, posthumanism and environmentalism, materiality, Marxism, psychoanalysis, etc. However, trends in theory vary with time and they will continue to do so. For example, narratology was a popular literary theory decades ago, while currently many scholars employ affect theory to approach their work. This way, our knowledge keeps growing and widening.

The meaning of a text is the result of the act of reading and analyzing it. However, a text might not hold one single meaning, but might simultaneously hold different meanings. The meaning of a text can also vary with time and the approach of different scholars, theories, and lenses. Thus, canonical Spanish novel Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes was understood by 19th-century intellectuals as a celebration of marginal subjects who oppose societal expectations and conventions, while scholars in the 20th century have mostly read the novel as a parody that makes fun of a mentally ill man and advances a pessimistic message on the sociopolitical and economic state of the Spanish Empire in the 17th century.

Most of us understand that knowing the context in which a text was produced will render a better understanding of said text. However, the context of a text expands well beyond its historical frame, and includes personal and biographical details, the pertinent literary, artistic, and cultural movement, politics, religion, theory and philosophy, etc. For example, our understanding of stylistic and thematic resources of the poem “Nocturno III” by Colombian José Asunción Silva is illuminated when we read the poem as framed within the Hispanic Romanticism literary movement: the use of a wide variety of meter choices, the grim atmosphere, and the sentimentalism mobilized in the poem through the centering of the subjects’ emotions and the repeated use of aposiopesis (a sentence whose ending is interrupted and left unfinished) and ecphonesis (exclamations). However, when one learns also that Silva suffered the loss of a beloved sister and ended up taking his own life, the poem is further illuminated: now we understand in a new way the longing of the lyrical self for a deceased lyrical you, and the ending in which the self decides to follow the shadow of the deceased one beyond darkness.

Lastly, the threshold concept of form might prove challenging for novice learners of the field. The form of the text, that is, how the text is constructed (its structure, if it uses a first person or a third person narrator, the meter, the metaphors, the kind of language mobilized, the colors and shapes, the perspective, etc.), directly informs its content (what the text says). Ultimately, the form directly enacts the meaning of the poem. For example, Spanish poet José de Espronceda employs a variety of meters in his poem “Canción del pirata,” which celebrates the idea of total freedom through the figure of a pirate. Here, the mobilization of a wide variety of meters enacts the idea of freedom itself, for the poet is defying literary conventions.

Citation Practices in the Field

Our citation practices embody and enact our values and goals. Scholars in this field aspire to contribute to and enrich a long academic conversation that has been taking place for centuries and will continue to unfold for generations. For that reason, we typically prefer integral citation structures. That is, we incorporate the name of the scholar we are citing in the reporting sentence, and not merely in a parenthetical citation at the end of the sentence. This style of citing highlights the prominence of the author cited. There are several canonical figures in the field and its different subfields who are well known by scholars, and citing them in an integral structure is not only a manner of acknowledging their valuable contributions to the field, but also of inscribing ourselves into that ongoing academic conversation and of affiliating ourselveswith the legacy of that scholar. Summary and generalization are the most common strategies to cite other scholars’ work, but sometimes we also employ quotes, including long quotes that clearly demonstrate or support with textual evidence the idea or argument we are articulating. Some of the most commonly used reporting verbs that we use to introduce citations in integral structures are say, suggest, argue, claim, point out, propose, and think (Hyland 27). There are several different citation styles, but scholars in this field, like most scholars in disciplines within the Humanities, usually prefer the latest MLA citing style guide, which is currently the 9th edition of the MLA Handbook.

Undergraduate Writing in the Field

Undergraduate students in this discipline are typically expected to employ close reading skills to analyze and interpret a wide range of cultural objects with special attention to literature, film, and art. They are also expected to adequately contextualize a Hispanic cultural object or text within its historical, social, political, biographical, philosophical, religious, literary, and artistic context. They should be able to come up with an appropriate research question when tackling a writing project, to develop a thesis statement answering said question, and to employ textual evidence and secondary sources to support their claims and ideas in a cohesive, well-organized manner while mobilizing a formal, academic linguistic register and tone. They are also expected to become apt at searching for secondary academic sources, and selecting, quoting, and citing them.

Indiana University Bloomington has a strong program in Hispanic Cultural Studies where seasoned instructors guide students through their educational and writing journey, helping them develop the required tools and skills to become polished writers in the field and prepare them for graduate degrees. Students can accomplish their objectives by regularly attending classes, thoroughly completing assigned readings, enthusiastically engaging with materials, assignments, and class discussions, taking notes, putting effort and time into writing assignments, revising their assignments based on feedback, attending office hours, and discussing their work with their instructor.