Recovering Lost Footprints is the first full-length critical study to analyze Latin American Indigenous literary narratives in a systematic manner. In the book, Arturo Arias looks at Maya narratives in Guatemala. The study of these works is intended to spark changes so that constitutions recognize these cultures, their rights, their languages, their centers of worship, and their cosmologies. Through this study, Arias problematizes the partial or full omission of Latin America's original inhabitants from recognized citizenry. This book analyzes these elements of exclusion in the novelistic output of three salient figures, Luis de Lión, Gaspar Pedro González, and Víctor Montejo. The works by these writers offer evidence that most native people have entered modernity without renouncing their respective cultures or the specifics of their singular identities. The philosophical ethics elaborated in the texts, such as respect for nature and recognition of the holistic value of natural beings, enable non-Indigenous readers to both understand and relate to these values.

Analyzes contemporary Yucatecan and Chiapanecan Maya narratives. Recovering Lost Footprints, Volume 2 is an in-depth analysis of the sociohistorical conflict impacting Indigenous communities in Latin America. Continuing the project he began in volume 1, Arturo Arias analyzes contemporary Peninsular and Chiapanecan Maya narratives. He examines the works of Yucatecan writers Jorge Cocom Pech, Javier Gómez Navarrete, Isaac Carrillo Can, and Marisol Ceh Moo. For Chiapas, Arias looks at the works of Tseltal novelist Diego Méndez Guzmán, Tsotsil short-story writer Nicolás Huet Bautista, and Tseltal narrative writer Josías López Gómez. Arias problematizes the nature of Western modernity and the crisis of Western models of development in the present. By way of his analysis, he suggests that we are facing a historical impasse because we have neglected native knowledges that offer alternative codes of ethics and beingness that emerge from Indigenous cosmovisions. The text skillfully contributes to and strengthens debates between US-centered and Latin American cultural studies theorists, as well as the hemispheric expansion of Native American and Indigenous Studies. Recovering Lost Footprints, Volume 2 is inspired more by the past as it impinges upon a continuing, constantly expanding present. Arias’s reading of Maya literatures forces us to reconsider the space-time structure of Western thinking. Indeed, this book is intriguing precisely because it views literature from an Indigenous perspective, evidencing how that social space is full of multiple contrasting experiences and historical processes. “By drawing attention to the articulation between the contemporary literary production and its relationship to Mayan cosmovision in a broad sense, and focusing on the different traditions preserved through diverse languages and customs, this rich, comprehensive overview offers glimpses of a very different worldview.” — Cynthia Margarita Tompkins, author of Affectual Erasure: Representations of Indigenous Peoples in Argentine Cinema

The Routledge Companion to Twentieth and Twenty-First Century Latin American Literary and Cultural Forms brings together a team of expert contributors in this critical and innovative volume. Highlighting key trends within the discipline, as well as cutting-edge viewpoints that revise and redefine traditional debates and approaches, readers will come away with an understanding of the complexity of twenty-first-century Latin American cultural production and with a renovated and eminently contemporary understanding of twentieth-century literature and culture. This invaluable resource will be of interest to advanced students and academics in the fields of Latin American literature, cultural studies, and comparative literature.

The Serpent's Plumes analyzes contemporary Nahua cultural production, principally bilingual Nahuatl-Spanish xochitlajtoli, or "poetry," written from the 1980s to the present. Adam W. Coon draws on Nahua perspectives as a decolonizing theoretical framework to argue that Nahua writers deploy unique worldviews—namely, ixtlamatilistli ("knowledge with the face," which highlights the value of personal experiences); yoltlajlamikilistli ("knowledge with the heart," which underscores the importance of affective intelligence); and tlaixpan ("that which is in front," which presents the past as lying ahead of a subject rather than behind). The views of ixtlamatilistli, yoltlajlamikilistli, and tlaixpan are key in Nahua struggles and effectively challenge those who attempt to marginalize Native knowledge production.

Mikel Ruiz's The Errant Children, the first novel published in the Tsotsil Maya language, offers a bold and unflinching portrayal of contemporary Maya life in Chiapas, México. Pedro Ton Tsepente' has a position in his village's traditional council, but rather than taking just a few ceremonial drinks, he becomes an alcoholic, subject to blackouts and delirium tremens. His wife, Pascuala, rages at God to step in and change her husband's behavior, taking extreme measures when He does not. Their neighbor, seventeen-year-old Ignacio Ts'unun, learns about gender relations by watching television programs where beautiful women are lighter-skinned and about sex by watching pornography, which leads to disastrous choices. These characters' suffering comes not from conquerors, missionaries, or settlers but from invasive economic and cultural forces that can make Indigenous people devalue themselves. Do not expect to be uplifted, but do prepare to be astonished.

Cultural preservation, linguistic revitalization, intellectual heritage, and environmental sustainability became central to Indigenous movements in Mexico and Central America after 1992. While the emergence of these issues triggered important conversations, none to date have examined the role that new media has played in accomplishing their objectives. Indigenous Interfaces provides the first thorough examination of indigeneity at the interface of cyberspace. Correspondingly, it examines the impact of new media on the struggles for self-determination that Indigenous peoples undergo in Mexico and Central America. The volume’s contributors highlight the fresh approaches that Mesoamerica’s Indigenous peoples have given to new media—from YouTubing Maya rock music to hashtagging in Zapotec. Together, they argue that these cyberspatial activities both maintain tradition and ensure its continuity. Without considering the implications of new technologies, Indigenous Interfaces argues, twenty-first-century indigeneity in Mexico and Central America cannot be successfully documented, evaluated, and comprehended. Indigenous Interfaces rejects the myth that indigeneity and information technology are incompatible through its compelling analysis of the relationships between Indigenous peoples and new media. The volume illustrates how Indigenous peoples are selectively and strategically choosing to interface with cybertechnology, highlights Indigenous interpretations of new media, and brings to center Indigenous communities who are resetting modes of communication and redirecting the flow of information. It convincingly argues that interfacing with traditional technologies simultaneously with new media gives Indigenous peoples an edge on the claim to autonomous and sovereign ways of being Indigenous in the twenty-first century. Contributors Arturo Arias Debra A. Castillo Gloria Elizabeth Chacón Adam W. Coon Emiliana Cruz Tajëëw Díaz Robles Mauricio Espinoza Alicia Ivonne Estrada Jennifer Gómez Menjívar Sue P. Haglund Brook Danielle Lillehaugen Paul Joseph López Oro Rita M. Palacios Gabriela Spears-Rico Paul Worley

Reconceptualizing the epic genre and opening it up to a world of storytelling, The Epic World makes a timely and bold intervention toward understanding the human propensity to aestheticize and normalize mass deployments of power and violence. The collection broadly considers three kinds of epic literature: conventional celebratory tales of conquest that glorify heroism, especially male heroism; anti-epics or stories of conquest from the perspectives of the dispossessed, the oppressed, the despised, and the murdered; and heroic stories utilized for imperialist or nationalist purposes. The Epic World illustrates global patterns of epic storytelling, such as the durability of stories tied to religious traditions and/or to peoples who have largely "stayed put"; the tendency to reimagine and retell stories in new ways over centuries; and the imbrication of epic storytelling and forms of colonialism and imperialism, especially those perpetuated and glorified by Euro-Americans over the past 500 years, resulting in unspeakable and immeasurable harms to humans, other living beings, and the planet Earth. The Epic World is a go-to volume for anyone interested in epic literature in a global framework. Engaging with powerful stories and ways of knowing beyond those of the predominantly white Global North, this field-shifting volume exposes the false premises of "Western civilization" and "Classics," and brings new questions and perspectives to epic studies.

Volume 1: "Recovering Lost Footprints is the first full-length critical study to analyze Latin American Indigenous literary narratives in a systematic manner. In the book, Arturo Arias looks at Maya narratives in Guatemala. The study of these works is intended to spark changes so that constitutions recognize these cultures, their rights, their languages, their centers of worship, and their cosmologies. Through this study, Arias problematizes the partial or full omission of Latin America's original inhabitants from recognized citizenry. This book analyzes these elements of exclusion in the novelistic output of three salient figures, Luis de Lión, Gaspar Pedro González, and Víctor Montejo. The works by these writers offer evidence that most native people have entered modernity without renouncing their respective cultures or the specifics of their singular identities. The philosophical ethics elaborated in the texts, such as respect for nature and recognition of the holistic value of natural beings, enable non-Indigenous readers to both understand and relate to these values." -- SUNY Press.

How does coding change the way we think about architecture? This question opens up an important research perspective. In this book, Miro Roman and his AI Alice_ch3n81 develop a playful scenario in which they propose coding as the new literacy of information. They convey knowledge in the form of a project model that links the fields of architecture and information through two interwoven narrative strands in an “infinite flow” of real books. Focusing on the intersection of information technology and architectural formulation, the authors create an evolving intellectual reflection on digital architecture and computer science.

Christian-Muslim Relations, a Bibliographical History, Volume 8 (CMR 8) covering Northern and Eastern Europe in the period 1600-1700, is a continuing volume in a general history of relations between the two faiths from the seventh century to the early 20th century. It comprises a series of introductory essays and also the main body of detailed entries which treat all the works, surviving or lost, that have been recorded. These entries provide biographical details of the authors, descriptions and assessments of the works themselves, and complete accounts of manuscripts, editions, translations and studies. The result of collaboration between numerous leading scholars, CMR 8, along with the other volumes in this series is intended as a basic tool for research in Christian-Muslim relations. Section Editors: Clinton Bennett, Luis F. Bernabe Pons, Jaco Beyers, Lejla Demiri, Martha Frederiks, David Grafton, Stanisław Grodź, Alan Guenther, Emma Loghin, Gordon Nickel, Claire Norton, Reza Pourjavady, Douglas Pratt, Radu Păun, Peter Riddell, Umar Ryad, Cornelia Soldat, Karel Steenbrink, Davide Tacchini, Ann Thomson, Serge Traore, Carsten Walbiner