In her new compilation of short fiction The Astral Plane: Stories of Cuba, the Southwest and Beyond, Teresa Dovalpage offers a diversity characters in the midst of decisions and transitions. In the presence of South Indian Yogis, New Mexican Santeros, Afro-Cuban Orishas, Edgar Allen Poe, The Beatles and La Llorona, the author details moments in the lives of Cubans, Nuevo Mexicanos and Anglo-Americans. The stories are sometimes comical and often tragic but always engaging. In each one, Dovalpage reminds us that any choice we make, from deciding to leave the country, to walking around the block to engaging in a conversation with a total stranger, could become momentous. In the blink of an eye, the insignificant turns historic. Although each story is self contained and can be read independently, it is when they are read together that they are most affective, unsettling, comic and heartfelt. Characters, storylines, and motifs reappear from one tale to the next, informing and enriching each other. While every story is distinct, these protagonists, who are from varied cultural and economic backgrounds, share common struggles as they stumble in search for a way to escape or a place to land, to live, to be who they are. There are no heroes in these stories but they are not villains either, much like in everyday life. Oddly, that is what is most comforting, for lack of a better word, about The Astral Plane: Stories of Cuba, the Southwest and Beyond, at least for this reader. Dovalpage's characters exude an unapologetic normalcy in their flaws that even toothless false prophets, calculating serial killers, conniving prostitutes, and scheming mothers-in-law become endearing in the end. (Carolina Caballero LatinoLA, February 2, 2012) The stories are thoroughly Cuban, original, delightful, and unexpected. In this cohesive collection, Ms. Dovalpage’s prodigious talent takes us on a dazzling journey of high drama, whimsical imagery, nail-biting suspense, and laugh-out-loud hilarity. Along the way she lays bare the reality of life in Cuba and totally debunks the myths of the Castro Revolution. One favorite passage includes a lyrical, evocative description of El Malecón that made me weep with longing for the sights, sounds, and smells of that drive; a paragraph later I erupted in laughter at a character’s offhand comment. This savory collection is certain to become a favorite read, highly recommended. (February 4, 2012) Teresa Dovalpage’s latest collection of short stories The Astral Plane features a set of stories where the characters have a tenuous connection to each other. The stories showcase how the Cuban Hispanic diaspora spread with contacts with former relatives, escapees via the rafts, and with contacts with visitors and universities that can travel to Cuba with ease. Thus, stories take place partly in Cuba, in Miami, and in Albuquerque. Throughout the tales, the change brought about by Fidel Castro seep out in details about the way people live, the food they eat, the political pressures to conform, the desire for US Cash and lifestyle and the turn to the Santeria religion. Teresa Dovalpage constructs her stories with a heavy dose of metaphor that is artfully shared by taking a distant point of view and by carefully constructing her plots. The plots unfold in a chatty fashion where you learn about the people that surround a character, their family, their friends, and their style of life. Readers will enjoy the unusual mix of character types, settings, and plots that can introduce them to a politically strong minority population in the United States. They make a potent case for democracy and capitalism. (Sheri Fresonke Harper The Compulsive Reader, March 2012) The Astral Plane is the latest book by Cuban author Teresa Dovalpage. Ziva Sahl describes the stories in Dovalpage's collection as, 'thoroughly Cuban, original, delightful, and unexpected.' I had the chance to read the book and can only say that The Astral Plane is another fine accomplishment by one of our most talented Latina writers these days. (Mayra Calvani The Examiner, May 22, 2012)

An outstanding exploration of a photographer, educator, and curator whose work both documented and created change in post-Revolutionary Mexico This stunning and lyrical volume highlights the personal work of Lola Álvarez Bravo (1903–1993), one of Mexico’s foremost photographers. Álvarez Bravo worked as a photojournalist, commercial photographer, portraitist, and educator and played a critical role in her country’s cultural renaissance. In the years following the Mexican Revolution, she captured a profoundly transformative moment for the country’s land, architecture, and people. She remains best known for these works and for her portraits of prominent modernists working in Mexico, including Frida Kahlo, Diego Rivera, and David Alfaro Siqueiros. Lola Álvarez Bravo delves into a lesser-known body of work, in which attention to pattern, light, and abstraction guides the artist’s depictions of urban and rural landscapes and their inhabitants. It also addresses her role in building and securing the legacy of the post-Revolutionary period, her dialogue with modernist photographers, and her place within the broader cultural sphere, offering new insight into the mutual influence she shared with prominent painters, filmmakers, and literary figures of her time.

This study contributes to ongoing discussions on the connections between the environmental imaginary and issues of identity, place and nation. Utilizing a delimited ecocritical approach, McNee puts Brazilian culture, through the work of contemporary poets and visual artists, into a broader, transnational dialogue.

How can Clarice Lispector’s writings help us make sense of the Anthropocene? How does race intersect with the treatment of animals in the works of Joaquim Maria Machado de Assis? What can Indigenous philosopher and leader Ailton Krenak teach us about the relationship between environmental degradation and the production of knowledge? Literature Beyond the Human is the first collection of essays in English dedicated to an investigation of Brazilian literature from the viewpoint of the environmental humanities, animal studies, Anthropocene studies, and other critical and theoretical perspectives that question the centrality of the human. This volume includes 15 chapters by leading scholars covering two centuries of Brazilian literary production, from Gonçalves Dias to Astrid Cabral, from Euclides da Cunha to Davi Kopenawa, and others. By underscoring the vast theoretical potential of Brazilian literature and thought, from the influential Modernist thesis of “cultural cannibalism” (antropofagia) to the renewed interest in Amerindian perspectivism in culture. Post-Anthropocentric Brazil shows how the theoretical strength of Brazilian thought can contribute to contemporary debates in the anglophone realm.

V.1. A-Mat v.2. Mat-Z, encabezamientos en inglés y sus equivalentes en español.

Essay by Elizabeth Ferrer. Foreword by Douglas R. Nickel.

We also suggest that the intellectual biographies of thinkers and professionals are fertile soil for biographical study. Moreover, the prosopographical study of common folks in the Austrian population lifts these lives from the dark matter of anonymous masses and gives rich insight into the lives that ordinary Austrians have been leading. We present an array of political lives, including that of Ignaz Seipel and Therese Schlesinger-Eckstein, as well as "Lives of the Mind" which capture the lives of fascinating intellectual figures in pre- and post-World War II Vienna such as Viktor Frankl and Eugenie Schwarzwald. The approaches to writing biography taken in this volume also suggest that much work needs to be done to shed light on the lives of ordinary Austrians. In this volume we have biographical accounts detailing the lives of soldiers, prisoners of war, and farming families.

The classic manifesto of the liberated woman, this book explores every facet of a woman's life.