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University of Texas Press The University of Texas Press is internationally recognized as one of the pioneer and premier publishers in Latin American studies. The Press began actively publishing books about Latin America fifty years ago, well before the formal establishment of most Latin American studies programs. Continuing that tradition of innovation and excellence, it intends to publish the results of the most exciting new research in Latin American studies from art to political science and to keep in print important books from the past. Part of its mission is to serve as an imperative to and a significant resource for furthering understanding and appreciation of our southern neighbors. Throughout the last five decades, the Latin American studies list at UT Press has stood as a benchmark. More than a quarter of its annual output of some ninety new books is dedicated to a broad range of Latin American topics, and roughly a third of its thousand-plus titles in print are on Latin American topics, making UT Press one of the most prolific as well as one of the most prestigious publishers in that realm. The first book published by the University of Texas Press was a translation from Spanish of The Florida of the Inca by sixteenth-century chronicler Garcilaso de la Vega, and it is still in print today. Many works in translation have followed that original one, notably Ariel, the foundational essay on the relationship (and differences) between the United States and Latin America by José Enrique Rodó, and a stream of classic literary works by now canonical authors such as Nobel prize winners Pablo Neruda and Octavio Paz, Jorge Luis Borges, Machado de Asis, Clarice Lispector and Elena Garro. Forthcoming selected editions of both poetry and prose by the other Chilean Nobel Prize winner, Gabriela Mistral, add another Latin American star to our list. The UT Press Latin American studies program comprises a broad range of topics and time periods from prehistory to the present. Pre-Columbian studies is of long-standing interest here and is represented by work from Tierra del Fuego to Mexico, Guatemala and Belize. Scholars like Tatiana Proskouriakoff, Michael Coe, Linda Schele, and David Grove push aside the barriers of language and time to give a glimpse of the splendors of the ancient Maya world, and a younger generation of researchers like Rosemary Joyce, in her new book Gender and Power in Prehispanic Mesoamerica, continue the rigorous and innovative tradition that is such a vital part of the University of Texas Press. Books from award-winning scholars like Elizabeth Hill Boone (Stories in Red and Black: Pictorial Histories of the Aztec and Mixtec), Anthony Aveni (Between the Lines: The Mystery of the Giant Ground Drawings of Ancient Nasca, Peru and Skywatchers of Ancient Mexico), Eloise Quiñones Keber (Codex Telleriano-Remensis: Ritual, Divination, and History in a Pictorial Aztec Manuscript), and MacArthur Fellow Gary Urton (The Social Life of Numbers: A Quechua Ontology of Numbers and Philosophy of Arithmetic, among other titles) indicate the breadth of the UT Press interest in ancient Latin America. The ethnic diversity of Latin America is evident, and books on the peoples of Latin America take us from the pre-contact world through the colonial periods and into the present. We can begin to appreciate the scope of history and society in Latin America from such books as Anita Brenner’s summary in text and photographs of the Mexican Revolution and Thomas Benjamin’s look at the Revolution as a symbol and tool; ethnographies of modern people and lifeways by scholars like John Watanabe, Joel Sherzer, Gregory Urban, Robert A. Voeks and Beth Conklin; literary studies of writers like Carlos Fuentes, Gabriel García Márquez, Isabel Allende and Clarice Lispector; inquiries into the social, economic and political realms, such as Richard Graham’s edited volume, The Idea of Race in Latin America, and Damián Fernández’s timely study, Cuba and the Politics of Passion; and autobiographical works such as Jean Robert Cadet’s compelling Restavec: From Haitian Slave Child to Middle-Class American. And from these same books, we can understand the complexity of traditions and knowledge-systems that not only rivaled but bested, in many cases, those of the Europeans who arrived in the sixteenth century. Works on language and literature, like Joseph J. Keenan’s Breaking Out of Beginner’s Spanish, Stephen Tapscott’s Twentieth-Century Poetry of Latin America, and David Foster’s Mexican Literature: A History and The Writer’s Reference Guide to Spanish; major reference works like the Handbook of Middle American Indians and its Supplement series, and the Handbook of Latin American Studies published for the Library of Congress; and several series co-published with UT’s Lozano Long Institute of Latin American Studies (LLILAS) from the 1960s through the present, give ample testimony to the importance of Latin American studies to the University of Texas Press. Conversely, numerous awards, citations, reviews and classroom adoption sales for the last fifty-one years attest to the importance of UT Press to the field of Latin American studies. New initiatives in Latin American art and culture, supported in part by a generous endowment from Joe and Teresa Lozano Long and showcased by such recent publications as Jacqueline Barnitz’s Twentieth-Century Art of Latin America, promise to keep the University of Texas Press at the cutting edge of publishing in Latin American studies for many years to come. While scholars and researchers around the world work to enlarge our storehouse of cultural knowledge about Latin America, the University of Texas Press is committed to making that knowledge relevant and accessible. Our books go into libraries, into classrooms, and into the hands and homes of readers whose curiosity honors no borders. For a more complete listing of University of Texas Press publications, contact us at 512-232-7600 or visit the University of Texas Press Web site. Theresa May issue index next article

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