Decolonizing American Spanish

Eurocentrism and Foreignness in the Imperial Ecosystem

Jeffrey Herlihy-Mera

• Publisher: University of Pittsburgh Press
• Year: 2022
• eBook ISBN: 9780822988984
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Higher Education

Despite a pronounced shift away from Eurocentrism in Spanish and Hispanic studies departments in US universities, many implicit and explicit vestiges of coloniality remain firmly in place. While certain national and linguistic expressions are privileged, others are silenced with predictable racial and gendered results. Decolonizing American Spanish challenges not only the hegemony of Spain and its colonial pedagogies, but also the characterization of Spanish as a foreign language in the United States. By foregrounding Latin American cultures and local varieties of Spanish and reconceptualizing the foreign as domestic, Jeffrey Herlihy-Meraworks to create new conceptual maps, revise inherited ones, and institutionalize marginalized and silenced voices and their stories. Considering the University of Puerto Rico as a point of context, this book brings attention to how translingual solidarity and education, a commitment to social transformation, and the engagement of student voices in their own languages can reinvent colonized education.

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Contents
• Preface: When Do We Improve upon Silence by Speaking?
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction: Colonialism in US Spanish Departments
• 1: After Hispanic Studies: On the Democratization of Spanish-Language Cultural Study
• 2: Vetting the Decolonial Turn
• 3: Multilingual Cognition and Ethno-Lingual Relativity: Expanding “Spanish” Maps of Meaning
• 4: Spain: The Arabized Province of Latin America, or, Which Quijote Do We Need?
• 5: On the Puertoricanization of US Higher Education: or, The Awkward Constraints of Using One Language
• Conclusion: Overcoming the Tradition of Silence
• Notes
• References
• Index