The Americas

David W. Walker (1948-2001)

A few years ago at a RMCLAS meeting in Santa Fe, David Walker had organized a panel that included John Coatsworth as commentator. It is quite possible that John Coatsworth never knew he was on that panel, but he was not in attendance at that meeting. There was a name-tag prepared for him, however, and the night of the awards dance--a Ray Sadler idea to get away from another dull banquet--David picked up that name tag and started wearing it. Clad in his usual jeans, boots, and other cowboy regalia--the farther away from Texas he went, the more Texan he became--David began asking all the women in attendance if they would like to dance with "John Coatsworth." It was great fun. After every woman in the place had their chance, he began giving the males a chance to dance with "John Coatsworth." I suffered through the experience. David LaFrance did. There may have been others--my memory is not that great as David was not the only one drinking tequila that night. I do not know if John Coatsworth ever heard of the night his name was so abused, but, if so, I bet he understood. After all, he was one of the major influences in the career development of this fine historian and incredible personality, David W. Walker.

David Walker died this summer--a life lived to the fullest with a career advancing rapidly--in a sky-diving accident in South Texas. David leaves Gracie and their four children, Robert David Francisco, Juanita Elizabeth, Ana Victoria and her twin, John Henry, who has heroically fought cancer and inspired all the family the last few years. His death also leaves many of us among his good friends in something of a state of disbelief--how could this be? David no longer with us?

David has one of the most revealing web sites I have ever run across, if it is still around (http://www.msu.edu/user/walkerd). From this you can learn that he was born in Natchitoches, Louisiana, grew up in the refinery suburbs of Houston, Texas, and went on to an undistinguished academic record until duty in Vietnam called. David never got over Vietnam, as only John Hart and a few others he confided in can attest. His experiences there weighed heavily on him all the rest of his life. On his web site, he commented that his main concern as a historian of agrarian revolution [End Page 285] in Durango was influenced by his questioning "why do some people chose to resist--no matter what the cost?"--a question he carried home from Southeast Asia. I met David when he returned from Vietnam. He came to Texas A&I University in Kingsville (now swallowed up in the A&M system and carrying a different name), where I had the pleasure of introducing him to Latin American and Mexican history. What a joy to have such a bright, inquisitive student! But it was not always easy. David was brighter than most people he encountered in his life--but his problem was that very often he let people he met know it. He started graduate work with me and I remember a seminar where I had each student write a paper and also critique another student paper. That was all well and good until David's turn to critique came up. Virtually the entire class was cowering under his devastating, and correct, critique. David Walker was always honest, brutally honest sometimes, in a world where such an attribute is not always valued.

David did not finish his master's with me but instead went to the University of Houston, where he studied under John Mason Hart. He not only became one of John's best ever students, but he became a fast friend. From Houston, David went to Chicago and studied under Friedrich Katz and John Coatsworth. He admired all three of these distinguished scholars immensely, and, from what I have been able to determine, much of that admiration was mutual.

After leaving Chicago, David taught at eight different universities, before he seemed to find a home at Michigan State University in 1991, with Gracie happy to be working in Lansing schools, and the growing family putting down some roots. Before landing in East Lansing, David published his well-received Kinship, Business, and Politics (University of Texas Press, 1987) and numerous articles. He was well along on another book, which still may be produced, on the agriculture society and agrarian radicalism in Durango. Work on this project was set aside when David took a year to be with his ill son. He knew what was important in life.

His recent fascination with sky diving is amply discussed on his web site under the heading: "The Dangerous Pursuit of Leisure: Trying Not To Become History." At the conclusion of the section, he wrote, "If you can't be good, DO BE LUCKY." On his last dive, he was neither--but I consider myself lucky to have known him--a sentiment I know I share with many of our colleagues.

Ward S. Albro

Awards, Fellowships, and Prizes

Guggenheim Awards

The John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation has announced its awards for advanced research for 2001. The editors congratulate the following scholars of Latin America who have been included among those selected. [End Page 286]

Jeremy Adelman, Professor of History, Princeton University: The political economy of revolution in South America, 1750-1824.

Catherine J. Allen, Professor of Anthropology and International Affairs, George Washington University: Cultural patterning in Andean art.

Tom D. Dillehay, Professor of Anthropology, University of Kentucky: History and the identity politics of the Chilean Mapuche.

Ana Fernández Garay, Associate Researcher, National Research Council of Argentina (CONICET); Professor of Linguistics, National University of La Pampa, Argentina: An edition of the testimonies of the last Ranquels.

Asunción Lavrin, Professor of History, Arizona State University: Masculinity and the religious orders in colonial Mexico.

Claudio Mercado Muñoz, Coordinator of Audiovisual Department, Chilean Museum of Pre-Colombian Art, Santiago: Bailes chinos and prehispanic memory in central Chile.

Tomas Moulian Emparanza, Director, Instituto Formación Social Paulo Freire, Santiago, Chile: Intellectuals and politics in Chile, 1958-1970.

Hans W. Niemeyer Fernandez, Archaeologist, Santiago, Chile: The rock paintings of El Médano.

Amy G. Remensnyder, Associate Professor of History, Brown University: Conquest, conversion, and the Virgin Mary in medieval Spain and Spanish colonial America.

Sol Serrano, Associate Professor of History, Catholic University of Chile: Catholicism and secularization in 19th-century Chile.

Jorge Daniel Tartarini, Associate Researcher, National Research Council of Argentina (CONICET): The architecture of the Argentine railroads.

Alejandro Tortolero Villaseñor, Professor of History, Metropolitan Autonomous University, Iztapalapa, Mexico: Land, society, and ecology in the economy of Mexico, 1780-1940.

The Editors

John Carter Brown Library Awards

The John Carter Brown Library, an independently administered and funded center for advanced research in history and the humanities located at Brown University, has awarded fellowships to 27 scholars from around the world for the 2001-2002 academic year.

All of the fellows will be doing research in the Library's renowned collection of primary materials relating to the European discovery, exploration, settlement, and development of the New World, the African contribution to the development of this hemisphere, and indigenous responses to the European conquest. Ten scholars received longterm fellowships (five to nine months): two funded by the National Endowment for the Humanities (an agency of the Federal government); five by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation; and one each by the Lampadia Foundation and the Arthur F. and Alice E. Adams Charitable Foundation jointly; by the Library's J. M. [End Page 287] Stuart Endowment; and by Connecticut College and the John Carter Brown Library jointly. The other scholars will be in residence during the year for periods ranging from two to four months.

Fourteen fellows will be receiving support from special Library endowment funds, in addition to the Stuart endowment, mentioned above. Several of these are restricted in scope: the Jeannette D. Black Memorial Fellowship for the study of the history of cartography; the Maria Elena Cassiet Fellowship for scholars from Spanish America; the Ruth and Lincoln Ekstrom Fellowship for research on the history of women and the family in the Americas; the Touro National Heritage Trust Fellowship for research on the history of the Jewish experience in the Americas before 1825; and the Alexander O. Vietor Memorial Fellowship for research in early maritime history. The William Reese Company Fellowship for the study of bibliography and the history of printing is supported by annual grants from the Company.

Other fellowships are awarded without topical restrictions: the Helen Watson Buckner Memorial Fellowship; the Paul W. McQuillen Memorial Fellowship; the Barbara S. Mosbacher Fellowship; and the Charles H. Watts Memorial Fellowship. Some fellowships are underwritten by the endowment of the Library's Center for New World Comparative Studies, and one fellowship is supported by annual gifts from the Associates of the John Carter Brown Library. The Lampadia-Adams Fellowship is restricted to senior scholars from Argentina, Brazil, or Chile. The JCB/Connecticut College Research Fellowship and Visiting Professorship is restricted to scholars from Spain or Spanish America.

Of the 27 fellows invited this year, 10 are coming from foreign countries, and 11 are completing work on doctoral dissertations. According to the Director of the Library, Dr. Norman Fiering, "It is part of the essential mission of the John Carter Brown Library to offer scholars from distant places modest financial support when their research requires that they travel to Providence to use the Library's unique resources." A list of fellows, their current institutional affiliations, and the titles of their projects follows. The number in parentheses indicates the length of their tenure at the Library.

Jose Manuel de Bernardo Ares, University of Cordoba, Spain. "The PoliticalTerritorial Articulation of New England: The Duel for Empire between the Treaties of Ryswick (1697) and Utrecht (1713)." Center for New World Comparative Studies Fellow (3).

Lisa Brooks, Cornell University. "Recovering the Voices of Our Ancestors." John Carter Brown Library Fellow (2).

Denver A. Brunsman, Princeton University. "From Riots to Rights: Opposition to British Naval Impressment in Transatlantic Perspective, 1689-1815." Alexander O. Vietor Memorial Fellow (2).

Benjamin L. Carp, University of Virginia. "Cityscapes and Revolution: Urban Spaces and Revolutionary Mobilization in North America, 1740-1790." Barbara S. Mosbacher Fellow (2). [End Page 288]

Jose Carlos Chiaramonte, University of Buenos Aires, Argentina. "Fundamentos Iusnaturalistas del Federalismo: Examen Comparativo en las Independencias Norteamericana e Iberoamericana." Lampadia-Adams Fellow (5).

Luca Codignola, Universita di Genova, Italy. Andrew W. Mellon Senior Research Fellow (5).

John E. Crowley, Dalhousie University, Canada. "The Development of a Global Landscape in British Visual Culture, c. 1750-1820." Andrew W. Mellon Postdoctoral Research Fellow (4).

Christopher D'Addario, Washington University in St. Louis. "The Exiled Imagination in Seventeenth-Century England." Center for New World Comparative Studies Fellow (2).

Fermin del PinoDíaz, Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas, Spain. "Edition of 'The Natural and Moral History of the Indies' (HNMI) of Father Acosta, and the Study of the HNMI Literary Genre." JCB/Connecticut College Fellow (5).

James Delbourgo, Columbia University. "Political Electricity: Experimentalism, Enthusiasm, and Enlightenment in 18th-Century British America." Paul W. McQuillen Memorial Fellow (2).

Blanche T. Ebeling-Koning, Catholic University of America. "Seventeenth-Century Brazilian History: A Translation of Caspar van Baerle's Rerum per octennium et alibi nuper gestarum . . . Historia." William Reese Company Fellow (3).

Matthew H. Edney, University of Southern Maine. "Cartographic Practices and the British North American Colonies." Jeannette D. Black Memorial Fellow (3).

Pawel Konieczny, Pedagogical University of Cracow, Poland. "The Gentlemen of EighteenthCentury Virginia: Social and Political Issues Concerning English Colonies in North America." John Carter Brown Library Fellow.

Hal Langfur, University of North Carolina at Wilmington. "The Forbidden Lands: Frontier Settlers, Slaves, and Indians in Minas Gerais, Brazil, 17601830." National Endowment for the Humanities Fellow (9).

Kittiya Monica Lee, Johns Hopkins University. "Translating the Faith: The General Languages of Colonial Latin America in the Construction of Christendom and IberianAmerindian Society (1549-1759)." Center for New World Comparative Studies Fellow (2).

Kenneth MacMillan, McMaster University, Canada. "Expressions of English Sovereignty in New Found Lands, 1570-1640." Helen Watson Buckner Memorial Fellow (2).

Tota C. Mangar, University of Guyana, Guyana. "European Exploration and Settlement in the Caribbean in the 16th and 17th Centuries." Center for New World Comparative Studies Fellow (2).

Luis MillonesFigueroa, Colby College. "Natural Histories of the New World (16th and 17th Centuries)." Center for New World Comparative Studies Fellow (2).

Stella E. Nair, University of California, Berkeley. "Of Remembrance and Forgetting: The Architecture of Chinchero, Peru, from Thupa Inca to the Spanish Occupation." Paul W. McQuillen Memorial Fellow (2).

Moises Orfali, BarIlan University, Israel. "Isaac Aboab da Fonseca: One of the First Jewish Authors in the New World." Touro National Heritage Trust Fellow (2). [End Page 289]

Horst Pietschrnann, Universität Hamburg, Germany. Andrew W. Mellon Senior Research Fellow (5).

Matthew Pursell, Brown University. "The Intellectual Construction of Servitude in the British Atlantic, 1630 to 1780." J. M. Stuart Fellow (9).

Matthew Restall, Pennsylvania State University. "The Black Middle: Slavery, Society, and African/Maya Relations in Colonial Yucatan." National Endowment for the Humanities Fellow (6).

Neil Safier, Johns Hopkins University. "Turning Water into Lines: European Scientific Exploration and the Eighteenth-Century Cartographic Construction of Amazonia." Charles H. Watts Memorial Fellow (4).

Wil Verhoeven, University of Groningen, The Netherlands. "Transatlantic Identities: The Dutch Republic and America." Library Associates Fellow (3).

Tim Watson, Princeton University. "The Sun Also Sets: Transatlantic Cultures at the Ends of the British Empire." Andrew W. Mellon Postdoctoral Research Fellow (5).

Elizabeth Wright, University of Georgia. "Imperial Odysseys: Travel and Translation in Spain's New Worlds, 1556-1598." Andrew W. Mellon Postdoctoral Research Fellow (6).

In addition, the following scholars will be in official residence at the Library for varying lengths of time:

James Muldoon, Professor Emeritus, Rutgers University, New Jersey. (Invited Research Scholar).

Jack P. Greene, Johns Hopkins University, Maryland. (Invited Research Scholar).

Amy Turner Bushnell, Independent Scholar. (Research Associate).

The John Carter Brown Library houses one of the world's outstanding collections of early and rare Americana, covering the area from Greenland to Patagonia. Its more than 45,000 volumes dating from before ca. 1820 include, for example, European accounts of voyages by explorers, literature on the growth of the colonies, accounts of the American Indians, religious writings, and literature on the colonial wars and wars for independence. The Library also has an extensive collection of maps dating from 1477 to the mid-19th century. Visit the John Carter Brown Library website at: www.JCBL.org.

John Carter Brown Library

Research Fellowships to Be Awarded

The John Carter Brown Library will award approximately twenty-five short and longterm Research Fellowships for the year June 1, 2002-May 31, 2003. Short-term fellowships are available for periods of two to four months and carry a stipend of $1,300 per month. These fellowships are open to foreign nationals as well as to U.S. citizens who are engaged in pre and postdoctoral, or independent, research. Graduate students must have passed their preliminary or general examinations at the time of application and be at the dissertation-writing stage. Longterm fellowships, primarily funded by the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) and the [End Page 290] Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, are typically for five to nine months and carry a stipend of $3,000 per month. Recipients of longterm fellowships may not be engaged in graduate work and ordinarily must be U. S. citizens or have resided in the U. S. for the three years immediately preceding the application deadline.

It should be noted that the Library's holdings are concentrated on the history of the Western Hemisphere during the colonial period (ca. 1492 to ca. 1825), emphasizing the European discovery, exploration, settlement, and development of the Americas, the indigenous response to the European conquest, the African contribution to the development of the hemisphere, and all aspects of European relations with the New World, including the impact of the New World on the Old. Research proposed by fellowship applicants must be suited to the holdings of the Library. All fellows are expected to relocate to Providence and to be in continuous residence at the Library for the entire term of the fellowship.

Several shortterm fellowships have thematic restrictions: the Jeannette D. Black Memorial Fellowship in the history of cartography; Center for New World Comparative Studies Fellowships for research in the comparative history of the colonial Americas; the Alexander O. Vietor Memorial Fellowship in early maritime history; the Ruth and Lincoln Ekstrom Fellowship in the history of women and the family in the Americas; the William Reese Company Fellowship in bibliography and the history of printing; and the Touro National Heritage Trust Fellowship for research on some aspect of the Jewish experience in the New World before 1825. Maria Elena Cassiet Fellowships are restricted to scholars who are permanent residents of countries in Spanish America. The Lampadia-Adams Fellowship is restricted to senior scholars from Argentina, Brazil, or Chile.

The application deadline for fellowships for 2002-2003 is January 15, 2002. For application forms or more information, write to: Director, John Carter Brown Library, Box l894, Providence, RI 02912. Tel.: 401-863-2725. Fax: 401-863-3477. EMail: JCBL_Fellowships@brown.edu. Web Site: http://www.JCBL.org

John Carter Brown Library

Clements Research Fellowships for 2002-2003

The William P. Clements Center for Southwest Studies in the Department of History at Southern Methodist University in Dallas welcomes applications for three research fellowships, known as The Bill and Rita Clements Research Fellowships for the Study of Southwestern America. Individuals in any field in the humanities or social sciences doing research on Southwestern America are invited to apply. The fellowships are designed to provide time for senior or junior scholars to bring book-length manuscripts to completion.

Fellows will be expected to spend the 2002-2003 academic year at SMU to teach one course during the two-semester duration of the fellowship, and to participate in [End Page 291] Clements Center activities. Each fellow will receive the support of the Center and access to the extraordinary holdings of the DeGolyer Library. Fellowships carry a stipend of $31,000, health benefits, a $2,000 allowance for research and travel expenses, and a publication subvention.

Applicants should send a copy of their vita, a description of their research project, and a sample chapter or extract (if the sample is from a dissertation, please include the introduction), and arrange to have letters of reference sent from three persons who can assess the significance of the work and the ability of the scholar to carry it out. Send applications to David Weber, Director, Clements Center for Southwest Studies, Dallas Hall, Room 356, 3225 University Ave., P.O. Box 750176, Dallas, TX 75275-0176. Applications must be received by January 14, 2002. The award will be announced on March 1, 2002. This announcement contains all the information necessary to complete the application process. If you have questions, however, please contact Andrea Boardman, Associate Director, at (214) 768-1233 or at swcenter@mail.smu.edu. Our web site address is http://www2.smu.edu/swcenter.

SMU will not discriminate on the basis of race, color, religion, national origin, sex, age, disability, or veteran status.

Clements Center for Southwest Studies

Clements DeGolyer Library Grants

The William P. Clements Center for Southwest Studies offers research grants to applicants who live outside the greater Dallas-Fort Worth area to encourage a broader and more intensive use of the special collections at DeGolyer Library, Southern Methodist University, Dallas, Texas. The library consists of almost 90,000 volumes of rare and scholarly works, 350,000 photographs, and approximately 4,000 linear feet of archival materials pertaining to the trans-Mississippi West, the Spanish Borderlands, and the history of transportation, especially railroads worldwide. The library's web site is http://www2.smu.edu/cul/degolyer.

The Clements DeGolyer Library Grant provides an opportunity to conduct scholarly research in the DeGolyer Library on any aspect of the Southwestern experience. The $400 a week grant is awarded for periods of one to four weeks to help to defray costs of travel, lodging, and research materials.

Applicants should provide a project outline, correlating its pertinence to the DeGolyer Library collection and the requested length of research time; a curriculum vitae; and, two letters of reference from persons who can assess the significance of the project and the scholarship record of the applicant. In exchange, grant recipients are expected to consult with DeGolyer Library staff about available resources in their specialty area and to recommend the acquisition of additional research materials that will deepen the library's collection. Recipients might also be asked to deliver an informal lecture or seminar talk on their research topic. [End Page 292]

Deadlines for applications are September 14 and March 15. Awards will be announced on October 1 and April 1.

Send applications to David Weber, Director, Clements Center for Southwest Studies, Dallas Hall, Room 356, 3225 University Ave., P.O. Box 750176, Dallas, TX 752750176. If you have questions, however, please contact Andrea Boardman, Associate Director, at (214) 768-1233 or at swcenter@mail.smu.edu. Our web site address is http://www2.smu.edu/swcenter.

SMU will not discriminate on the basis of race, color, religion, national origin, sex, age, disability, or veteran status.

Clements Center for Southwest Studies

Conferences

A TransBorderland Conference

"Social Control on Spain's North American Frontiers: Choice, Persuasion, and Coercion" will be held April 56, 2002 at Southern Methodist University, Dallas, Texas.

The Spanish frontier is often juxtaposed against the English frontier as a zone of "inclusion" as opposed to English "exclusion" of subject peoples. But, the broad category of "inclusion" masks a variety of ways in which Spaniards sought to control subjects and potential subjects. This conference marks the culmination of a yearlong dialogue between scholars from Mexico, the U.S., and Spain, as each explores the nature of social control in the region he or she knows best, explaining how and why the institutions and practices in that region depart from or adhere to what are generally perceived as "norms" on the Spanish frontier. The final product of this interaction will be a book of their essays. Participants include: David Weber, Ross Frank, Frank de la Teja, Juliana Barr, José Cuello, Susan Deeds, Gilbert Din, Jane Landers, Patricia Osante, James Sandos, Cecilia Sheridan, and Cynthia Radding.

For more information, please contact: Andrea Boardman, Associate Director, Clements Center for Southwest Studies, Dallas Hall Room 356, Southern Methodist University, P.O. Box 750176, Dallas, TX 75275-0176. Tel: 214-768-1233 Fax: 214-768-4129. Email: swcenter@mail.smu.edu. Web site: http://www2.smu.edu/swcenter.

Clements Center for Southwest Studies

Graduate Programs

Catalan Presence on the Pacific Coast

El Colegio de Jalisco announces the initiation of a Program of Studies, entitled "Presencia Catalana en la Costa del Pacífico," for the purpose of research, publication, teaching, and diffusion of information regarding the activities and contributions [End Page 293] of persons native to Cataluña or descendants of Catalán people in the region comprising the Pacific coast of North America from Mexico to British Columbia. The program incorporates the involvement all persons, from the sixteenth to the twentyfirst centuries, whose ethnolinguistic foundation is Catalán Catalán, Balearic, and Valencian. In the near future it is expected that scholarships for graduate level studies in this field will become available.

All interested persons please contact: Claudia Reyes, Secretaria, Presencia Catalana en la Costa del Pacifíco: Programa de Estudios; El Colegio de Jalisco, 5 de Mayo 321, 45100 Zapopan, Jalisco, México. Telephone: 36331013; e-mail: coljalsp@coljal.edu.mx.

Miguel Mathes

Journals

Nahuatl Culture

Estudios de Cultura Nahuatl, vol. 31 (2000) has recently appeared. This occasional journal is published by the Instituto de Investigaciones Históricas of the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de Mexico, under the editorship of Dr. Miguel León Portilla. Volume 31 includes such pieces as Michel Graulich writing on Coyolxauqui and the naked women of Tlatelolco, Cecelia F. Klein, "The Devil and the Skirt: An Iconographic Inquiry into the Prehispanic Nature of the Tzitzimmime," María José García Quintana on the "hueheutlahtolli" in the Florentine Codex, Barry Sell studies a rare set of cofradía records from 1619, and Asención Hernández de León-Portilla continues her on-going bibliography of works in or about Nahuatl. For more information contact the Instituto de Investigaciones Históricas web page.

J.F.S.

Borderlands

The editors of Romance Philology have recently been encouraging scholars of the Borderlands to submit studies of original documents from the region. Recently the journal came out with a two-part volume dedicated to Borderlands studies (Volume 53, Spring 2000). This special issue contains contributions by such noted scholars as Maureen Ahern, Daniel Reff, Charles Polzer, S.J., William Bright, and Barbara De Marco. Some contributions will be of great interest to historians. Rick Hendricks's essay, "A Brief Guide to Archival Collections," is a real handbook to archives holding Borderlands materials and Geoffrey Symcox narrates the history of the development of the Repertorium Columbianum (1986-1998). In short, this issue is well worth a look for anyone doing research in the Southwestern Borderlands.

J.F.S. [End Page 294]

New Publications

Brazilian Emancipation

David Baronov's The Abolition of Slaverv in Brazil: The "Liberation" of Africans Through the Emancipation of Capital, published in 2000 by Greenwood Press is perhaps a book for a sociologist--which the author is--rather than a historian. His main thrust, and he would find few historians to dispute this, is that the abolition of slavery in the Americas, and in Brazil in particular, did not result in "free labor," but rather the creation and perpetuation of other forms of coerced labor: apprenticeships systems, vagrancy laws, debt peonage, etc. Roughly the first third of the book revisits Smith, Ricardo, Marx, etc. on the origins and diversity of "capitalism's" work force; the second third surveys the end of serfdom and slavery generally in Europe and America and the systems that succeeded them; and the last third describes slavery in Brazil, its abolition, and the labor relations that followed, arguing that "the abolition of slavery in Brazil had its basis in the nonemergence of wage labor and the active stifling of market forces" (p. 681). Generally, it is a familiar story, particularly evident because the author relies entirely on secondary sources. While parts of the book might be useful as a classroom text, there is little original here, from a historian's point of view.

David McCreery

CD-ROM Collection of Travelers' Accounts

"Narratives of 19th-Century U.S. Travellers to Hispanic America," compiled by Sylvia L. Hilton, provides easy electronic access to travel narratives by Henry Willis Baxley, Nathaniel Holmes Bishop, Benjamin Franklin Bourne, William Tufts Brigham, Hezekiah Butterworth, Frances Calderón De La Barca, Cecil Charles, Theodore Child, Cincinnatus (Pseud.), Rev. Walter Colton, William Curtis, Richard Harding Davis, Albert S. Evans, Joseph Warren Fabens, Isaac Nelson Ford, Robert Wilson Gibbes, Isaac Farwell Holton, Julia Ward Howe, Eliza Mchatton-Ripley, Loretta Merwin,Benjamin Moore Norman, Ober, Frederick Albion Ober, Felix L. Oswald, Melinda Rankin, William Lindsay Scruggs, Francis Hopkinson Smith, James William Steele, John Steuart, Lt. Isaac G. Strain, William Taylor, and Frank Wiborg. These narratives are important sources for historians and literary scholars of U.S. and Latin American societies, and provide fascinating reading for a broader public.

Hilton is to be commended on the caliber of the selections (which cover the more peripheral as well as the central regions of Latin America and the Caribbean) and her scholarly apparatus. She provides extensive biographical data and bibliographic material and annotates both the selections and dozens of other classic and lesser known travel accounts--a service which scholars wishing to construct courses around themes, regions, or the genre of travel literature will find to be particularly useful.

Hilton analyzes the genre of travel literature within the context of European textual constructions of the New World, and discusses the commercial, technical, economic, [End Page 295] and political shifts that shaped U.S. interest in, travel to, and writing about Latin America in the nineteenth century. Travel narratives, she notes, provide evidence of how U.S. travelers saw and defined the land and people of Latin America and how they saw and defined themselves in relation to others. What this textual evidence means--particularly, whether such narratives created, confirmed, appropriated, or contested Latin American stereotypes--is still under dispute in academic circles.

Hilton offers a typology based on the political, religious, scientific, economic, literary, and health- and pleasure-seeking motivations and goals of the traveler-author. She includes a separate section on female travelers, who usually traveled as companions or tourists dependent on their parents, husbands, or other relatives. Although a category based on gender seems at odds with the other classifications, it does serve to underscore the existence of a genre of female travel narratives in the nineteenth century. Furthermore, the classification of the women in terms of their dependent status raises the paradoxical notion that these women were able to express a certain autonomy through their writing. Perhaps the most obvious shortcoming to Hilton's classification scheme, which she herself notes, is that the divisions between categories are not mutually exclusive.

The CD-ROM is simple to use, and contains an excellent help feature, clear iconographic symbols for manipulating the images (zoom, rotation, inversion, contrast, print, save), high-quality reproductions, and readily accessible technical assistance. The indexing feature is exceptionally good, as it allows a reader to search both individual and multiple texts. This CD-ROM is an economical and valuable addition to both personal and institutional library collections. The price is US$180.00. Contact information: www.digibis.com; distribucion@digibis.com; Calle Duque de Medinaceli 12, 1era dcha. 28014 Madrid, Spain; Tel. 3491 429-8003; Fax: 3491 429-8071.

Virginia M. Bouvier

Mesoamerican Archeology

The University of Oxford Press has recently published a lovely guide to Mesoamerican archeological sites: John M. D. Pohl's Exploring Mesoamerica. The guide covers eighteen of the best known sites ranging chronologically from La Venta to Tenochtitlan, and geographically from Paquimé--Casas Grandes, Tula, and El Tajín in the north to Iximché and Copán in the south, and Tzintzuntzan in the west. The book is handsomely illustrated; it would be a fine addition to any coffee table. Moreover, it includes site descriptions and sketch maps for each site along with a history of the site and description of the associated peoples. Each chapter has a brief list of suggestions for further reading. It is a handy reference work for very general information on each site and associated culture.

J.F.S. [End Page 296]

Nahuatl Testaments

Teresa Rojas Rabiela, Elsa Leticia Rea López, and Constantino Medina Lima have brought out the third volume of Vidas y bienes olvidados: testamentos indígenas novohispanos. As with the previous two volumes, these wills and testaments come from the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries and are all written in Nahuatl. This collection includes fifty wills taken from varios sections of the Archivo General de la Nación (Mexico). They represent a cross-section of native society: twenty are from the native nobility, thirty from commoners. More men (32) are represented than women (17), with one person whose gender could not be determined from the documentation. Two-thirds of the wills in the collection come from the Valley of Mexico, with the other third from nearby regions. The some of the Spanish versions of the wills were contemporary to the original Nahuatl, while others were translated as a result of later judicial proceedings. Only two were translated by the authors for inclusion in the collection. In sum, this is a fine continuation and extremely useful collection for both scholars of Nahuatl and historians of the early colonial period.

J.F.S.