MACMILLAN New Visions of Adolescence in Contemporary Latin American Cinema (New Directions in Latino American Cultures)

This volume explores the recent ‘adolescent turn’ in contemporary Latin American cinema, challenging many of the underlying assumptions about the nature of youth and distinguishing adolescence as a distinct and vital area of study. Its contributors examine the narrative and political potential of teenage protagonists in a range of recent films from the region, acknowledging the distinct emotional registers that are at play throughout adolescence and releasing teenage subjectivities from restrictive critical and theoretical emphases on theories of childhood. As the first academic study to examine the figure of the adolescent in contemporary Latin American film, New Visions of Adolescence in Contemporary Latin American Cinema thus presents a timely and innovative analysis of issues of sexuality and gender, political and domestic violence and social class, and will be of significant interest to students and researchers in Latin American Studies, Cultural Studies, World Cinema and Childhood Studies. Review “Geoffrey Maguire and Rachel Randall have assembled a striking collection of essays on adolescence in contemporary Latin American cinema, in what is a tightly edited volume that covers a range of productions from the continent. The quality of the essays is excellent throughout and the volume includes a very useful introductory essay, written by the editors, which convincingly makes the case for the important contribution of this study to both World Cinema and Latin American cultural studies.” (Stephanie Dennison, Professor of Brazilian Studies, University of Leeds, UK) “This exciting volume provides original insights into the representation of adolescence in contemporary Latin American cinema, and commences with an excellent and rigorous introduction by Maguire and Randall. Gender acts as a key framework for the book, but these high quality essays are also tied together by their interest in film and the senses, and by the emerging tropes they collectively identify as central to these new depictions of adolescence. New Visions of Adolescence in Contemporary Latin American Cinema is an important contribution to the field.” (Deborah Martin, Senior Lecturer in Latin American Cultural Studies, University College London, UK) “This is a rich collection of essays that offers original and important insights into contemporary Latin American cinema through the pivotal but critically neglected figure of the adolescent. Written by leading experts in the field, the book sheds new light on Latin American film culture. This book is a fascinating read for scholars of youth studies, gender, sexuality and cinema and Latin American cinema.” (Deborah Shaw, Reader in Film Studies, University of Portsmouth, UK) About the Author Geoffrey Maguire is a Junior Research Fellow in Latin American Studies at Murray Edwards College, University of Cambridge, UK. He is author of The Politics of Postmemory: Violence and Victimhood in Contemporary Argentine Culture (2017). Rachel Randall is a Leverhulme Early Career Fellow and Lecturer in Hispanic Media and Digital Communications at the University of Bristol, UK. She is author of Children on the Threshold in Contemporary Latin American Cinema (2017).