Title: The sound of two hands clapping: the education of a Tibetan Buddhist monk
Author: Dreyfus, Georges B. J
Published: University of California Press,  2003
Subjects: Religion | Buddhism | Tibet | Autobiographies and Biographies | Buddhism
Publisher's Description: A unique insider's account of day-to-day life inside a Tibetan monastery, The Sound of Two Hands Clapping reveals to Western audiences the fascinating details of monastic education. Georges B. J. Dreyfus, the first Westerner to complete the famous Ge-luk curriculum and achieve the distinguished titl . . . [more]
Similar Items

Title: The snow lion and the dragon: China, Tibet, and the Dalai Lama 
Author: Goldstein, Melvyn C
Published: University of California Press,  1997
Subjects: History | Politics | Asian History | China | Cultural Anthropology | Tibet
Publisher's Description: Tensions over the "Tibet Question" - the political status of Tibet - are escalating every day. The Dalai Lama has gained broad international sympathy in his appeals for autonomy from China, yet the Chinese government maintains a hard-line position against it. What is the history of the conflict? Can the two sides come to an acceptable compromise? In this thoughtful analysis, distinguished professor and longtime Tibet analyst Melvyn C. Goldstein presents a balanced and accessible view of the conflict and a proposal for the future.Tibet's political fortunes have undergone numerous vicissitudes since the fifth Dalai Lama first ascended to political power in Tibet in 1642. In this century, a forty-year period of de facto independence following the fall of the Qing dynasty in 1911 ended abruptly when the Chinese Communists forcibly incorporated Tibet into their new state and began the series of changes that destroyed much of Tibet's traditional social, cultural, and economic system. After the death of Mao in 1976, the rise to power of Deng Xiaoping quickly produced a change in attitude in Beijing and a major initiative to negotiate with the Dalai Lama to solve the conflict. This failed. With the death of Deng Xiaoping, the future of Tibet is more uncertain than ever, and Goldstein argues that the conflict could easily erupt into violence.Drawing upon his deep knowledge of the Tibetan culture and people, Goldstein takes us through the history of Tibet, concentrating on the political and cultural negotiations over the status of Tibet from the turn of the century to the present. He describes the role of Tibet in Chinese politics, the feeble and conflicting responses of foreign governments, overtures and rebuffs on both sides, and the nationalistic emotions that are inextricably entwined in the political debate. Ultimately, he presents a plan for a reasoned compromise, identifying key aspects of the conflict and appealing to the United States to play an active diplomatic role. Clearly written and carefully argued, this book will become the definitive source for anyone seeking an understanding of the Tibet Question during this dangerous turning point in its turbulent history.   [brief]
Similar Items

Title: Echoes from Dharamsala: music in the life of a Tibetan refugee community
Author: Diehl, Keila
Published: University of California Press,  2002
Subjects: Music | Ethnomusicology | Tibet | Southeast Asia | Cultural Anthropology
Publisher's Description: In Echoes from Dharamsala, Keila Diehl uses music to understand the experiences of Tibetans living in Dharamsala, a town in the Indian Himalayas that for more than forty years has been home to Tibet's government-in-exile. The Dalai Lama's presence lends Dharamsala's Tibetans a feeling of being "in place," but at the same time they have physically and psychologically constructed Dharamsala as "not Tibet," as a temporary resting place to which many are unable or unwilling to become attached. Not surprisingly, this community struggles with notions of home, displacement, ethnic identity, and assimilation. Diehl's ethnography explores the contradictory realities of cultural homogenization, hybridity, and concern about ethnic purity as they are negotiated in the everyday lives of individuals. In this way, she complicates explanations of culture change provided by the popular idea of "global flow." Diehl's accessible, absorbing narrative argues that the exiles' focus on cultural preservation, while crucial, has contributed to the development of essentialist ideas of what is truly "Tibetan." As a result, "foreign" or "modern" practices that have gained deep relevance for Tibetan refugees have been devalued. Diehl scrutinizes this tension in her discussion of the refugees' enthusiasm for songs from blockbuster Hindi films, the popularity of Western rock and roll among Tibetan youth, and the emergence of a new genre of modern Tibetan music. Diehl's insight into the soundscape of Dharamsala is enriched by her own experiences as the keyboard player for a Tibetan refugee rock group called the Yak Band. Her groundbreaking study reveals the importance of music as a site where official and personal, old and new representations of Tibetan culture meet and where different notions of "Tibetan-ness" are being imagined, performed, and debated.   [brief]
Similar Items

Title: A history of modern Tibet, 1913-1951: the demise of the Lamaist state
Author: Goldstein, Melvyn C
Published: University of California Press,  1991
Subjects: History | Asian History | Tibet
Publisher's Description: The "Tibetan Question," the nature of Tibet's political status vis-à-vis China, has been the subject of often bitterly competing views while the facts of the issue have not been fully accessible to interested observers. While one faction has argued that Tibet was, in the main, historically independent until it was conquered by the Chinese Communists in 1951 and incorporated into the new Chinese state, the other faction views Tibet as a traditional part ofChina that split away at the instigation of the British after the fall of the Manchu Dynasty and was later dutifully reunited with "New China" in 1951. In contrast, this comprehensive study of modern Tibetan history presents a detailed, non-partisan account of the demise of the Lamaist state.Drawing on a wealth of British, American, and Indian diplomatic records; first-hand-historical accounts written by Tibetan participants; and extensive interviews with former Tibetan officials, monastic leaders, soldiers, and traders, Goldstein meticulously examines what happened and why. He balances the traditional focus on international relations with an innovative emphasis on the intricate web of internal affairs and events that produced the fall of Tibet. Scholars and students of Asian history will find this work an invaluable resource and interested readers will appreciate the clear explanation of highly polemicized, and often confusing, historical events.   [brief]
Similar Items

Title: Westward dharma: Buddhism beyond Asia
Author: Prebish, Charles S
Published: University of California Press,  2002
Subjects: Religion | Asian Studies | Buddhism
Publisher's Description: The first authoritative volume on the totality of Buddhism in the West, Westward Dharma establishes a comparative and theoretical perspective for considering the amazing variety of Buddhist traditions, schools, centers, and teachers that have developed outside of Asia. Leading scholars from North America, Europe, South Africa, and Australia explore the plurality and heterogeneity of traditions and practices that are characteristic of Buddhism in the West. This recent, dramatic growth in Western Buddhism is accompanied by an expansion of topics and issues of Buddhist concern. The contributors to this volume treat such topics as the broadening spirit of egalitarianism; the increasing emphasis on the psychological, as opposed to the purely religious, nature of practice; scandals within Buddhist movements; the erosion of the distinction between professional and lay Buddhists; Buddhist settlement in Israel; the history of Buddhism in internment camps; repackaging Zen for the West; and women's dharma in the West. The interconnections of historical and theoretical approaches in the volume make it a rich, multi-layered resource.   [brief]
Similar Items

Title: The life of Buddhism
Author: Reynolds, Frank 1930-
Published: University of California Press,  2000
Subjects: Religion | Asian Studies | Buddhism
Publisher's Description: Bringing together fifteen essays by outstanding Buddhist scholars from Asia, Europe, and North America, this book offers a distinctive portrayal of the "life of Buddhism." The contributors focus on a number of religious practices across the Buddhist world, from Sri Lanka to New York, Japan to Tibet. The essays highlight not so much Buddhist doctrine or sacred texts, but rather the actual behavior and lived experience of Buddhist adherents. A general introduction by Frank E. Reynolds and Jason A. Carbine provides a historical overview and briefly characterizes the three major variants of Buddhist tradition - the Hinayana/Theravada branch practiced in Sri Lanka and much of Southeast Asia; the Mahayana branch located most notably in East Asia; and the Vajrayana/Esoteric branch established in Tibet and Japan. It also takes note of a distinctive form of Buddhism that is now emerging among non-Asian practitioners in the West. The editors introduce each essay with a brief commentary that situates its contents within the Buddhist tradition as a whole. The pieces offer concise depictions and analyses of particular aspects of Buddhist life, including temple architecture and iconography, the consecration of sacred objects, meditative practices, devotional expressions, exorcisms, and pilgrimage journeys. Topics discussed also include the construction of religio-political and religio-social hierarchies, gender roles, the management of asocial behavior, and confrontations with dying and death.   [brief]
Similar Items

Title: The faces of Buddhism in America
Author: Prebish, Charles S
Published: University of California Press,  1998
Subjects: Religion | Buddhism | American Studies | Gender Studies
Publisher's Description: Buddhism is the fastest growing religion in the United States, with adherents estimated in the several millions. But what exactly defines a "Buddhist"? This has been a much-debated question in recent years, particularly in regard to the religion's bifurcation into two camps: the so-called "imported" or ethnic Buddhism of Asian immigrants and the "convert" Buddhism of a mostly middle-class, liberal, intellectual elite. In this timely collection Charles S. Prebish and Kenneth K. Tanaka bring together some of the leading voices in Buddhist studies to examine the debates surrounding contemporary Buddhism's many faces.The contributors investigate newly Americanized Asian traditions such as Tibetan, Zen, Nichiren, Jodo Shinshu, and Theravada Buddhism and the changes they undergo to meet the expectations of a Western culture desperate for spiritual guidance. Race, feminism, homosexuality, psychology, environmentalism, and notions of authority are some of the issues confronting Buddhism for the first time in its three-thousand-year history and are powerfully addressed here.In recent years American Buddhism has been featured as a major story on ABC television news, National Public Radio, and in other national media. A strong new Buddhist journalism is emerging in the United States, and American Buddhism has made its way onto the Internet. The faces of Buddhism in America are diverse, active, and growing, and this book will be a valuable resource for anyone interested in understanding this vital religious movement.   [brief]
Similar Items

Title: Sensory biographies: lives and deaths among Nepal's Yolmo Buddhists
Author: Desjarlais, Robert R
Published: University of California Press,  2003
Subjects: Anthropology | Cultural Anthropology | Buddhism | Aging
Publisher's Description: Robert Desjarlais's graceful ethnography explores the life histories of two Yolmo elders, focusing on how particular sensory orientations and modalities have contributed to the making and the telling of their lives. These two are a woman in her late eighties known as Kisang Omu and a Buddhist priest in his mid-eighties known as Ghang Lama, members of an ethnically Tibetan Buddhist people whose ancestors have lived for three centuries or so along the upper ridges of the Yolmo Valley in north central Nepal. It was clear through their many conversations that both individuals perceived themselves as nearing death, and both were quite willing to share their thoughts about death and dying. The difference between the two was remarkable, however, in that Ghang Lama's life had been dominated by motifs of vision, whereas Kisang Omu's accounts of her life largely involved a "theatre of voices." Desjarlais offers a fresh and readable inquiry into how people's ways of sensing the world contribute to how they live and how they recollect their lives.   [brief]
Similar Items

Title: Seeing through Zen: encounter, transformation, and genealogy in Chinese Chan Buddhism
Author: McRae, John R 1947-
Published: University of California Press,  2004
Subjects: Religion | China | Buddhism
Publisher's Description: The tradition of Chan Buddhism - more popularly known as Zen - has been romanticized throughout its history. In this book, John R. McRae shows how modern critical techniques, supported by recent manuscript discoveries, make possible a more skeptical, accurate, and - ultimately - productive assessment of Chan lineages, teaching, fundraising practices, and social organization. Synthesizing twenty years of scholarship, Seeing through Zen offers new, accessible analytic models for the interpretation of Chan spiritual practices and religious history. Writing in a lucid and engaging style, McRae traces the emergence of this Chinese spiritual tradition and its early figureheads, Bodhidharma and the "sixth patriarch" Huineng, through the development of Zen dialogue and koans. In addition to constructing a central narrative for the doctrinal and social evolution of the school, Seeing through Zen examines the religious dynamics behind Chan's use of iconoclastic stories and myths of patriarchal succession. McRae argues that Chinese Chan is fundamentally genealogical, both in its self-understanding as a school of Buddhism and in the very design of its practices of spiritual cultivation. Furthermore, by forgoing the standard idealization of Zen spontaneity, we can gain new insight into the religious vitality of the school as it came to dominate the Chinese religious scene, providing a model for all of East Asia - and the modern world. Ultimately, this book aims to change how we think about Chinese Chan by providing new ways of looking at the tradition.   [brief]
Similar Items

Title: Imagining karma: ethical transformation in Amerindian, Buddhist, and Greek rebirth
Author: Obeyesekere, Gananath
Published: University of California Press,  2002
Subjects: Religion | Anthropology | Buddhism | Classics | Indigenous Religions | Asian Studies
Publisher's Description: With Imagining Karma, Gananath Obeyesekere embarks on the very first comparison of rebirth concepts across a wide range of cultures. Exploring in rich detail the beliefs of small-scale societies of West Africa, Melanesia, traditional Siberia, Canada, and the northwest coast of North America, Obeyesekere compares their ideas with those of the ancient and modern Indic civilizations and with the Greek rebirth theories of Pythagoras, Empedocles, Pindar, and Plato. His groundbreaking and authoritative discussion decenters the popular notion that India was the origin and locus of ideas of rebirth. As Obeyesekere compares responses to the most fundamental questions of human existence, he challenges readers to reexamine accepted ideas about death, cosmology, morality, and eschatology. Obeyesekere's comprehensive inquiry shows that diverse societies have come through independent invention or borrowing to believe in reincarnation as an integral part of their larger cosmological systems. The author brings together into a coherent methodological framework the thought of such diverse thinkers as Weber, Wittgenstein, and Nietzsche. In a contemporary intellectual context that celebrates difference and cultural relativism, this book makes a case for disciplined comparison, a humane view of human nature, and a theoretical understanding of "family resemblances" and differences across great cultural divides.   [brief]
Similar Items

Title: The Bodhidharma anthology: the earliest records of Zen
Author: Bodhidharma 6th cent
Published: University of California Press,  1999
Subjects: Religion | Buddhism | Asian Studies
Publisher's Description: In the early part of this century, the discovery of a walled-up cave in northwest China led to the retrieval of a lost early Ch'an (Zen) literature of the T'ang dynasty (618-907). One of the recovered Zen texts was a seven-piece collection, the Bodhidharma Anthology . Of the numerous texts attributed to Bodhidharma, this anthology is the only one generally believed to contain authentic Bodhidharma material.Jeffrey L. Broughton provides a reliable annotated translation of the Bodhidharma Anthology along with a detailed study of its nature, content, and background. His work is especially important for its rendering of the three Records, which contain some of the earliest Zen dialogues and constitute the real beginnings of Zen literature.The vivid dialogues and sayings of Master Yuan, a long-forgotten member of the Bodhidharma circle, are the hallmark of the Records . Master Yuan consistently criticizes reliance on the Dharma, on teachers, on meditative practice, and on scripture, all of which lead to self-deception and confusion, he says. According to Master Yuan, if one has spirit and does not seek anything, including the teachings of Buddhism, then one will attain the quietude of liberation. The boldness in Yuan's utterances prefigures much of the full-blown Zen tradition we recognize today.Broughton utilizes a Tibetan translation of the Bodhidharma Anthology as an informative gloss on the Chinese original. Placing the anthology within the context of the Tun-huang Zen manuscripts as a whole, he proposes a new approach to the study of Zen, one that concentrates on literary history, a genealogy of texts rather than the usual genealogy of masters.   [brief]
Similar Items

Title: The protocol of the gods: a study of the Kasuga cult in Japanese history
Author: Grapard, Allan G
Published: University of California Press,  1993
Subjects: Religion | Asian History | Japan
Publisher's Description: The Protocol of the Gods is a pioneering study of the history of relations between Japanese native institutions (Shinto shrines) and imported Buddhist institutions (Buddhist temples). Using the Kasuga Shinto shrine and the Kofukuji Buddhist temple, one of the oldest and largest of the shrine-temple complexes, Allan Grapard characterizes what he calls the combinatory character of pre-modern Japanese religiosity. He argues that Shintoism and Buddhism should not be studied in isolation, as hitherto supposed. Rather, a study of the individual and shared characteristics of their respective origins, evolutions, structures, and practices can serve as a model for understanding the pre-modern Japanese religious experience.Spanning the years from a period before historical records to the forcible separation of the Kasuga-Kofukuji complex by the Meiji government in 1868, Grapard presents a wealth of little-known material. He includes translations of rare texts and provides new, accessible translations of familiar documents.   [brief]
Similar Items

Title: Dōgen's manuals of Zen meditation
Author: Bielefeldt, Carl
Published: University of California Press,  1990
Subjects: Religion | Buddhism | Philosophy | Japan
Publisher's Description: Zen Buddhism is perhaps best known for its emphasis on meditation, and probably no figure in the history of Zen is more closely associated with meditation practice than the thirteenth-century Japanese master Dogen, founder of the Soto school. This study examines the historical and religious character of the practice as it is described in Dogen's own meditation texts, introducing new materials and original perspectives on one of the most influential spiritual traditions of East Asian civilization. The Soto version of Zen meditation is known as "just sitting," a practice in which, through the cultivation of the subtle state of "nonthinking," the meditator is said to be brought into perfect accord with the higher consciousness of the "Buddha mind" inherent in all beings. This study examines the historical and religious character of the practice as it is described in Dogen's own meditation texts, introducing new materials and original perspectives on one of the most influential spiritual traditions of East Asian civilization.   [brief]
Similar Items

Title: Decadent enchantments: the revival of Gregorian chant at Solesmes
Author: Bergeron, Katherine
Published: University of California Press,  1998
Subjects: Music | Musicology | French Studies | European History
Publisher's Description: The oldest written tradition of European music, the art we know as Gregorian chant, is seen from an entirely new perspective in Katherine Bergeron's engaging and literate study. Bergeron traces the history of the Gregorian revival from its Romantic origins in a community of French monks at Solesmes, whose founder hoped to rebuild the moral foundation of French culture on the ruins of the Benedictine order. She draws out the parallels between this longing for a lost liturgy and the postrevolutionary quest for lost monuments that fueled the French Gothic revival, a quest that produced the modern concept of "restoration."Bergeron follows the technological development of the Gregorian restoration over a seventy-year period as it passed from the private performances of a monastic choir into the public commodities of printed books, photographs, and Gramophone records. She discusses such issues as architectural restoration, the modern history of typography, the uncanny power of the photographic image, and the authority of recorded sound. She also shows the extent to which different media shaped the modern image of the ancient repertory, an image that gave rise to conflicting notions not only of musical performance but of the very idea of music history.   [brief]
Similar Items

Title: Business of the heart: religion and emotion in the nineteenth century
Author: Corrigan, John 1952-
Published: University of California Press,  2001
Subjects: Religion | American Studies | United States History | Christianity
Publisher's Description: The "Businessmen's Revival" was a religious revival that unfolded in the wake of the 1857 market crash among white, middle-class Protestants. Delving into the religious history of Boston in the 1850s, John Corrigan gives an imaginative and wide-ranging interpretive study of the revival's significance. He uses it as a focal point for addressing a spectacular range of phenomena in American culture: the ecclesiastical and business history of Boston; gender roles and family life; the history of the theater and public spectacle; education; boyculture; and, especially, ideas about emotion during this period. This vividly written narrative recovers the emotional experiences of individuals from a wide array of little-used sources including diaries, correspondence, public records, and other materials. From these sources, Corrigan discovers that for these Protestants, the expression of emotion was a matter of transactions. They saw emotion as a commodity, and conceptualized relations between people, and between individuals and God, as transactions of emotion governed by contract. Religion became a business relation with God, with prayer as its legal tender. Entering this relationship, they were conducting the "business of the heart." This innovative study shows that the revival--with its commodification of emotional experience--became an occasion for white Protestants to underscore differences between themselves and others. The display of emotion was a primary indicator of membership in the Protestant majority, as much as language, skin color, or dress style. As Corrigan unravels the significance of these culturally constructed standards for emotional life, his book makes an important contribution to recent efforts to explore the links between religion and emotion, and is an important new chapter in the history of religion.   [brief]
Similar Items

Title: Tantra: sex, secrecy politics, and power in the study of religions
Author: Urban, Hugh B
Published: University of California Press,  2003
Subjects: Religion | South Asia | Cultural Anthropology
Publisher's Description: A complex body of religious practices that spread throughout the Hindu, Buddhist, and Jain traditions; a form of spirituality that seemingly combines sexuality, sensual pleasure, and the full range of physical experience with the religious life - Tantra has held a central yet conflicted role within the Western imagination ever since the first "discovery" of Indian religions by European scholars. Always radical, always extremely Other, Tantra has proven a key factor in the imagining of India. This book offers a critical account of how the phenomenon has come to be. Tracing the complex genealogy of Tantra as a category within the history of religions, Hugh B. Urban reveals how it has been formed through the interplay of popular and scholarly imaginations. Tantra emerges as a product of mirroring and misrepresentation at work between East and West--a dialectical category born out of the ongoing play between Western and Indian minds. Combining historical detail, textual analysis, popular cultural phenomena, and critical theory, this book shows Tantra as a shifting amalgam of fantasies, fears, and wish-fulfillment, at once native and Other, that strikes at the very heart of our constructions of the exotic Orient and the contemporary West.   [brief]
Similar Items

Title: Marketing the menacing fetus in Japan
Author: Hardacre, Helen 1949-
Published: University of California Press,  1997
Subjects: Religion | Anthropology | Women's Studies | Asian Studies
Publisher's Description: Helen Hardacre provides new insights into the spiritual and cultural dimensions of abortion debates around the world in this careful examination of mizuko kuyo - a Japanese religious ritual for aborted fetuses. Popularized during the 1970s, when religious entrepreneurs published frightening accounts of fetal wrath and spirit attacks, mizuko kuyo offers ritual atonement for women who, sometimes decades previously, chose to have abortions. As she explores the complex issues that surround this practice, Hardacre takes into account the history of Japanese attitudes toward abortion, the development of abortion rituals, the marketing of religion, and the nature of power relations in intercourse, contraception, and abortion.Although abortion in Japan is accepted and legal and was commonly used as birth control in the early postwar period, entrepreneurs used images from fetal photography to mount a surprisingly successful tabloid campaign to promote mizuko kuyo . Enthusiastically adopted by some religionists as an economic strategy, it was soundly rejected by others on doctrinal, humanistic, and feminist grounds.In four field studies in different parts of the country, Helen Hardacre observed contemporary examples of mizuko kuyo as it is practiced in Buddhism, Shinto, and the new religions. She also analyzed historical texts and contemporary personal accounts of abortion by women and their male partners and conducted interviews with practitioners to explore how a commercialized ritual form like mizuko kuyo can be marketed through popular culture and manipulated by the same forces at work in the selling of any commodity. Her conclusions reflect upon the deep current of misogyny and sexism running through these rites and through feto-centric discourse in general.   [brief]
Similar Items

Title: Civic innovation in America: community empowerment, public policy, and the movement for civic renewal
Author: Sirianni, Carmen
Published: University of California Press,  2001
Subjects: Politics | Public Policy | Print Media | Environmental Studies | Social Problems
Publisher's Description: In this book, two leading experts on community action provide the first scholarly examination of the civic renewal movement that has emerged in the United States in recent decades. Sirianni Friedland examine civic innovation since the 1960s as social learning in four arenas (community organizing/development, civic environmentalism, community health, and public journalism), and they link local efforts to broader networks and to the development of "public policy for democracy." They also explore the emergence of a movement for civic renewal that builds upon the civic movements in these four arenas. In contrast to some recent studies that stress broad indicators of civic decline, this study analyzes innovation as a long process of social learning within specific institutional and policy domains with complex challenges and cross-currents. It draws upon analytical frameworks of social capital, policy learning, organizational learning, regulatory culture, democratic theory, and social movement theory. The study is based upon interviews with more than 400 innovative practitioners, as well as extensive field observation, case study, action research, and historical analysis.   [brief]
Similar Items

Title: Claiming the high ground: Sherpas, subsistence, and environmental change in the highest Himalaya 
Author: Stevens, Stanley F
Published: University of California Press,  1993
Subjects: Geography | Cultural Anthropology | Tibet
Publisher's Description: Stanley Stevens brings a new historical perspective to his remarkably well-researched study of a subsistence society in ever-increasing contact with the outside world. The Khumbu Sherpas, famous for their mountaineering exploits, have frequently been depicted as victims of the world's highest-altitude tourist boom. But has the flow of outsiders to Mt. Everest and the heights of Nepal in fact destroyed a stable, finely balanced relationship between the Sherpas and their environment?Stevens's innovative use of oral history and cultural ecology suggests that tourism is not the watershed circumstance many have considered it to be. Drawing on extensive interviews and data gathered during three years of fieldwork, and with the use of numerous maps and charts, he documents the Sherpas' ingenious adaptation to high-altitude conditions, their past and present agricultural, pastoral, trade, and forest management practices, and their own perspectives on the environmental history of their homeland. This is a book for geographers, anthropologists, and all those interested in conservation of the earth's high places.   [brief]
Similar Items

Title: The Spanish redemption: heritage, power, and loss on New Mexico's upper Rio Grande
Author: Montgomery, Charles H 1964-
Published: University of California Press,  2002
Subjects: History | United States History | Latino Studies | California and the West
Publisher's Description: Charles Montgomery's compelling narrative traces the history of the upper Rio Grande's modern Spanish heritage, showing how Anglos and Hispanos sought to redefine the region's social character by glorifying its Spanish colonial past. This readable book demonstrates that northern New Mexico's twentieth-century Spanish heritage owes as much to the coming of the Santa Fe Railroad in 1880 as to the first Spanish colonial campaign of 1598. As the railroad brought capital and migrants into the region, Anglos posed an unprecedented challenge to Hispano wealth and political power. Yet unlike their counterparts in California and Texas, the Anglo newcomers could not wholly displace their Spanish-speaking rivals. Nor could they segregate themselves or the upper Rio Grande from the image, well-known throughout the Southwest, of the disreputable Mexican. Instead, prominent Anglos and Hispanos found common cause in transcending the region's Mexican character. Turning to colonial symbols of the conquistador, the Franciscan missionary, and the humble Spanish settler, they recast northern New Mexico and its people.   [brief]
Similar Items