Preface

Summary

This book is concerned with the emergence of a new field of research, Iberian studies, that has as yet had a short life in American and a few European universities. Iberian studies, as here conceived, differs from similarly named academic units that gather programs of Spanish and Portuguese in administrative adjacency and mutual indifference, mimicking the geographic contiguity and mutual unconcern between Spain and Portugal. The innovative idea behind Iberian studies as a discipline is its intrinsic relationality and its reorganization of monolingual fields based on nation-states and their postcolonial extensions into a peninsular plurality of cultures and languages pre-existing and coexisting with the official cultures of the state.

The book is structured into four sections, preceded by an Introduction to the concept and academic place of Iberian studies that traces the historical logic of the new field, at once relating it to and distinguishing it from nineteenth- and twentieth-century political Iberianism. The first section focuses on the conceptual and practical difficulties of implementing a new field of Iberian studies in institutional contexts predefined by national traditions that, established as disciplines, have been less than accepting of the Iberian complexity. The essays making up this part of the book assess the situation quite frankly, stating it in terms of a historical opposition, as in Dominic Keown's essay “Dine with the Opposition? ¡No, gracias! Hispanism versus Iberian Studies in Great Britain and Ireland,” which considers the divergence of these approaches and the changes brought on by the disciplinary crisis arising from Hispanism's encounter with theory and the subsequent emergence of cultural studies. In this new environment, Keown contends, a significant foothold has been gained in the United Kingdom and Ireland for the open and inclusive strategy exemplified by Iberian studies. More skeptical about Hispanism's openness to change is Luisa Elena Delgado's “‘If We Build It, Will They Come?’ Iberian Studies as Field of Dreams,” which asks about the symbolic and material conditions under which a change of paradigm toward “Iberian studies” could be effected. If a different field is built with a distinctive critical scaffolding, Delgado asks, who will come to the game? Entrenched academic interests based on dreams of linguistic and political unity and universal reach raise problems of implementation. These are tackled by Mario Santana in “Implementing Iberian Studies: Some Paradigmatic and Curricular Changes.”