ABSTRACT
The introduction to the volume identifies some of the important moments and thinkers in the articulation of a genealogy of colonial Latin American and Caribbean studies focused in cultural, literary and historical studies. We identify and review four areas of thinking and methodological intervention that have characterized the formation and transformations of the field since its creation in the nineteenth century until the present: (1) the invention of colonial Latin American and Caribbean studies and its establishment as the origin of Latin American literatures and cultures; (2) the process of Latinization of the colonial period; (3) the challenges and contributions of postcolonial and decolonial frameworks in the field; and (4) the inter- and transdisciplinary engagements that have nourished the scholarship in colonial Latin American studies. These four areas of thought or dimensions of the field are not conceived as chronological developments, but as tendencies that have informed Caribbean and Latin American colonial studies transversally. We then discuss the overarching themes used to organize this volume—colonialism and coloniality, knowledge production and networks, materialities and archives, and language, translation and beyond—as generative frameworks to engage the interdisciplinary contributions included in this volume.
