ABSTRACT
The Routledge Handbook to Culture and Media of the Americas charts the field of inter-American studies, focusing on the transnational or hemispheric dimensions of cultural flows and geocultural imaginaries that shape the literatures, arts, media and other cultural expressions in the Americas. In doing so, the Handbook is inspired by recent debates in cultural and postcolonial studies in the humanities and social sciences that have challenged traditional conceptualizations. These have had the tendency to essentialize and universalize Western concepts that are grounded on particular local, especially European experiences, discriminating other systems of knowledge (Mignolo 2000). Against this epistemological monoculture, postcolonial approaches have illuminated the important contributions of other epistemic communities, especially indigenous and Afro-American, as well as nonacademic actors, especially from social movements and the field of cultural production, for the emergence and constant redefining of key concepts in the Americas.
