Portal Magazine Presents Benson Centennial Edition

LLILAS Benson Latin American Studies and Collections is pleased to announce the publication of Portal magazine’s Benson Centennial edition, available online at llilasbensonmagazine.org.

In anticipation of the centennial of the Nettie Lee Benson Latin American Collection in 2021, this issue features articles by faculty, students, scholars, and staff that highlight a wide array of collections in areas as diverse as art history, feminist theory, Black diaspora, Indigenous studies, Mexican film, and more. A special selection of Staff Picks surveys items in the collection chosen and written about by staff in short feature pieces. Truly, this issue has something for everyone, including information on how to support the Benson Centennial Endowment.

Annotated contents of Portal‘s Benson Centennial issue follow below.

Portal 2019–2020, Benson Centennial Edition 

From the Director

FEATURES

Diego Godoy, Inside the Agrasánchez Collection of Mexican Cinema—An entertaining and engaging look at a collection of historical Mexican cinema materials that will make you want to watch a bunch of these movies.

Still from the Agrasánchez Collection of Mexican Cinema, Benson Latin American Collection

Matthew Butler and John Erard, The Hijuelas Books: Digitizing Indigenous Archives in Mexico—A history professor and a first-year student teamed up to write this article on what is being learned by digitizing important historical records in Michoacán, Mexico.

Alicia Gaspar de Alba, Decolonial Feminists Unite! Dorothy Schons and Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz—Award-winning Chicana feminist author Alicia Gaspar de Alba explores the fascinating yet tragic story of UT scholar Dorothy Schons (1890–1961), whose groundbreaking research on the Mexican poet, intellectual, and nun Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz (1648–1695) was dismissed by her colleagues at the time. 

Miguel Cabrera, Portrait of Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz, c. 1750

Julia Detchon, To and From the “Real” World: Concrete Art and Poetry in Latin America—This piece, by an Art and Art History PhD candidate, explores the Concrete art and poetry movement and its artistic and intellectual foundations.

Voices of Black Brazilian Feminism: Conversations with Rosana Paulino and Sueli Carneiro—Rosana Paulino is a visual artist and Black Brazilian feminist; Sueli Carneiro is an author and one of the foremost feminist intellectuals in Brazil. Both were keynote speakers at the February 2020 Lozano Long Conference on Black women’s intellectual contributions to the Americas. Interviewed here by UT faculty members Christen A. Smith (Anthropology, AADS, LLILAS, dir. of Center for Women’s and Gender Studies) and Lorraine Leu (LLILAS / Spanish & Portuguese).

Daniel Arbino, (Self)Love in the Time of COVID—Reflections from Benson head of special collections on themes of self-care and solitude in the Benson’s Latino zine collection. 

David A. Bliss, Selections from the LADI Repository—Bliss, digital processing archivist at the Benson, highlights collections in the Latin American Digital Initiatives repository. These are vulnerable archival collections that are now available online due to Mellon grant–funded collaborations between LLILAS Benson and Latin American archival partners. 

STAFF PICKS: FAVORITES FROM THE BENSON COLLECTION 

Brooke Womack, Catalina de Erauso o sea la monja de alferes, a 19th-century text on a 16th-century nun who was born a woman and obtained permission to dress as a man in the Spanish army.

Susanna Sharpe, La Inocencia acrisolada de los pacientes jesuanos, 1816, on a stunningly illustrated rare book in the collection. 

Joshua G. Ortiz Baco, Arbol cronologico del descubrimiento de las Americas, 1864, on a map of the Americas in which the continent is depicted as a tree. 

Arbol cronologico geografico del descubrimiento de las Americas, 1864

Albert A. Palacios, Student Activism in the Archives, 1969, 1970. Items from Texas and Uruguay are but two of the many examples of student activism in the Benson’s archives. 

Dylan Joy, Ernesto Cardenal in Solentiname, 1970s, explores the spiritual artists’ community of Solentiname founded by the lateNicaraguan poet, priest, and politician Ernesto Cardenal (1925–2020), whose archive is at the Benson.   

Zaria El-Fil, Black Freedom Struggle and the University, 1977, focused on the John L. Warfield Papers and written by fourth-year student Zaria El-Fil, the 2019–20 AKA Scholars Black Diaspora Archive intern.   

Blackprint, Monthly Black Culture and Feature Supplement to The Daily Texan, March 30, 1977. John L. Warfield Papers

Ryan Lynch, Manifesto ao povo nordestino, 1982, discusses a Brazilian political archive and showcases how political themes are discussed in cordel literature, cheap chapbooks popular in Brazil.  

Susanna Sharpe, Camas para Sueños by Carmen Lomas Garza, 1985. The Benson is the repository for the archive of artist Carmen Lomas Garza, a native of Kingsville, Texas, whose highly popular and well-known artworks evoke many aspects of Chicano life and culture in the Rio Grande Valley and elsewhere. 

Daniel Arbino, Tecuichpoch / Doña Isabel de Moctezuma—Madre del Mestizaje, 2016, showcases the artwork of Catalina Delgado-Trunk, inspired by Mexican papel picado (paper cutouts).

CENTENNIAL 

Celebrating a Century A brief history of the Nettie Lee Benson Latin American Collection)  

Message from the Benson Collection Director A message from Melissa Guy

The Power of Giving Joe R. and Teresa Lozano Long, The Castañeda Legacy, Benson Centennial Fund

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