The City as Organizing Principle in Twenty-First-Century Luso-Hispanic Studies

Luso-Hispanic studies has responded ambivalently to the commonplace that the globe has passed the tipping point of urbanization. While disciplinary traditionalism poses challenges to scholars linking artistic production to urban contexts, interdisciplinary work on the city has nonetheless found terrain in which to thrive. This brief article thus explores the recent history and future potential of urban directions in Luso-Hispanic scholarship with an eye toward twenty-first-century academic shifts. These urban directions are a sign of increased interdisciplinarity within language and literature fields at the same time that they are a catalyst for social scientists to embrace literary forms of culture.