Editor's Preface

In SLAPC Volume 27 (2008), I announced that the journal, after more than twenty-five years, would be on an indefinite hiatus due to budget cuts at the University of Arizona. Many readers wrote to me to express their sadness at the news, but one individual also wrote with a suggestion. Sue Hausmann of the University of Texas Press expressed interest in adding SLAPC to their list of journal publications. I submitted a proposal, based in large part on information provided by SLAPC co-founding editor Charles Tatum, along with former production editor Tom Gelsinon of the UA Department of Mexican American and Raza Studies and Debra Olson from the University of Arizona College of Humanities Dean's office. UT Press's two outside evaluators provided overwhelmingly enthusiastic reviews of our journal. SLAPC had a new home.

I am delighted to be back at the helm after a one-year sabbatical during which time my colleague William H. Beezley served as Guest Editor. I am grateful to him for putting together such a thought-provoking volume on Latin America's presence at the World's Fairs and on gender and fashion among Mexicans and Mexican Americans in the last century.

Many exciting things have transpired in the last two years. As you may have noticed in the last issue we have a new cover. I'm delighted with the eye-catching design and color and I'm grateful to UT Press for the suggestion.

Additionally, I welcome Oakland University's Aldona Pobutsky as my new Associate Editor. She will serve as the SLAPC Book Review Editor as well, since, as Charles Tatum and Harold Hines announced in 2008, our former editor Dr. Donald Castro passed away.

We have three new members on our editorial board: Debra Castillo of Cornell University, David William Foster of Arizona State University, and William H. Beezley of the University of Arizona. All three are internationally esteemed scholars and I am very happy to have them on board.

As you will see on the first page of this issue, as was customary in the past, I have listed the winners and honorable mentions for the Carlos and Guillermo Vigil Prize. This distinction is given for the best essay of each issue, as determined by the editorial board. I include those from 2008 and 2010.

Finally, I owe a tremendous debt of gratitude to Sue Hausmann and Stacey Salling of the University of Texas Press as well as to the two outside reviewers who felt so strongly about the important role SLAPC plays in the fields of Latin/o American and global popular culture studies.