Notes from the Editors

NOTES FROM THE EDITORS Convening in Panama City, Panamá for the first time in the organization ’s history, the Southeastern Council of Latin American Studies held its Sixtieth Annual Meeting 6–10 March 2013. W. Frank Robinson of Vanderbilt University and Timothy Hawkins of Indiana State University organized the conference, with coordinating assistance from Melanie Endres of Ancon Expeditions and Ashleigh Blue of the University of North Carolina at Charlotte. Program chairs Marixa Lasso of Case Western Reserve University and Sarah Wamester Bares of Millsaps College assembled panels that addressed a broadly defined theme of “Latin America at the Crossroads .” A great number of panels and papers spoke to Panamanian history and culture. Other highlights included an opening reception at the Hotel Continental, the SECOLAS Awards Banquet, and the always lively Gran Baile. Award-winning Panamanian historian Dr. Alfredo Castillero Calvo delivered the keynote address at the banquet. This volume features some of the best papers from the conference in article format. Twelve of the ninety-four presenters at the conference submitted revised versions of their papers for publication. Following editorial and peer review and another round of revisions, eight articles appear in these pages. The articles published represent a range of disciplines, including cultural studies, literature, history, and political science. This issue includes Daniel Genkins’s “’To Seek New Worlds, for Gold, for Praise, for Glory:’ El Dorado and Empire in Sixteenth-Century Guiana,” the winner of the Moseley Award for the best graduate student paper presented at the SECOLAS meeting in Panama City. We are happy to present these articles, and we are grateful for the help provided in this endeavor by our graduate assistant, Alana Parks, and our colleagues at Wiley-Blackwell, especially Martha Lovvoll. The significant financial and institutional support provided by the two SECOLAS host institutions, the University of North Carolina at Charlotte and Winthrop University, is indispensable to the success of this journal. In particular, we express our appreciation and gratitude to Professor Nancy Gutierrez, Dean of the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences at UNC Charlotte , Dr. Debra Boyd, Provost and Vice-President of Academic Affairs at Winthrop, and Dr. Karen M. Kedrowski, Dean of College of Arts and Sciences at Winthrop for their enduring backing of both The Latin Americanist and the Southeastern Council of Latin American Studies. Gregory S. Crider and Jürgen Buchenau C  2014 Southeastern Council on Latin American Studies and Wiley Periodicals, Inc. 1 ...