Table of Contents

• Preface
• Introduction: Misplaced Objects and Subject Matters
• Part I: The Object as Specimen
• 1. Misplaced Objects from the Americas and the Emergence of the European Wunderkammern
• 2. Transatlantic Subject Matters and Big Bones: The Real Gabinete de Historia Natural de Madrid
• 3. Writing the Natural History of Our Destruction: From P. T. Barnum's National Histrionics to Contemporary, Post-Apocalyptic Wunderkammern
• Part II: Migrating Icons and Sacred Geographies in the Americas
• 4. GuadalupeNation: Disappearing Objects, National Narratives
• 5. Guadalupe's Wheels: Runaway Image, Undocumented Border Crosser, Miracle Worker
• 6. The New Mexico/New Mestizo Effect: Enchanted and Otherwise Enacted Spaces
• Part III: Found Objects and Re-Collecting Subjects
• 7. Re-Collecting the Past: Latinidad's Found Objects, Photographs, and Home Altars
• 8. Sandra Ramos and the Cuban Diaspora: La vida no cabe en una maleta
• Epilogue
• Notes
• Works Cited
• Index

Promotional Information

From sixteenth-century European Wunderkammern to the veneration of the Virgin of Guadalupe to the Latinization of the United States, this dynamic and innovative book explores how the circulation of objects between Europe and the Americas has profoundly reshaped our understanding of the world

About the Author

Silva Spitta is Professor of Spanish and Comparative Literature at Dartmouth College. She is the author of Between Two Waters: Narratives of Transculturation in Latin America.

Reviews

Misplaced Objects is an erudite, elegantly narrated, historically wide-ranging, and genuinely transdisciplinary exploration that should transform contemporary understandings of the Americas in numerous fields.
*The Comparatist*