Early Puerto Rican Cinema and Nation Building

National Sentiments, Transnational Realities. 1897-1940

Naida García-Crespo

2019
250 pages
$37.95
ISBN 9781684481170
Bucknell Studies in Latin American Literature and Theory

Early Puerto Rican Cinema and Nation Building focuses on the processes of Puerto Rican national identity formation as seen through the historical development of cinema on the island between 1897 and 1940. Anchoring her work in archival sources in film technology, economy, and education, Naida García-Crespo argues that Puerto Rico's position as a stateless nation allows for a fresh understanding of national cinema based on perceptions of productive cultural contributions rather than on citizenship or state structures. This book aims to contribute to recently expanding discussions of cultural networks by analyzing how Puerto Rican cinema navigates the problems arising from the connection and/or disjunction between nation and state. The author argues that Puerto Rico's position as a stateless nation puts pressure on traditional conceptions of national cinema, which tend to rely on assumptions of state support or a bounded nation-state. She also contends that the cultural and business practices associated with early cinema reveal that transnationalism is an integral part of national identities and their development. García-Crespo shows throughout this book that the development and circulation of cinema in Puerto Rico illustrate how the "national" is built from transnational connections.

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Reviews

"This book brings into conversation a wide array of disciplines, methodologies, and fields of study, a quality that makes Early Puerto Rican Cinema an excellent choice for both undergraduate and graduate courses. García-Crespo offers a significant contribution not only to the field of Puerto Rican studies but also to media, culture, and Caribbean studies."
- In CENTRO Journal, Spring 2021

"In this groundbreaking study, the author roams knowledgeably across the fields of history, political science, and sociology . . .Highly recommended."
- CHOICE

"Well-written and vigorously researched, this book will be of much value to scholars of the history of cinema, Puerto Rican history, sociology, and political science. It sheds new light on important aspects of Puerto Rico's early transition from a Spanish to a U.S. colony."
- Margherita Tortora, Yale University

"Naida García-Crespo's superb study of the confluence of early Puerto Rican cinema and the development of nationalism should interest a wide set of readers in the history of early cinema, Puerto Rican and Caribbean studies, and Latin American intellectual discourse during the early twentieth century. It provides both an excellent historiography of silent and sound films produced on the island before World War II and a treatise on how the idea of the Puerto Rican nation emerged as a 'mediation among contradictory discourses' of nativist nationalism and cross-cultural, transnational, and colonial exchanges (p. 170)."
- Hispanic American Historical Review, August 2020, Vol. 100, No. 3

"García-Crespo's professional, methodical approach is particularly to be emphasized....[A]n in-depth history of the film's beginnings in Puerto Rico."
-Rezensionen Medienwissenschaft

About the author:

Naida García-Crespo is an assistant professor of English at the U.S. Naval Academy in Annapolis, Maryland.

Distributed by Rutgers University Press

Cloth: $150.00, 978-1-6844-8118-7; EPUB: $37.95, 978-1-6844-8119-4