Iberianism and Crisis

Robert Patrick Newcomb’s Iberianism and Crisis examines how prominent peninsular essay writers and public intellectuals who were active around the turn of the twentieth century looked to Iberianism to address a succession of political, economic, and social crises that shook the Spanish and Portuguese states to their foundations.

Robert Patrick Newcomb is an associate professor in the Department of Spanish and Portuguese at the University of California, Davis.

"Iberianism and Crisis does something unique for a scholarly study: It excavates an anachronism in a way that offers perspective on the present, brilliantly showing at every step the enormous value of crossing disciplinary boundaries in the pursuit of broader humanistic and intercultural understanding."

Ana Paula Ferreira, Professor of Portuguese Studies, University of Minnesota :

"An intelligent contribution to the ongoing challenge of forging the academic field of Iberian Studies, Newcomb's book presents the emergence of Iberian thinking, or "Iberismo," in connection with local, regional, and European trends of fin-de-siècle crisis while, at the same time, inviting us to think beyond the conjunctures that have tended to exclude some regions of the Iberian Peninsula in the struggle against the cultural hegemony of Castilian Spain."

Estela Vieira, Associate Professor, Department of Spanish and Portuguese, Indiana University, Bloomington:

"Iberianism and Crisis is a major contribution to research in the field of Iberian studies. Working in several　linguistic, cultural, and national traditions with impressive ease, Robert Patrick Newcomb’s approach to Iberian studies is multifaceted. Iberianism and Crisis not only gives a comprehensive critical history of how the thought and writing of some of the central literary and intellectual peninsular figures of the late nineteenth century and early twentieth century were informed by Iberianism, but it also explores a more conceptual question that investigates the connections between Iberianism and crisis. Newcomb makes this critical history relevant to present concerns about the future directions of the emerging field of Iberian studies, and the subsequent replacement of academic Hispanism with Iberian studies."