Eyes on Amazonia: Transnational Perspectives on the Rubber Boom Frontier

Eyes on Amazonia explores how Latin American, European, and US intellectuals imagined and represented the Amazon region during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, examining how race, gender, representation, mobility, empire, modernity, and personal identity have shaped how the region was and is seen. It argues that representations of the Amazon as a backward region in need of civilizing influence served to legitimize and justify imperial control.

Format: Hardback
Length: 288 pages
Publication date: 29 February 2024
Publisher: Vanderbilt University Press

The Amazon spans nine countries, covers forty percent of South America, and is home to four European languages and over three hundred indigenous languages and cultures.
Eyes on Amazonia: Transnational Perspectives on the Rubber Boom Frontier is a captivating exploration of how Latin American, European, and US intellectuals envisioned and represented the Amazon region during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. This multi-faceted study, which draws on a wide range of literary and non-literary texts and visual sources, examines the intricate ways in which race, gender, representation, mobility, empire, modernity, and personal identity have shaped how the region has been perceived and continues to be seen. By doing so, the book argues that representations of the Amazon as a backward region in need of the civilizing influence of colonialism and modernization served to legitimize and justify imperial control.

Eyes on Amazonia operates within the fields of cultural geography, ecocriticism, and visual cultural analysis. The diverse and fascinating documents and images examined in Eyes on Amazonia capture the modernizing project of this region at a critical juncture in its long history: the early twentieth-century rubber boom.

Dimension: 229 x 152 (mm)
ISBN-13: 9780826506481