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It is an honor to contribute to this homage to Sara Castro-Klarén: scholar, teacher, mentor, and innovative leader in the field. Castro-Klarén's work is wide ranging, and has had a profound impact on Peruvian literature (particularly José María Arguedas and Mario Vargas Llosa), feminist criticism, colonial studies, and Latin American Cultural Studies. As one of her former graduate students and dissertation advisees, I recognize how much my own intellectual trajectory owes to Sara's pioneering critical thinking and interdisciplinary methodologies that have enriched the field.
Castro-Klarén was practicing cultural studies before cultural studies was a recognized field or approach in Latin American Studies. Though the University of Birmingham's Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies, most associated with Stuart Hall, was founded in 1964, the impact of cultural studies in Latin America (other than in the Caribbean) took some time to emerge but Sara was already paving the way. In her review of The Latin American Cultural Studies Reader, she identifies the "core preoccupations of cultural studies: the mutual effects of power and culture… [the] power relations implicit in the production, consumption and circulation of knowledge" (466). Rebecca Biron echoes Sara's definition by underscoring...