F E R N A N D O   D E G I O V A N N I .   Vernacular Latin Americanisms: War, the Market,   and the Making of a Discipline. Pittsburgh: U of Pittsburgh P, 2018. 238 pp.     Fernando Degiovanni  s engaging study follows seven of the key forefathers  of Latin American literary studies between 1900 and 1960, whose formation  of the field took place alongside their negotiation of the major geopolitical  and economic events of their time: the Spanish-American War, both World  Wars,  the  Spanish  Civil  War,  the  Cold  War,  and  the  Cuban  Revolution.  Hailing  from  Spain,  Latin  America,  and  the  US,  each  one  mediated  the  competing  cultural,  political,  and  economic  interests  of  their  countries  of  origin      and  their  adopted  countries      as  they  laid  out  their  respective  canonical approaches to the burgeoning discipline.   In  his  study,  Degiovanni  brilliantly  challenges  several  commonly  accepted truths of Latin American literary studies. He shows that far from  being  an  Arielista  discourse  espousing    uncontaminated  spiritual  values  opposed  to  utilitarian  and  materialist  United  States    (1),  it  is  inseparable  from the realities of communication, transport technologies, and markets  (7). Degiovanni even uncovers the rather authoritarian leanings of some of  the  field  s  main  proponents:  Pedro  Henríquez  Ureña  worked  for  Rafael  Trujillo  s dictatorship (150); Américo Castro justified the Spanish conquest  of the Americas (96); and Alfred Coester spied on Latin American countries  for the US government. Degiovanni exposes the conservatism at the heart of  the discipline, formed as it was    primarily by men    around the study of a  white, criollo elite (144).   The  most  chilling  evidence  of  this  conservatism  lies  in  the  racist  leanings of many of the field  s central early players. Coester  s presentation  of Latin American elites as white and   therefore free from crime-inducing    racial defects     (57) and Federico de Onís  s obstinately naive rendering of  Jim  Crow-era  US  as  a    country  without  prejudice    and  therefore  ripe  for  Spain  s  cultural  expansion  (64)  are  just  two  examples  of  the  evidently  endemic  racism  in  our  field.  Degiovanni  s  investigation  into  this  left  me  wishing that he had expanded even further on its implications, particularly  as  the  discipline  continues  to  reckon  with  this  legacy  of  willful  colorblindness today.   788 The  glue  that  binds  the  study  together  is  the  titular  notion  of  the    vernacular  : the process through which the terms of the discipline came to  acquire  agreed-upon,  common  meanings.  Degiovanni  thus  focuses  on  the  local and contingent interventions that these men made as they delineated  the boundaries of the field: lectures (and their performative implications),  epistolary exchanges (in this sense, his archival work is outstanding), travel,  and    the bulk of his corpus    anthologies that established the boundaries of  the  literary  canons  that  would  best  represent  each  man  s  vision  of  Latin  American literature.  The study follows a chronological path. Chapters one and two focus on  Jeremiah  Ford  and  his  disciple  Coester,  two  US-born  academics  who  promoted what Degiovanni calls a   Pan-Americanist   cultural agenda in the  early twentieth century, incubating US commercial and imperial hegemony  in the region following the opening of the Panama Canal, the US victory in  the  Spanish-American  War,  and  Roosevelt  s  Corollary  to  the  Monroe  Doctrine. Their ideal canon of Latin American literature    the more mimetic,  the  better      rendered  it  a    professional-managerial    discourse  (50)  that  could inform students about the region  s cultural mores, making them more  sophisticated interlocutors to their trading partners to the south.   Chapters  three  and  four  examine  two  Spanish-born  professors,  Onís  and Castro, whose time working in the US academy during the first half of  the twentieth century (bridging WWI, the Spanish Civil War, and WWII) was  dedicated  to  contesting  the  aforementioned  Pan-Americanist  approach  with a   Hispanic Studies   model (64) that sought to make Spain central to  Latin  American  literary  studies.  This  led,  as  Degiovanni  points  out,  to  contradictions in their disciplinary and political positions: their defense of  Spain  s imperial legacy in the Americas, as evidenced in their emphasis on a  canon  of  colonial  literature,  figured  the  country  as  a    modern    paradigm  that  could  teach  US  citizens  how  to  render  their  country  an  adequate  successor to Spain as a global imperial power.   Degiovanni then turns to Latin American figures who shaped the field.  Chapter five considers Luis Alberto Sánchez, whose Marxist-inflected canon  of    socioliterature    served  as  a  critique  of  authoritarianism,  economic  inequality,  the  bureaucratic  opacity  of  the  Spanish  language,  and  even  fascism  (110-5).  Influenced  by  the  University  Reform  movement,  Sánchez  felt  that  socioliterature  could  effect  cultural  democratization  through  accessible texts and lectures: a vernacular critique of Yankee imperialism  that  could,  paradoxically,  reach  fruition  when  marketed  to  the  region  s  expanding urban middle classes within a capitalistic framework.   The  final  two  chapters  discuss  Henríquez  Ureña  and  his  doctoral  student,  Enrique  Anderson  Imbert,  pointing  us  to  another  field-defining  student-mentor  relationship.  Degiovanni  notes  that  Henríquez  wrote  his   789 famous text Literary Currents in Hispanic America to figure Latin America  s  elite, lettered tradition as proof of its cultural authority to guarantee stable  Pan-American  economic  relations  and  capital  expansion  (150-54).  Anderson  s  approach  to  the  discipline,  meanwhile,  valued  a  more  direct  literary style, accessible to the reader (171) and less elitist, yet still offering  an  autonomous  creative  space  far  from  any  totalitarian  (read:  Peronist)  attempts to impose a cultural agenda (173).  At every turn, Degiovanni  s incisive and absorbing analysis shows how  the institutional and ideological frameworks of the first half of the twentieth  century  illuminate  how  we  study  Latin  American  literature  today.  His  account of the refusals by Onís and Castro to advocate for the republican  cause in the Spanish Civil War, based on the rationale that focusing on the  country  s  internal  divisions  would  reduce  its  symbolic  credibility  as  a  cultural hegemon (82), foreshadows the complicit silences that many in our  field  maintain  today  vis-à-vis  pressing  political  matters.  Meanwhile,  his  fascinating approach to the anthologies and textbooks his subjects wrote     aimed at teaching language and literature together    prefigures the oftenfraught linkage between the teaching of Latin American literature and the  teaching of the Spanish language that many of us currently deal with. Finally,  his  epilogue  focuses  on  the  still-ambivalent  position  of  the  discipline      which  figures  the  region  s  literature  alternately  as  a  force  of  political  radicalization and one that maintains existing hierarchies of lettered power  across  the  Americas      amidst  the  resurgence  of  the  anti-US,  Latin  Americanist discourses of Chavismo and Kirchnerismo.    CARL FISCHER   Fordham University