The impetus for this volume, "The Other Nineteenth Century," stems from the homonymous conference that was held at the University of Wisconsin-Madison in April 2005. Over twenty scholars from the United States and Portugal delivered papers, and expanded versions of nineteen of these studies, along with five other relevant articles, constitute the present volume of Portuguese Literary & Cultural Studies. The conference itself was designed to provide a forum to discuss works, authors and themes that are usually excluded from the repertoires of Lusophone literary and cultural history, and only seldom addressed in academic venues. Indeed, as the original conference presentations and the final published articles demonstrate, behind the more "canonized" nineteenth century lies another nineteenth century that has not always been duly recognized in literary and cultural histories.
