Mafalda

“This is transnational cultural history at its best. Isabella Cosse takes us on a global journey to reveal how and why a simple comic strip that began in Argentina in the 1960s found resonance and took root in Western Europe during the early 1970s, became a unifying symbol of Latin America's ‘continental identity’ in the 1980s, and evolved into a mass-marketed icon whose namesake—the puckish, prepubescent, feminist rebel, Mafalda—is today recognized the world over.” — Eric Zolov, author of The Last Good Neighbor: Mexico in the Global Sixties

“Mafalda combines the best traditions of Latin American social and political history. A brilliant discussion of gender and the political seriousness of humor, this book ingeniously invites the audience to ‘read the funny pages’ while taking students on a rigorous analytical journey about the politics of Latin American modernity. Just like Mafalda herself.” — Heidi Tinsman, author of Buying into the Regime: Grapes and Consumption in Cold War Chile and the United States

"Isabella Cosse's sociohistorical study of Mafalda (which was originally published in Argentina in 2014) is an outstanding example of one important current of cultural studies in that country." — David William Foster, Journal of the History of Childhood and Youth

“In this important sociopolitical/cultural study (first published in Spanish in 2014, here smoothly translated by Pérez Carrara), Cosse demonstrates—with a nod to Freud, Bakhtin, and other ‘humorists’—how a simple comic strip about a 1960s middle-class little girl speaks to generations of Argentines and transcends national borders… Highly recommended. Upper-division undergraduates through faculty.” — J. Walker, Choice