about us

Ampersand is an independent publishing

house established in 2012. In the beginning,
our catalog specialized mainly in Written
Culture, but now we have expanded into new
topics, such as Visual Studies, literary essays,
and Fashion Studies.

Ampersand is obsessed with reading in all its

forms, as a practice and as a relationship with
cultural products around us: books, art, and
fashion.

Cavia 2985
Buenos Aires, AR
Ampersand
+54 11 4809 8614

Victoria Britos
meaning
[email protected] The Ampersand is the symbol &.
The word is a corruption of the phrase
“et per se, et”. The origins of the
logogram date back to the first
edicionesampersand.com
century, as a ligature, due to fast
writing, between the letters “e” and “t”.

Follow us on social media

at @ediciones.ampersand!
Visual culture
and imaginary
worlds

Natural and Mythical History

of the Elephants
The fascination that men have with elephants
goes as far as the ancient civilizations. Aristotle,
Plutarch and Marco Polo, among others, admired
their intelligence and guile. Throughout history,
pachyderms were gifted to kings, emperors, and Landscape with Figures
popes, but also used as war machines and circus
attractions. What did Fitz Roy and Darwin see when
In this exhaustive and rigorous research, the they arrived at the “end of the world”? How
authors go through art, religion, science, and did they transform that experience into an
Vertical Landscape mythology to bring out the importance of this image of this part of the map?
animal in Western and Eastern culture. This book is a deep analysis of the
The construction of tradition is the main
Narrative of the Surveying Voyages of his
phenomenon of modern societies. The cities - Pages: 250 Majesty’s Ships Adventure and Beagle,
had a principal relevance as the place where - Keywords: nature, culture and society, published in 1839. Penhos manages to
this discussions happened. Buenos Aires mithology decode the visual and literary devices that
dealt with the same issue. This work tells us - Authors: JOSÉ EMILIO BURUCÚA is an art worked in the invention of the legends of
the story of the mechanisms of culture to historian. He is an emeritus professor at the the southernmost point in Patagonia.
build, through art and literature, the Universidad de Buenos Aires and Universidad de
discourse of an emerging nation. San Martín, and a visiting professor in Paris, - Pages: 394
Florence, and Berlin. - Keywords: science, exploration, art,
- Pages: 272 NICOLÁS KWIATKOWSKI has a doctorate in Darwin
- Keywords: Latin America, city, modernity, History at the Universidad de Buenos Aires. He is - Author: MARTA PENHOS is an art
tradition, art, literature a specialist in European cultural history, in historian, professor-researcher at the
- Author: CATALINA FARA is an art historian Leonardo da Vinci’s figure and the representation Universidad de Buenos Aires and
specialized in Visual Studies. of massacres and genocides. Universidad de San Martín.
 Memoirs of
Readers

What does “Reading” mean? How does

this practice affect our point of view or
even our lifestyle? This series is about
life and its extraordinary encounters
with a book, author or text.

Different Latin American writers go

through their stories as readers. MARÍA MORENO is one of the sharpest
However, they are not merely chroniclers of Argentine literature. Her
theorizing. Instead, they give us a texts combine freedom, rigorous research
TAMARA KAMENSZAIN. Argentinian
and a critical perception of life.
glimpse into small but meaningful writer.
aspects of their lives and the moments
when a book changes its path.

Other readers

The Center of The Earth, Jorge

Monteleone
Phantoms of Knowledge, Noé Jitrik
Excess and Reading, José Emilio
Burucúa SYLVIA MOLLOY. Novelist and CARLOS
Trance, Alan Pauls EDGARDO COZARINSKY. Argentinian literary critic. She lives in the US ALTAMIRANO.
Reading: a life..., Daniel Link writer, filmmaker, and playwright. and has taught Latin American Emeritus professor at
When the Text Finds Substance, literature at Princeton, Yale, and Universidad Nacional
Margo Glantz NYU, where she created the MFA de Quilmes. He is an
The Invisible life, Sylvia iparraguirre in Creative Writing in Spanish. specialist in intellectual
history.
Essays about and
from Latin America

The Origins of Popular Libraries

Women Readers in the
Nineteenth Century In 1870, Argentina passed a law that
Why and what do women read? Graciela promoted the development of popular
Batticuore rewrites the story of illustrated libraries. The author explores the
women from Latin America, particularly difficulties that these institutions went
from Argentina. Through different historic though, the role of Domingo Faustino
Authors Don´t Write Books events, paintings and literature, she Sarmiento, the meaning of the libraries in
proposes a classification of types of Latin American history and the tension
women readers. Newspapers, letters, and between the State and civil society.
Which role have the editors played in Latin
America? This book goes through different novels not only create the imaginary and
real universe of females but also become - Pages: 320
editorial projects and catalogs from Chile,
valid tools for social mobility in modern - Keywords: Library, State, civil society
Argentina, and Venezuela. De Diego analyses how
life. - Author: JAVIER PLANAS is a professor-
markets, new technologies, the economic crisis
researcher at the Universidad de La Plata.
and the Franco regime in Spain affected the book
- Pages: 174 He is a specialist in the history of libraries in
industry. Besides, he explores the evolution in the
- Keywords: women, literature, art Argentina.
roles of editors and the new readers in a time of
changing paradigms. - Author: GRACIELA BATTICUORE is an
Argentinian essay writer, novelist, poet More books
- Pages: 246 and professor-researcher at the
- Keywords: Latin America, history, books, culture Universidad de Buenos Aires.
- Author: JOSÉ LUIS DE DIEGO has a doctorate in Outdated, Regina Root & Susan Hallstead (eds.)
Literature and is a professor at the Universidad de The Other Face of Janus, José Luis de Diego
La Plata. He is a specialist in the history of the
Press, Politics and Visual Culture, Claudia Roman
book and publishing houses in Latin America.
Reading and Writing:
past and present

Write, Read, Preserve

Write, read, preserve is an original work, so far
unpublished in any other language other than
Spanish, written by Guglielmo Cavallo. As a
product of his long academic trajectory in the
field of Paleography, it allows us to
The Mediated Reading
reconstruct with detail the structure of
written culture in each of its stages: Focused on Media Ecology theory but with
production, circulation, reception, as well as the contribution of History, Neuroscience,
its preservation and status, within ancient Multimedia, and Hypertext notions, this
The Hybrid Text and medieval societies. Cavallo leans on a rich work explores the way we read in a
variety of documentary sources: from books multiscreen world.
Today´s world is full of screens. Writing for and written documents to inscriptions Francisco Albarello analyses the new and
mass media demands a particular recovered from archaeological remains, creative skills that the multitask reader has
knowledge and sensibility. In this work, classic literary and philosophical texts, or art to develop to deal, read and understand
Ramírez Gelbes exposes, between theory pieces such as sculptures, engravings, and different kinds of texts: pictures, audio files,
and practice, the necessary skills to drawings. animations, screensavers, video sequences
produce textual content in the digital and, last but not least, the written ones.
environment. - Pages: 378
- Keywords: written culture, ancient & - Pages: 224
- Pages: 270 medieval societies - Keywords: digital culture, screens, society
- Keywords: communication, digital, society - Author: GUGLIELMO CAVALLO is an Italian - Author: FRANCISCO ALBARELLO is a
- Author: SILVIA RAMÍREZ GELBES has a paleographer. Professor of Latin Paleography professor specialized in mass media
doctorate in Linguistics at the Universidad at the Scuola Speciale per Archivisti e communication. He is the director of the
de Buenos Aires. She is the director of the Bibliotecari of Rome and Greek Paleography doctoral program in Communication at the
Master in Journalism at the Universidad de at the University of Rome La Sapienza. Universidad Austral from Buenos Aires.
San Andrés.