SOUTHWEST HUMANITIES

Southwest Humanities LC provides translation (Spanish-to-English), editing, and indexing services for academic and other professional writers.

Spanish-to-English Translation

Southwest Humanities’ founder and owner, Andrew Ascherl, is an accomplished Spanish-to-English translator. Since 2015, Andrew has translated several academic monographs from Spanish to English, including work by Nelly Richard, Santiago Castro-Gómez, and Mabel Moraña. These books have been or will soon be published by Cambria Press, Polity Press, and Columbia University Press. Andrew is available for consultation for future translation projects, and can be reached at aascherl@gmail.com

Editing and Proofreading

All writing can benefit from careful review by an editor and proofreader. The professional editing services we offer attend to the mechanics of English grammar, structure, usage, phrasing, consistency, and commonly accepted style conventions that academic publishers use. We implement a wide variety of editorial services and can tailor them to each client’s particular needs, helping the author’s voice and ideas come through in writing that is clear, concise, and polished.

We apply our skills and expertise to your manuscript to correct errors, smooth out problems with phrasing, structure, and style, and to provide the kind of feedback necessary to prepare a manuscript for submission or for publication. Follow this link for more information about the editing and proofreading services we offer at Southwest Humanities.

We also offer developmental editing services for writers who are at an earlier point in their writing process and need assistance of a larger scope than what is provided by copy-editing. This service includes weekly or bi-weekly phone/video call meetings, priority attention during the drafting and revision process, and complete copy-editing services. Follow this link for additional information.

We specialize in editing academic theses, articles, and book manuscripts for publication but also have substantial experience editing other types of written documents and websites. For a quick and free estimate for your editing or proofreading needs, please contact us: aascherl@gmail.com or 716-228-4198.

Indexing

Southwest Humanities also offers academic indexing services. These days, most academic publishers require authors to compile an index for their soon to be published books. Typically one of the final steps before an academic book’s publication, indexing can be an arduous task for an author who has already spent years reading, revising, and refining a manuscript. Since 2014, the specialists at Southwest Humanities have prepared thorough and professional indexes for dozens of academic monographs and edited collections. Contact us today for a quick and free estimate for the index for your forthcoming book: aascherl@gmail.com
or (716) 228-4198.

We are very pleased to announce that another book indexed by Southwest Humanities has been published (Nov. 1, 2025): Sam Holley-Kline’s In the Shadow of El Tajín: The Political Economy of Archaeology in Modern Mexico, in University of Nebraska Press’s Confluencias series. In this important study, Holley-Kline offers a deeply textured account of the famous archaeological site of El Tajín in Veracruz, Mexico—moving beyond its ancient pyramids to examine its modern history as a site of labor, industry, and Indigenous life. Through ethnographic interviews with Totonac residents and archival investigations, the author sheds light on how oil extraction, vanilla cultivation, wage labor for site conservation, and tourism have transformed both the landscape and the social fabric of the region. The book reframes El Tajín not just as a monument of pre-Hispanic glory, but as a living terrain shaped by colonial and modern political-economic forces. This volume bridges archaeology, Indigenous studies, and political economy in novel ways. By decentering the archaeological narrative and placing Indigenous workers, industry, and local histories at the heart of the story, it challenges how heritage sites are traditionally studied. It prompts scholars to ask: Who benefits from heritage? Whose voices are excluded? How do industrial and extractive economies impact cultural landscapes? As such, the book makes a valuable contribution to Latin American studies, heritage studies, labor history, and Indigenous scholarship—offering a more holistic understanding of how past and present intertwine in heritage landscapes. For more information, please see the publisher’s website here.