Other Spanish and Portuguese Language and Literature Commons^™

Climate Change, Colonialism, And Second-Class Citizenry: A Case Study Of The Impacts Of Hurricane María In Puerto Rico, Aislyne Calianos

Senior Honors Projects

The hurricane season of 2017 was a historic one, with mammoth storms making landfall one after another, in what seemed like an unrelenting assault on our coastal cities and communities. Hurricane Harvey inundated Houston, Irma plowed through Florida, and Maria devastated Puerto Rico, but one of these storms was unlike the others. Why is it that the American citizens of our southern states were able to recover so much more quickly than our citizens in Puerto Rico? In the era of climate change, we will be forced to reckon with the modern legacy of colonialism, as vulnerable communities must face ...

Mahoma En Dos Textos Aljamiados Del Siglo Xvi: La Filosofía Perenne Y El Monomito De Los Moriscos, Emil L. Cruz Fernández

All Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Besides highlighting the legitimacy of Islam, a religion that was prohibited by the Spanish Inquisition during the 1500’s, Aljamiado-Moriscoliterature has been distinguished by its secrecy, hybridity, ethnocentrism, proselytism, and emphasis on the chaotic reality of the clandestine social group considered to be the "last Moors" of Spain. The Spanish-Muslims or Moriscoswrote this underground literature in the Spanish language, utilizing Arabic characters. The work of historians and “moriscologists” such as L.P. Harvey, Luce López-Baralt, María Teresa Narváez, Vincent Barletta, among others, have examined the practical role and didactic value that —at various levels— these hybrid texts had ...

Blaming The Victim: Deconstructing María De Zayas's Feminism, Jennifer Zundel

Undergraduate Theses and Professional Papers

María de Zayas y Sotomayor (1591 – 1661?) was the best-selling author of two extant collections of novellas, Novelas Amorosas y Ejemplares (Exemplary Tales of Love) (1637) and Desengaños Amorosos (The Disenchantments of Love) (1647). Both collections, consisting of stories of love, marriage, and gendered violence between aristocratic men and women, are explicitly and unapologetically pro-woman. Zayas condemns systemic misogyny and calls for institutional inclusion and protection of women, earning her place as an early modern feminist. Despite her depictions of violence against women and her denunciation of patriarchal institutions, Zayas does not advocate for a radical restructuring of society. She ...

La Influencia De Boccaccio En La Literatura Catalana Medieval (1390-1495). Un Estudio De La Imitación Literaria En Bernat Metge, Bernat Hug De Rocabertí Y Joan Roís De Corella, Pau Cañigueral Batllosera

Doctoral Dissertations

This dissertation studies the impact of the works by Giovanni Boccaccio on Catalan medieval literature. The influence of Italian literature in medieval Iberian writing is traditionally understood as a key component of a wide-ranging cultural process of transition from the Middle Ages to the Renaissance. The works of Dante, Petrarch, and Boccaccio, the tre corone, played a crucial role in that process. Boccaccio, in particular, became a model for the writing of a variety of literary genres, from misogynistic poetry to chivalric romances. His works, both in Latin and Italian, featured in the most remarkable libraries of the period as ...

“¿Qué Coño Es Esto?”: Exploración De Identidad De Género Y De Orientación Sexual En La Mucama De Omicunlé, Vianny C. Lugo Aracena

Honors Theses

La mucama de Omicunlé (2015) es una novela escrita por la autora dominicana Rita Indiana, que lidia con temas que son considerados tabúes dentro de la sociedad dominicana: sexualidad, identidad de género, y espiritualidad afrodescendiente. Indiana utiliza la espiritualidad afrodescendiente para facilitar la exploración de las respectivas identidades de género y de orientación sexual en los personajes principales, Acilde y Argenis. El utilizar la espiritualidad afrodescendiente también permite ver a la novela como un texto literario que utiliza el patakí, una narración que contiene conocimientos afrodescendientes, como elemento estructural principal. Los temas que normalmente caracterizan a los patakíes son abundantes ...

Intermediarios: Introduction To SpanishEnglish Community And Legal Translation And Interpreting, Laura Kanost, Julie A. Sellers

NPP eBooks

Intermediarios: Introduction to Spanish<>English Community and Legal Translation and Interpreting is intended for students who have advanced skills in both Spanish and English and a basic familiarity with translation and interpretation. Activities are based on the U.S. context. Translation activities increase in difficulty. The sequencing of interpreting activities develops skills gradually by beginning with memory exercises, then moving into class role plays, and finally working with legal interpreting exercises of increasing difficulty. Judicial interpreting activities target the three modes of interpreting used in the judicial setting: sight translation of documents, consecutive interpreting, and simultaneous interpreting.

Substitute Salvation: An Online Classroom Resource, Rachel Callaly

Honors Theses

As a teacher, not having a plan for days when you are not in the classroom is not an option. Usually, a teacher can plan a few days in advance and be prepared for a substitute teacher to come in. However, more often than not, the substitute is not certified to teach in the subject they are covering, which becomes particularly difficult in a World Language class, such as Spanish. Additionally, some days there is no advanced notice for an absence, and a last-minute plan has to be made. That is where Substitute Salvation comes in. Substitute Salvation is a ...

The Benefits Of Immersion In Learning A Foreign Language, Cassidy Crouch

Honors Theses

The purpose of this study is to measure the linguistic benefits of learning a foreign language in a study abroad immersion program through Western Michigan University’s (WMU) Spanish department. The participants in this study were all participants of the Santander, Spain program of the Summer II semester of 2017. Nineteen students in total went to Spain and eleven of them agreed to participate in this study. During the Spring 2017 semester the eleven participants were given a pre-departure questionnaire and oral interview where they were asked demographic questions as well as program-specific information. During the last week in Santander ...

Going Beyond The Textbook: Revitalizing Culture In The Spanish Classroom, Sarah Basar

Honors Theses

Effectively teaching the culture of a target language in foreign language classrooms can be a rather difficult and time-consuming task. Most often, culture is placed somewhere on a spectrum of either being a minor supplement to acquiring and learning the target language or utilizing culture as the direction through which grammar, vocabulary, and conversational practice are attained. Teachers’ beliefs, experiences, and resources all play a significant role in how culture is defined and taught in the schools of a country where globalization and immigration are quickly beginning to change the sociopolitical and demographic dynamics of our society. Thus, it is ...

China And The Politics Of Cross–Cultural Representation In Interwar European Fiction, Carles Prado-Fonts

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In his article "China and the Politics of Cross–Cultural Representation in Interwar European Fiction" Carles Prado-Fonts analyzes Joan Crespi's La ciutat de la por (The City of Fear, 1930) to illustrate the varied representations of China in interwar Europe. In the 1920s and 1930s, a plurality of views on China and the Chinese people became widespread across different parts of Europe, mainly shaped by English, French, and German representations. Contradictory images of China coexisted in literature, thought, and popular culture. Crespi's work exemplifies these contradictions: China appears as both an attainable reality and an unreachable fantasy, two ...

Alba As Eternal Mother: Violent Spaces And The ‘Last Woman’ In Manuel De Pedrolo’S "Mecanoscrit Del Segon Origen", Pedro Nilsson-Fernàndez

Alambique: Revista académica de ciencia ficción y fantasia / Jornal acadêmico de ficção científica e fantasía

The ambitious literary project of Catalan author Manuel de Pedrolo i Molina (1918-1990) has generally been perceived as belonging to the tradition of popular literature, a label often reinforced by the unprecedented success of his minor work Mecanoscrit del segon origen. This has clearly damaged Pedrolo’s status in the Catalan literary; as Kathryn Crameri highlights, “(w)hen authors such as Manuel de Pedrolo championed more popular genres such as crime fiction” –or science fiction as far as this study is concerned– “they had to endure criticisms of the quality of their writing” (Crameri, 2008, p. 23). This article will ...

"Typescript Of The Second Origin". Counterculture And Politics In The 1970s'., Antoni Maestre-Brotons

Alambique: Revista académica de ciencia ficción y fantasia / Jornal acadêmico de ficção científica e fantasía

This article explores how, like other science fiction and fantasy novels, Typescript of the Second Origin relates to 1970s counterculture, radical politics and anti-establishment movements. Pedrolo, a leftist and pro-independence strongly committed author, echoes the radical left’s breakaway from the bourgeois reactionary way of life and consumer society in the novel. The beginning of a post-apocalyptic era in the novel stands for some of the values attached to hippie culture: the search for an ‘authentic’ —natural, primitive, non-technological— life; anti-establishment activity —as shown in self-organisation and the dissolution of the political system—, universal solidarity —the first member of the ...

Political Wishful Thinking Versus The Shape Of Things To Come: Manuel De Pedrolo’S "Mecanoscrit" And “Los Últimos Días” By Àlex And David Pastor, Pere Gallardo Torrano

Alambique: Revista académica de ciencia ficción y fantasia / Jornal acadêmico de ficção científica e fantasía

Despite almost forty years separating Manuel de Pedrolo’s novel Mecanoscrit del segon orígen (1974, trad. Typescript of the Second Origin) and the brothers Àlex and David Pastor’s film “Los últimos días” (2013, US tit. “The Last Days”), it is not difficult to find several socio-political areas of intersection which converge on a biological issue at the end of both works: the pregnancy of one of the characters at the end of each story.

Yet, such an interpretation would be rather limited as it ignores the socio-political landscape from which each work originated. Published in the aftermath of the ...

Frida's Daughter, Myrta Vida

Theses

The purpose of my creative writing is to highlight a group of U.S. citizens still woefully underrepresented in literature proper: the Latinx middle class. I’m keenly interested in exploring Puerto Rican and first- and second-generation Latinx immigrant stories. Even though some of the experiences from these groups have been elegantly visited by writers such as Giannina Braschi, Sandra Cisneros, Junot Diaz, Julia Alvarez, and others, there are nuances to the Latinx middle class experience that are yet to be uncovered. Being stuck in the cultural, linguistic, socio-economic, and political middles in a country that has recently taken a ...

Bilingual Children’S Literature: Bridging The Gap Between Language And Identity = Literatura Infantil Bilingüe: Cerrando La Brecha Entre El Idioma Y La Identidad, Amanda Weber

Student research

No abstract provided.

Educating Dídac: Mankind’S New Father And The End Of Patriarchy In Manuel De Pedrolo’S "Typescript Of The Second Origin", Sara Martín

Alambique: Revista académica de ciencia ficción y fantasia / Jornal acadêmico de ficção científica e fantasía

The post-apocalyptic novel by Catalan writer Manuel de Pedrolo, Typescript of the Second Origin (1974, English 2017) celebrates Alba as humankind’s new mother. Alba’s mission, however, clearly depends on the help of a man willing to father her children, a role for which Pedrolo made an extremely singular choice: whereas Alba is already 14 when Typescript begins, Dídac is just a 9-year-old boy. Because of the exceptional situation (the catastrophic extraterrestrial devastation of Earth), Pedrolo forces Dídac to mature very fast, to the point that he is only 12 when Alba gives birth to their baby. Additionally, Dídac ...

El Spill De Jaume Roig. Estudio De Relaciones Semióticas Con La Picaresca, Raul Macias Cotano

All Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

The Spill is a literary work written in the Catalan dialect of Valencia in 1460 by Jaume Roig, a prestigious doctor whose personal and public life is well known. The book presents numerous parallels with Lazarillo de Tormes, the 1554 novel written in Spanish (or “Castilian”) that has traditionally been considered the start of the picaresque genre in Spain. These similarities are so striking that it makes critics wonder if Spill may be a precedent of Lazarillo de Tormes. This dissertation studies the possible relations between those two books. The similarities are mostly thematic, for which the lens used to ...

Dos Rayanos-Americanos Rewrite Hispaniola: Julia Alvarez And Junot Díaz, Megan Jeanette Myers

Megan Jeanette Myers

Juan Pablo Duarte, revered as a founding father of the Dominican Republic,2 recently found his nationalist message featured in a video on YouTube titled “ex Dominican@ os que juraron por la bandera de Haiti,” or “ex-Dominicans who swore on Haiti’s flag.” The short clip, about seven minutes in total, features a slideshow containing photos and names of Dominicans who, according to the nationalist, anti-Haitian producers of the video, have “betrayed their Dominican citizenship,” as the title slide suggests, and sworn allegiance to Haiti.3 What sparked the production of this video? The answer is muddled by centuries of ...

Family Documents, Analogy And Reconciliation In The Works Of Carme Riera, Kathryn Everly

Languages, Literatures, and Linguistics

Carme Riera's works Temps d'innocencia and La mitat de l'anima explore the restorative power of fiction and memoir in coming to terms with personal and national loss regarding the Spanish Civil War.

Los Beneficios De La Educación Bilingüe En Los Estados Unidos Y Sus Implicaciones Para El Futuro De La Sociedad Estadounidense, Madeline Osborne

Undergraduate Honors Theses

In the current context of globalization, bilingualism is not only becoming more frequent but more necessary for professional success. This fact inspired the present research on the benefits of bilingual education for primary and secondary school students and the future of US society.

To develop this study, I will first explore the history of bilingual education in the United States and the effects that history has had on what we now consider bilingual education programs. I will then discuss the controversy over bilingual education in the United States and how the controversy has shaped and, at the same time, created ...