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Primitivismo Y Modernidad En La Literatura Modernista Hispanoamericana, Sara Marta Gonzalez

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation explores the troubled relationship between Hispanic-American Modernism and modernity through the close study of a representative array of authors (José Martí, Rubén Darío, Enrique Gómez Carrillo, Augusto Dhalmar and Pedro Prado). My analysis departs from the revisionist theories of Angel Rama and Ivan A. Schulman, which changed the traditional views about the movement towards a more complete vision of its role as a literature that is highly subversive.

During the XIX century, America experienced a vigorous cultural awakening unsupported by an incomplete modernization whose more fundamental principles are challenged by the systematic use of primitivism by these authors. …

The Bible Against American Slavery: Anglophone Transatlantic Evangelical Abolitionists' Use Of Biblical Arguments, 1776-1865, Richard Rodriguez

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation argues that transatlantic abolitionists used the Bible to condemn American slavery as a national sin that would be punished by God. In a chronological series of thematic chapters, it demonstrates how abolitionists developed a sustained critique of American slavery at its various developing stages from the American Revolution to the Civil War. In its analysis of abolitionist anti-slavery arguments, “The Bible Against Slavery” focuses on sources that abolitionists generated. In their books, sermons, and addresses they arraigned the oppressive aspects of American slavery. This study shows how American and British abolitionists applied biblical precepts to define the maltreatment …

A Historical Floristic Inventory Of Pine Rockland Fabaceae (Leguminosae), Adel L. Pena

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The objectives of this study were to investigate temporal changes in the diversity of pine rockland Fabaceae, induced by anthropogenic factors. Herbarium collections spanning 170 years were used to analyze species frequency and richness. The results indicated temporal fluctuations in diversity with frequency of native species highest previous to the year 1920, and exotic-invasive species richness peaking after the 1960s. The accompanying species list resulting from the inventory included 122 Fabaceae species, in 56 genera, with an additional 19 species not previously listed for pine rocklands. The results emphasize the damage caused by early and deliberate introductions of exotic species, …

Reading Spaces: Nation And Popular Learning In Nineteenth-Century Lima, Gracia G. Solis

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

My dissertation examined the transformation of reading practices and ideas about the functions of alphabetic literacy in nineteenth-century Lima. Scholars of Latin America have attributed improvements in literacy rates to the rise of the Teaching State in the twentieth century; however, as I showed, literacy and reading culture spread decades earlier in the Peruvian capital, at a time when the state lacked the stability and resources to develop a public system of education. “Reading Spaces” argued that during the second half of the nineteenth century, private educational enterprise from a diverse group of booksellers, writers, and educators established key institutions …

Examining The Relationships Between Gender Role Congruity, Identity, And The Choice To Persist For Women In Undergraduate Physics Majors, Bronwen Bares Pelaez

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Persistent gender disparity limits the available contributors to advancing some science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) fields. While higher education can be an influential time-point for ensuring adequate participation, many physics programs across the U.S. have few women in classroom or lab settings. Prior research indicates that these women face considerable barriers. For university students, faculty, and administration to appropriately address these issues, it is important to understand the experiences of women as they navigate male-dominated STEM fields.

This explanatory sequential mixed methods study explored undergraduate female physics majors’ experiences with their male-dominated academic and research spaces in the U.S. …

The Syrian Refugee Crisis And The European Union: A Case Study Of Germany And Hungary, Simone-Ariane Schelb

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This thesis explores the impact of the Syrian refugee crisis on the Common European Asylum System. It evaluates the extent to which the European Union was able to implement a common asylum system, identifies discrepancies between different European countries, primarily Germany and Hungary, and briefly examines the roots of these differences. To this end, the structure of the international refugee protection regime and the German and Hungarian asylum systems are analyzed. Furthermore, the thesis explores how the governments of the two countries perceive the rights of refugees and how their views have affected their handling of the crisis. The case …

Unsmiling Lips And Dull Eyes: A Study Of Why We Continue To Read Jane Austen, Kareen Barakat

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The purpose of this thesis is to take a closer look at Jane Austen’s work and understand the importance of it in both the academic and cultural sphere. With a specific focus on Pride and Prejudice, this research starts with a focus on feminist readings of the novel. Primarily, this research looks at the novel with a feminist lens in order to better understand the female characters and their involvement in the marriage plot. Secondarily, the research goes on to look at the cultural impact of Pride and Prejudice and attempts to understand the ways in which this novel re-appears …

An Unreceptive Audience: The Mixed Receptions Of Mark Twain's And J.D.Salinger's Novels In The 1950s And 1960s, Marlene Tovar

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This thesis examines how the sociopolitical contexts of the mid-twentieth century influenced readers’ interpretations of Mark Twain’s novel “The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn” and J.D. Salinger’s “The Catcher in the Rye,” two controversial novels that were subjected to censorship activity. In particular, this thesis will focus on the reception of both of these novels during the 1950s and 1960s, a period marked by two major events: The Civil Rights Movement and the youth counterculture phenomenon. In this study, the reception of “Huckleberry Finn” will be analyzed in the context of the civil rights movement, using news articles published in …

Family Medicine, Jaimie Eubanks

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The novel FAMILY MEDICINE follows three married women as they struggle to define themselves in Foley, South Dakota, a small town where privacy is nearly impossible.

Marcy Morrow, a queen bee, in a vulnerable moment reveals misgivings about her second pregnancy to Bridget Cunningham, the wife of Dr. Herb Cunningham and his office manager at the town’s only medical practice. Bridget's offer of off-the-books help begins a chain of secrecy into which Dr. Maka Smith, the practice’s other physician, is reluctantly pulled. Meanwhile Marcy and Bridget’s husbands run for mayor, forcing the women to reexamine their lives, ambitions, and the …

Existential Bebop, Brett Kaplan

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

EXISTENTIAL BEBOP is a collection of thirteen short stories that use humor and satire to address some of the absurdities of human existence.

In some stories, characters are forced to come to terms with mortality, such as the six-year-old boy in “A Goldfish Memory,” who learns about death for the first time. In “Cassandra Knows All” a rational twenty-something is lured by a charlatan who convinces her that there is an afterlife. In others, the comedy centers on human frailties, such as “Weekend in Deceit,” where two couples confront infidelity. “The Sacrifice of Mikey Horowitz” explores family values, ancient and …

Reimagining African Authenticity Through Adichie's Imitation Motif, Ivette Rodriguez

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

In An Image of Africa, Chinua Achebe indicts Conrad’s Heart of Darkness for exemplifying the kind of purist rhetoric that has long benefited Western ontology while propagating reductive renderings of African experience. Edward Said refers to this dynamic as the way in which societies define themselves contextually against an imagined Other. Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s fiction exposes how, by occupying cultural dominance, Western, white male values are normalized as universal. Nevertheless, these values are de-naturalized by their inconsistencies in the lived experiences of Adichie’s black, African women. Women who are at once aware of and participant in, the pretentions that underlie …

Conservative Right-Wing Protest Rhetoric In The Cold War Era Of Segregationist Mobilization, Devon A. Wright

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

In the early Cold War decades, the Citizens’ Councils of America (CCA) became the flagship conservative right-wing social movement organization (SMO). As part of its organizational activities, it engaged in a highly sophisticated propaganda effort to mobilize pro-segregationist opinion, merging traditional racist arguments with modern Cold War geopolitics to characterize civil rights activism and federal civil rights reforms as an effort to bring about a tyrannical, Soviet-inspired, dictatorship. Through a content discourse analysis, this research aims to contribute to understanding what factors determine how SMO’s deploy propaganda rhetoric. The main hypothesis is that geopolitical factors, defined here as specific geographic …

The Ethical Import Of Entheogens, Joshua Falcon

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The term entheogen refers to drugs—including the artificial substances and active principles drawn from them—which are known to produce ecstasy and have been used traditionally in certain religious and shamanic contexts. The entheogenic experiences provoked by entheogens are described by users in myriad ways, including in spiritual, religious, philosophical, and secular contexts. Entheogenic experiences have shown that they can create opportunities for individuals to generate meaning, including novel philosophical insights, which users claim to gain by way of experience. As such, entheogenic experiences exhibit the ability to influence a change in a user’s fundamental philosophical commitments, or live options, including …

The Effects Of Children's Spiritual Coping After Parent, Grandparent Or Sibling Death On Children's Grief, Personal Growth, And Mental Health, Ivette M. Hidalgo

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Parental death can have a negative impact on children’s lives with changes in economic resources, and lead to change in residence, loss of contact with friends and neighbors, change in caretakers, and loss of time with the surviving parent. Research on the effects of a grandparent’s death on children is limited. Death of a sibling signifies the loss of a role model, friend, confidante, and playmate. The purpose of this correlational study was to identify: 1) differences in the spiritual coping strategies used by children across age groups, gender, race/ethnicity, participation in religious rituals and practices, and the relationship of …

Del Etnovaivén Al Etnobúmeran: Identidad Cultural, Estrategias De Resistencia E Impronta Literaria Del Subalterno En El Perú, Frank Otero Luque

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

In my dissertation, I explore social strategies that Peruvian subalterns have developed to survive against racism and discrimination. I have identified and coined one of these strategies as etnovaivén (ethno-sway), which I define as a pendulum-like approach that allows subalterns to swing/sway from blanqueamiento to cholificación, and vice versa. In this context, blanqueamiento (whitening) mainly refers to the subaltern's willingness and efforts to assimilate the white culture in order achieve upward social mobility, whereas cholificación depicts the reluctance of Indian and mestizo subalterns to assimilate the cultural norms of the dominant group in certain circumstances, while asserting their own ethnic …

Foreign Policy Evaluation And The Utility Of Intervention, Graham Slater

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation identifies and explains the factors contributing to the presence and severity of U.S. foreign-policy blunders, or gross errors in strategic judgment resulting in significant harm to the national interest, since the Second World War. It hypothesizes that the grand strategy of preponderance and the overestimation of military power to transform the politics of other states have precipitated U.S. foreign-policy blunders since 1945. Examining the Vietnam War and Iraq War as case studies, it focuses on underlying conditions in the American national identity and the problematic foreign policy decision-making (FPDM) that corresponds to this bifurcated hypothesis, termed the overestimation/preponderance …

Progressive Saxonism: The Construction Of Anglo-Saxonism In Jack London's The Valley Of The Moon And Frank Norris's Mcteague, Matthew John Soderblom

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The purpose of my thesis seeks to uncover the constructed nature of the Anglo-Saxon ethnicity within two works of fiction. My thesis utilizes London’s The Valley of the Moon (1913) and Norris’s McTeague (1899) because they were published in a similar era. Both authors lived and wrote in the Bay Area during the Progressive Era of American politics. Therefore, there is political, stylistic, and regional proximity. Although Anglo-Saxonism has always been present in the United States, the construction of race was changing in the 1900s. The Valley of the Moon and McTeague both contain intriguing (and antiquated) notions of whiteness …

Reimagining Movements: Towards A Queer Ecology And Trans/Black Feminism, Gabriel Benavente

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This thesis seeks to bridge feminist and environmental justice movements through the literature of black women writers. These writers create an archive that contribute towards the liberation of queer, black, and transgender peoples.

In the novel Parable of the Talents, Octavia Butler constructs a world that highlights the pervasive effects of climate change. As climate change expedites poverty, Americans begin to blame others, such as queer people, for the destruction of their country. Butler depicts the dangers of fundamentalism as a response to climate change, highlighting an imperative for a movement that does not romanticize the environment as heteronormative, but …

Border Crossings And Transnational Movements In Sandra Cisneros’ Spatial Narratives Offer Alternatives To Dominant Discourse, Raquel D. Vallecillo

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

My study aims to reveal how ideologies, the way we perceive our world, what we believe, and our value judgments inextricably linked to a dominant discourse, have real and material consequences. In addition to explicating how these ideologies stem from a Western philosophical tradition, this thesis examines this thought-system alongside selections from Sandra Cisneros’ Woman Hollering Creek and Caramelo or Puro Cuento. My project reveals how Cisneros’ spatial narratives challenge ideologies concerning the border separating the United States and Mexico, which proves significant as the project of decolonization and understanding of identity formation is fundamentally tied to these geographical …

Institutional Ethnography: Utilizing Battered Women’S Standpoint To Examine How Institutional Relations Shape African American Battered Women’S Work Experiences In Christian Churches, Ursula Tiershatha Wright

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The purpose of the collected papers dissertation was to critically examine the individual and institutional conditions that shaped battered women’s work experiences in church organizations. The studies in the collected papers shared the provision of using a methodological and analytic tool, institutional ethnography (IE), that offers a strategic and comprehensive means of investigating issues related to institutions and institutional processes that merge a macro and micro view. The first paper was a conceptual paper that emphasized the socio-political context in which adult vocation education is practiced and shared a practical means of using IE to uncover the interconnected and interdependent …

Imperial Illness: Considering The Trope Of Madness In Michelle Cliff's No Telephone To Heaven, James Mccrink

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The purpose of this thesis is to examine Michelle Cliff’s No Telephone to Heaven (1996), and to scrutinize, through Christopher’s mental illness, the couched, unspoken, and deeply embedded presence of imperial hegemony in the Caribbean. I shall argue that Christopher’s mental illness is not, as one might have it, an inexplicable lapse into insanity, but both a fitting, polyrhythmic expression of longstanding postcolonial/neocolonial abuse, and a dynamic form of counterhegemonic resistance. Thus, my use of the term, imperial illness, refers to colonial impacts on the Caribbean, and how those impacts continue to play a significant role in postcolonial/neocolonial societies and, …

Depictions Of Fear In Lev Tolstoy's Sevastopol Sketches And Stephen Crane's The Red Badge Of Courage, Ralph Willard Schusler Jr

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The purpose of this thesis was to examine and compare two iconoclastic works dealing with war as experienced by combatants. So much of modern war fiction takes this perspective that one is hard pressed to imagine a time when such was not the case; the watershed was marked in the above named works by the aforementioned writers, which, and who, were first in putting readers inside the heads of common soldiers facing mortal danger. These pioneering authors opened the door to modernist writing about boundary situations involving existential threat, as well as the psychological reactions they evoke – especially fear. …

An Ethnographic Study Of Sectarian Negotiations Among Diaspora Jains In The Usa, Venu Vrundavan Mehta

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This thesis argued that the Jain community in the diasporic context of the USA has invented a new form of Jainism. Sectarian negotiations are the distinguishing marks of the diaspora Jain community and their invented form of Jainism. Based on ethnographic study that is, interviews and observations conducted at four different sites (Jain temples/communities) from June-August 2016, the thesis examined the sectarian negotiations among the diaspora Jain community in the USA and the invented Jain tradition that is resulting from these negotiations. The central questions of the research on which this thesis is based were: 1) what are the levels, …

Brown Eyes, Black Magic, Marcus Duane Norris Jr

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This thesis consists of a large composition for chamber orchestra titled Brown Eyes, Black Magic and an accompanying analytical paper. The piece, approximately twelve minutes long, is a tribute to women of color in America. The title pays homage to the “Black Girl Magic” campaign that CaShawn Thompson founded in 2013 to empower women of color by highlighting their achievements in different fields (Wilson 2016). Although the piece is not programmatic, I tried to create a mysterious sound world, in which the listener focuses on the beauty of ever-shifting sonic colors. The composition explores musical texture and timbre, and is …

Non-Ownership Principles As Understood By Lay Practitioners Of Jainism And Quakerism, David St John

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This thesis examines how lay members of the Jain and Quaker traditions understand and navigate ideals of non-ownership. The tenets of aparigraha (non-ownership) and the testimony of simplicity are explored to show how interpretation of sacred texts leave open the possibility for financial success.

Through interviews with members of Jain and Quaker communities in the US, and textual research, I assert that proper methods for earning, maintaining and using capital in each tradition transcend prohibitions against excess accumulation. Following Foucault and Weber, I show that proper ethical ways of earning and spending money depend on community-based interpretations and self-policing.

My …

History, Material Culture, And The Search For The Mythic American Dream In Angie Cruz’S Let It Rain Coffee, Michelle Almonte

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This thesis examines the connection between Dominican history, the influence of American material culture, and the mythic American Dream as catalysts for migration. The two U.S. occupations and American propaganda through media had a great effect on the deceptive perception of an American life as an effortless method for attaining wealth. Let it Rain Coffee by Angie Cruz, will focus on the character, Esperanza Colon, and her obsession with the lavish lifestyle she views on the television show, Dallas. Material objects, as argued by Daniel Miller in his book, Stuff, work in subtle yet significant ways and determine our function, …

Listening/Reading For Disremembered Voices: Additive Archival Representation And The Zong Massacre Of 1781, Jorge E. Cartaya

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This thesis grapples with questions surrounding representation, mourning, and responsibility in relation to two literary representations of the ZONG massacre of 1781. These texts are M. NourbeSe Philip’s ZONG! and Fred D’Aguiar’s FEEDING THE GHOSTS. The only extant archival document—a record of the insurance dispute which ensued as a consequence of the massacre—does not represent the drowned as victims, nor can it represent the magnitude of the atrocity. As such, this thesis posits that the archival gaps or silences from which the captives’ voices are missing become spaces of possibility for additive representation. This thesis also examines the role voice …

Voces - Drama In One Act, Juan F. Mansilla

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This thesis consists of a chamber-staged composition for soprano, baritone, modified Pierrot ensemble (flute, clarinet, piano, violin, viola and cello), Colombian tiple, and fixed media, together with an analytical paper in which I discuss my compositional techniques and their historical antecedents. The composition is an interpretation of an acute schizophrenic episode of a young female patient that is committed to a mental health facility. It was inspired by the need to bring awareness about mental illness and the struggles that these patients experience every day. In this work, I explore the inclusion of a folkloric instrument, the Colombian tiple, within …

The Printed Word In Joyce's Ulysses, Reynaldo Ales

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The purpose of this thesis was to explore the ways the printed word in James Joyce’s Ulysses opens new and alternative paths towards the interpretation of the text. We show how it induces multiple chains of associations beyond the act of reading, which start at the visual, spatialized sequencing and contiguity of letters, words and sentences, their layout on the page, or the persistence or absence of punctuation.

After initial observations of the visual prevalence of the written word over its auditory capabilities as noted in the “Aeolus” chapter (e.g.: puns that can be realized only in writing; meanings that …

Kim Was Korea And Korea Was Kim: The Formation Of Juche Ideology And Personality Cult In North Korea, Bianca Trifoi

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Juche ideology, created by founder Kim Il-Sung, governs all aspects of North Korean society. This thesis attempts to answer the questions of why and how Juche ideology and the cult of personality surrounding Kim Il-Sung were successfully implemented in North Korea. It is a historical analysis of the formation of the North Korean state that considers developments from the late 19th century to the late 20th century, with particular attention paid to the 1950s-1970s and to Kim’s own writings and speeches. The thesis argues that Juche was successfully implemented and institutionalized in North Korea due to several factors, including the …