Arts and Humanities Commons^™

Forging Romanitas: The Intersection Of Urbanization And Identity In Mérida, Raymond Puentes

FIU Undergraduate Research Journal

This paper aims to explore the role of urbanization in the formation of a shared Roman identity during the time of the Roman Empire. By examining the physical features of urban settlements and the economic opportunities that arose from them, it seeks to understand how these factors contributed to the development of a cohesive identity across the empire’s vast and diverse territory. This paper will use examples from cities in the western regions of the empire, such as Pompeii and Mérida, to demonstrate how urbanization and the economic opportunities it brought forth helped create a sense of Romanness among diverse …

Representing Minority Groups And Their Heritage Across Access And Preservation Of Unique Audio Recordings A Grant Overview, Veronica Gonzalez, Ximena Valdivia

Athenaeum: Scholarly Works of the FIU Libraries Faculty and Staff

In 2021, the Florida International University (FIU) Libraries received the Recordings at Risks (R&R) grant from the Council on Library and Information Resources (CLIR). The funds allowed us to digitize, create metadata, and provide online access to hundreds of unique Caribbean and Latin American songs produced between 1900 and 1935 that are included in the Diaz Ayala Cuban and Latin American Popular Music Collection (DAC) Cassette Series. The digitized materials comprise more than 1,000 cassettes with approximately 1,200 songs, recorded originally in 78rpms by Columbia, Victor, and other historical record companies. The music represents a variety of genres and is …

Ethical Data Considerations For Engaging In Reparative Archival Practice, Jamie Rogers, Rhia Rae

Works of the FIU Libraries

Archival textually-rich materials--such as warranty deeds, mortgages, legal documents, and letter correspondence--can provide valuable historical insights, and if transcribed and analyzed, can produce data points in the form of unstructured text, tabular data, and geospatial assets. This presentation will provide an overview of the process Florida International University librarians went through to turn the papers of Dana A. Dorsey, Miami's first Black Millionaire, into data. Their work is guided by the concept of "collections as data" as a form of reparative archival practice, enabling the elevation of marginalized individuals' histories. The goal of reparative archival practice is to create a …

The Threat To Academic & Intellectual Freedom, Christopher M. Jimenez, Melissa Del Castillo, Stephen Thomson Moore, Lowell Bryan Cooper, Jacqueline Radebaugh, George Pearson

Works of the FIU Libraries

The Academic and Intellectual Freedom Ad Hoc Committee presented a First Thursday discussion on May 4 about academic and intellectual freedom. Starting with a brief definition of these terms, they traced the history of Academic Freedom and how current events affect us at FIU. The committee posed several real-life scenarios threatening Academic/Intellectual Freedom in libraries. All library staff were invited to attend this lively discussion.

Silent Music And Sacred Sounds Of The Hoysaḷas: Visual And Aural Sensory Experiences In Jain And Hindu Temples, Vani Vignesh

Jain Studies

This project examines affective responses to temple spaces and investigates how visual and aural sensory stimulations can amplify people’s experiences in Jain and Hindu temples through ethnographic research and qualitative interviews. It involves the study of the traditional Indian methods of designing and planning temples to understand their place in contemporary South Indian devotion. This project focuses on two twelfth century temples built by the Hoysaḷa dynasty in the South Indian state of Karnāṭaka—the Jain Pārśvanātha basadi (temple) at Haḷēbīḍu and the Hindu Vaiṣṇava Chennakēśava temple at Bēlūru—to show that their location, design, and structure were planned to cater to …

Engaging Your Students By Engaging With Your Librarians:​ Accessing And Preserving ​ Audio Primary Materials ​ For Academic Work, Veronica Gonzalez

Works of the FIU Libraries

This section presents FIU library initiatives to promote and supports long-term preservation and academic access to primary materials in the humanities. The Diaz Ayala Collection (DAC) provides access to faculty and students to one of the most relevant collections of Cuban and Latin American music in the United States. The DAC librarian will explain the application of technologies to preserve, access, and disseminate audiovisual content. Additionally, she will elaborate further on national and international academic partnerships, grant participation, classwork collaboration, and travel grant opportunities supported by the FIU Libraries, LACC, and CRI.

Foucauldian Biopolitics And Nation Making In General Juan Velasco’S Peru, 1968-1975, Hayley M. Serpa

FIU Undergraduate Research Journal

This brief academic article examines the military government of General Juan Velasco Alvarado in Peru from 1968 through 1975 via the lens of Michel Foucauld’s foundational concepts of biopolitics and biopower. It analyzes a variety of primary and secondary sources, including legal documents from Velasco’s government, state propaganda posters, economic appendixes, historiographical analyses from the time, and other important documents. By examining this varied set of documents, we are able to get a better understanding of how biopower was utilized by Velasco’s government, as best seen through the discourse they maintained, to legitimize their undemocratic hold on power. This comprehensive …

Imagining Costumbrismo: Connecting Image And Text In Nineteenth-Century Colombian Cuadros De Costumbres, María Sol Echarren

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Influenced by nineteenth-century scientific trends, Costumbrismo was a literary and artistic genre combining aspects of Romanticism and Realism and presenting traditional customs of autochthonous daily life. Nineteenth-century cuadros de costumbres, or “sketches of manners,” often used local color to depict national scenes, regional types, and cultural traditions. The cuadros, comprised of short but illustrative writings published as periodical pamphlets, contained visually charged descriptive language infused with a didactic objective in order to shape readers’ perspectives about the nation and present specific sociopolitical philosophies.

This dissertation analyzes the connections between literature and art through the written cuadros de costumbres …

Beyond Honor: Historicizing Sexual Coercion In Late Colonial Lima, 1750-1821, Morgan C. Gray

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Sexual assault and sexual coercion are intensely emotional crimes that have been the focus of many recent public discussions around the world, including protests and reforms in Latin America. As such, the history of these crimes in countries like Peru provides vital context for reformers and scholars alike. This research aims to incorporate women’s emotional experiences of sexual coercion into the legal and cultural context of Peru’s capital city between 1750 and 1821, and thus to illustrate that social and political changes also affected individual women’s pursuit of justice. Using dozens of court cases from the ecclesiastical and royal secular …

The Unusual Suspects: The Bourbon Reforms And The Inter- And Intracolonial Mobility Of Africans And Their Descendants In The Spanish Caribbean, Trevor E. Bryant

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This social history examines the trans-imperial mobility of people of African descent in the eighteenth-century Spanish Caribbean in the context of Atlantic enslavement and fugitivity and Spanish imperial policy. Spanish officials knew how often Africans and their descendants traveled throughout the circum-Caribbean. They implemented policies to use this movement for their own gain, either by harnessing that movement for imperial rivalry or commandeering it for security. A close analysis of Catholic parish records, Spanish governors’ correspondence, drafts of Black codes, and smuggling investigations reveals a tension between free and enslaved people’s multi- faceted mobility and Spanish officials’ attempts to use …

The Politics Of The Self: Psychedelic Assemblages, Psilocybin, And Subjectivity In The Anthropocene, Joshua Falcon

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation examines how psychedelic substances become drawn into particular sociohistorical and political arrangements, and how psychedelic experiences with psilocybin ‘magic mushrooms’ are used as tools of subjectivation. Guided by literatures in philosophy, critical theory, and the social sciences that focus on subjectivity, assemblage theory, and critical posthumanism, I argue that psychedelics are drawn into variegated assemblages, each of which conceptualizes the nature of psychedelics in highly specific ways that reflect implicit conceptions of the world and the self. In developing the concept of psychedelic assemblages, this research provides a window onto the politics of the self in the Anthropocene. …

Homoerotic Medievalism: Looking At Queer Desire In The Homosocial Relationships Of Chaucer’S “The Knight’S Tale” And Fletcher And Shakespeare’S The Two Noble Kinsmen, Juan P. Espinosa

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The purpose of this thesis is to explore queer interiority within the heteronormative social constructions of late medieval England. Queer interiority is not an occurrence of modernity, but rather a response to social constructions that date back to the Middle Ages. It is essential to account for queerness in the Middle Ages because authors like Chaucer promote the successive resurfacing of queer characters within heteronormative social constructions. Writing during the queer reign of Richard II, Chaucer constructs the interior identities of Palamon and Arcite as a reflection of the king and the political norms of England. Inspired by Chaucer, authors …

A Non-Normative Paradigm: Disability And Gender In Nineteenth-Century Gothic Literature, Malena Sol Pendola Biondi

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Within nineteenth century society, normalcy is presented through unfeasible means of appearance and identity, leading to a rejection of the self. By exploring characters in Victorian gothic literature, who are marginalized by society, and invoking the work of Gail Weiss, Kim Hall, and others, this essay investigates the way these norms are immortalized through published representations and how they expose the lingering presence of rejection of disabled, queer, and gender-fluid bodies. Through the analysis of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein and Oscar Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Gray, I look at the contextualization of marginalized existence compared to able-bodiedness and normalized …

Semi-Presidential Executive Branch Institutionalization And Personalization Under Cuba's 1940 Constitution, Daniel Pedreira

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The ratification of Cuba’s Constitution of 1940 ushered hopes for democratic stability, most notably through the implementation of a semi-presidential system. Innovative for its time, semi-presidentialism sought to reduce the “perils of presidentialism” that plagued the early decades of the Cuban Republic. Yet, over the next two decades, the Cuban Republic declined and fell as it devolved into authoritarianism and totalitarianism.

This study analyzes the extent to which Cuba’s executive branch was institutionalized or personalized under the 1940 Constitution. Taking a close look at the presidential administrations of Fulgencio Batista Zaldívar (1940-1944, 1952-1954, and 1954-1959), Ramón Grau San Martín (1944-1948), …

Oral History Best Practices, Rebecca J. Bakker

Works of the FIU Libraries

This presentation was created to provide undergraduate students at FIU an overview of the oral history process.

Son For Everybody: Exploring Afro Cuban And African American Relations Through Langston Hughes’ Translations Of Nicolas Guillén’S Poetry, Hayley R. Fernandez

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The purpose of this thesis was to analyze the translation decisions made in Cuba Libre, Translated from the Spanish By Langston Hughes and Ben Frederic Carruthers, and to explore the contemporary image of Nicolás Guillén as expressed in recent projects regarding his work and legacy. Particular attention was paid to the historical and social frameworks Guillén employed in his own work and the same frameworks he and his poetry have been associated with in recent years. The larger importance of this piece was to take a look at how international Blackness existed and was worked with in literature at the …

Understanding The Paris Commune On Its 150th Anniversary, Dan La Botz

Class, Race and Corporate Power

The Paris Commune of 1871 only lasted from March 18 to May 28, just 72 days, yet it is one of the most celebrated events in socialist history. It is a legend. Yet, what was it? What is it for us today? A model for socialists? A heroic failure? Negation of the state? Or the first workers’ government? Karl Marx wrote the most famous contemporary account, yet he failed to take up some of the Commune’s serious problems. Why?

This article was originally published in New Politics on August 4, 2021 (pt. 1) and in the Summer 2021 issue (pt. …

Realizing A Green New Deal: Lessons From World War Ii, Martin Hart-Landsberg

Class, Race and Corporate Power

Many activists in the United States are working to build a movement for a Green New Deal transformation of the economy in order to tackle both global warming and the country’s worsening economic and social problems. To this point, Green New Deal advocates have been far more interested in discussing the programs to be included than in how to achieve the desired transformation. Helpfully, we have the experience of World War II to provide some guideposts. This paper begins by highlighting the enormity and speed of the US economy’s wartime transformation from civilian to military production. Then, it describes the …

Canadian Financial Imperialism And Structural Adjustment In The Caribbean, Tamanisha J. John

Class, Race and Corporate Power

From the start of the early 1980s, structural adjustment was already normalized in the Caribbean given the power of a variety of self-interested actors, including the U.S., IFIs, and Canadian investors who continued to advance and support— by any means necessary— structural adjustment policies in the Caribbean. Debt traps, coupled with incursions on Caribbean state’s sovereignty would see the neoliberal and capitalist doctrine accepted by all of the independent states in the English-speaking Caribbean region by the mid-1980s. Structural adjustment drastically intensified the existing inequalities in states and removed the ability for governments to alleviate these situations. Alongside Caribbean structural …

Into The Limelight: Staying Connected In Unprecedented Times, Alicia Melton, Luis Berthin

Archives Day

Keywords: Rethinking Access, Method of Delivery, New Tools, Community Engagement, Renewed Roles

The Black Archives wants to submit a Poster for Archives Day 2021. The poster will address how we reimagined access for our users, through digital programming & outreach. Creativity was required from our department so that we could continue operations while we were at home. There were restrictions on some tasks such as acquisition, processing and reference, but we were able to focus on outreach.

This poster presentation is to encourage information professionals to adopt Social Media and other online platforms as tools for outreach and programming. As …

Atlantic Legacies: Free Women Of Color And The Changing Notions Of Womanhood In The Long Nineteenth Century, Marie Stephanie Chancy

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation focuses on three free-born African-descended women who defied expectations and prejudices to live previously unthinkable lives in the nineteenth century. The project uses their biographies to illustrate how, as black and mixed-ancestry émigrés from the Americas living in Europe, they adopted and adapted the evolving notions of ideal womanhood. As a result they expanded who could be identified as a true, redemptive or new woman. The project shows how they used the tenets of these ideals to live life on their terms. The dissertation is set in an era dominated by white males, and defined by the enslavement …

Our Representative On This Island: Local Belonging And Transnational Citizenship Among Syrian And Lebanese Cubans, 1880-1980, John T. Ermer Jr

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Émigrés from Ottoman Syria and Cuba who, beginning in the late-nineteenth century, traveled not unidirectionally, from one nation to another, but between and within multiethnic, polycentric empires. Tracing their history opens a route to better understanding global legal regimes of citizenship. Weaving government records from Cuba, France, and the United States with associational records and oral history interviews, this dissertation reveals how vernacular understandings of citizenship in Cuba and the Levant, based on locally derived conceptions of belonging, but over time contended with liberalizing legal reforms meant to redefine citizenship as a state-focused and legible status. As a mobile population …

We Have The Land Titles: Indigenous Litigants And Privatization Of Resguardos In Colombia, 1870s-1940s, Gloria Lopera

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Pressures for the privatization of indigenous lands accompanied the making of nation-states in post-colonial Latin America and boosted the natives' quest for colonial legal documents suitable to prove their rights over indigenous communal landholdings (known in Colombia as "resguardos"). This dissertation compares the experiences of two communities - San Lorenzo and Cañamomo-Lomaprieta - engaging with the law and producing legal and historical evidence to respond to the privatization of their resguardos. These communities inhabit the municipalities of Riosucio and Supía (Caldas) in the Western Colombian Andes. While the study explores the genesis of San Lorenzo's and Cañamomo-Lomaprieta's …

Canadian Banks And Imperialism In The English-Speaking Caribbean, Tamanisha J. John

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Canadian banks have been important components of an imperialist system since at least the 19^th century. However, their long and rich history of operating as purely exploitative entities in the English-speaking Caribbean region is often overlooked— leading to many incomplete and conflicting narratives about Canada’s role within the global system. I argue that Canada is an imperial actor that exerts agency in supporting a Canadian banking oligopoly both within Canada and in the English-speaking Caribbean. Insufficient attention is given to these Canadian banks, especially considering the power they have wielded in the Caribbean over the centuries. By analyzing the …

The Nomad Selves: The American Women Of The Spanish Civil War And Exile, Maria Labbato

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

As witnesses to the Spanish Civil War (1936-1939) and its ensuing streams of exile Americans Muriel Rukeyser and Janet Riesenfeld understood the conflict as symptomatic of larger European and antifascist struggle. Weaving biography, intellectual history, and cultural studies this dissertation reveals how the art and activism of these two North American women in the Spanish Civil War can expose an overlooked element in the antifascist movement and its fate with the rise of Cold War anti-Communism. Their experiences—one a writer and poet, and the other a dancer and screenwriter—with the Spanish conflict and exile informed their lives and creative works. …

The Pedagogy Of The Youth Teachers Of The Cuban Literacy Campaign, Yuleisy Mena

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Abstract

The Cuban Literacy Campaign of 1961 turned teenagers into teachers. This study interviewed three former youth teachers and recorded their experiences through the oral history lens and method. The study focused on the pedagogical components of their lived experience, often overlooked by scholars who have mainly focused on the campaign’s political and economic history from the top down. In turn, issues of identity surfaced that helped explain the personal motivations for participating in the campaign and produced counter-narratives in the process. The interviews compiled allowed a bottom-up history to be archived, highlighting the stories of people omitted from the …

Representations Of A Good Citizen: A Genealogy Of Power And Critical Investigation Of Pictographs, 1937-1942, Joselyn Naranjo

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The study traced selected knowledge that influenced pictographs in social studies textbooks in the United States from 1937 through 1942. The qualitative study analyzed the messages in pictographs produced by Rudolf Modley’s business - Pictorial Statistics, Incorporated. The study interpreted the underlying ideological management within pictographs to present a method of analysis for future research on other visual educational material. Foucault’s (1980; 2003; Shiner, 1982) genealogy of power method addressed the different shifts in power and meaning making involved in communicating sociopolitical messages to the reader through pictographs while ideological management and governmentality informed Hsieh & Shannon’s (2005) directed content …

The Jewish Museum Of Florida-Fiu: Archives On The Edge, Todd Bothel, Jacqueline Goldstein, Luna Goldberg

Archives Day

As the COVID-19 pandemic has threatened much of our access to communal spaces of learning and research such as universities, libraries, and museum collections, many new technologies have emerged to make these resources accessible to the public from the comfort of their homes.

The Jewish Museum of Florida-FIU (JMOF) collection consists of ~60,000 objects, documents, images and ephemera. The collections are wide-ranging in content, cover numerous subject headings and geographically represent all sixty-seven counties of Florida and Cuba.

Join the JMOF staff for a series of lightning talks with Registrar Todd Bothel, Curator Jacqueline Goldstein, and Education Manager Luna Goldberg. …

Monroe County Libraries - Key West - Florida History Archives, Breana Sowers

Archives Day

No abstract provided.

Intermedialidad En El Documental Cubano Contemporáneo, Esteban Alfonso Lopez

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Cuban documentaries, which have experienced dramatic changes in the last two decades, are now more in tune with the most recent global trends in cinema. However, the scarce implementation within the documentary genre of other perspectives and modes of analysis, outside those that are purely cinematographic, has stalled investigations in the field, thus creating a disengagement with the structural and thematic renovation that has been taking place within the discourse of contemporary Cuban documentaries.

My dissertation “Intermedialidad en el documental cubano contemporáneo” examines a select sample of representative texts and Cuban documentaries, with a view to adapting and/or developing an …