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Portland State University

Student Research Symposium

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Full-Text Articles in Arts and Humanities

The Significance Of A Distinction Between A Sexual Act And A Sexual Identity, Nirvana Fairbanks May 2013

The Significance Of A Distinction Between A Sexual Act And A Sexual Identity, Nirvana Fairbanks

Student Research Symposium

This paper describes the distinction between a sexual act and a sexual identity as seen in different cultural contexts with regard to male homosexuality. It describes differences in how homosexual behavior is interpreted culturally. It discusses how more value is placed on certain sexual acts while there is less focus on a sexual identity and vice versa. For example, in Latin American culture, if two men are sexually involved with one another, it is the acts they perform that dictate how they are viewed, rather than the fact that they are two men engaging in sex together. In Western culture, …


The Marxist Stream Of Untouchable, Daniel Blanchard May 2013

The Marxist Stream Of Untouchable, Daniel Blanchard

Student Research Symposium

This presentation was given as part of the Panel Presentation Studies in Postcolonial Modernism at Portland State University's Research Symposium. The study investigates Mulk Raj Anand's 1935 novel, Untouchable, through a Marxist lens, following its main character, Bakha, through his trials and tribulations. It argues that through Bakha's religious inquisitions, and frustrations with his experiences as a Hindu outcaste, he comes to realize himself as a class entity, part of the Marxist process of the proletariat's rise to power. Bakha evolves throughout the novel, from being uncritical of his own materialism and egoism, to recognizing his ethics as unrepresentative of …


Magical Realism As A Means Of Expressing Cultural Disjunction In Alejo Carpentier's 'El Reino De Este Mundo', Ryan Saul Cunningham May 2013

Magical Realism As A Means Of Expressing Cultural Disjunction In Alejo Carpentier's 'El Reino De Este Mundo', Ryan Saul Cunningham

Student Research Symposium

Cuban writer Alejo Carpentier's 1949 novel El reino de este mundo is considered to be a key work in the development of the magical realist narrative idiom. The narrative includes instances of the fantastic -- including ghosts and animal metamorphoses -- that the novel's Afro-Caribbean characters accept as factual. In keeping with his suggestions that "the entire history of America [is] a chronicle of the marvelous real," Carpentier supposes that these elements elucidate an "authentic" New World mode of perception. However, the novel's narrative structure belies the author's objective. The concurrent presentation of both non-Western/magical and Western/disenchanted cultural paradigms prevents …