Arts and Humanities Commons^™

Coming To An Understanding: Daoist Rhetoric As Dialogue In Composition Studies, Veronica Anzaldua

Theses and Dissertations

Monological argumentation, based on Aristotelian principles, dominates composition pedagogy in the United States. With this model, students construct arguments in which they advocate for their own viewpoints. To make argumentation more dialogic, there exist various discourse models, including Daoist rhetoric, based on the ancient Chinese philosophy of Daoism. Its tenets have the potential to generate dialogic discourse in composition due to Laozi’s, Zhuangzi’s, and Sunzi’s principles. The recent cultural turn in composition studies opens space for the exploration of dialogic pedagogy. Dialogic pedagogies based on Daoist philosophies, with other recent pedagogical innovations, have the potential to promote deep, interconnected dialogue …

To Love The Birds And The Places They’Ve Made Their Home: Poems From The Magic Valley, Alyssa B. Garza

Theses and Dissertations

The theme of the collection could be summed up in these lines written by Caryll Houselander in The Reed of God, “body and soul together give glory to God: the sharper the capacity for sorrow and joy, the greater the hallowing...Christ laid hold of the world with His human hands...He wed Himself to it. Our life is the response of the bride” (66–67). Our loving connection to every human person is our loving connection to Christ—charity is our bride-ness. The poems follow one bride through her journey, with the author’s environment (the Rio Grande Valley) coloring the verses, as …

Shattering Taciturnity: The Use Of Visual Arts As A Method Of Communication And Expression, Jesmil M. Maldonado Rodriguez

Theses and Dissertations

Silence an action that conceals a person’s memories, thoughts, emotions, fears, and insecurities, making them crave a method of expression. In this case, the Visuals Arts serves as an approach to investigate, create, understand, accept, and confront the darkness within the artist's psychological and emotional state. Inspiration taken from vibrant colors and insects found within Puerto Rico's natural sources, how these interact, relate, and consume the human within. By creating a series of artworks, the artist starts to comprehend how silence has taken over her life. Taciturnity has become the flame that ignited the artistic flow that leads to the …

Detention, Virginia Murray-Torres

Theses and Dissertations

A novel-in-verse about a teenage girl's detainment in an immigration center, separation from her family, and removal proceedings hearing with a 360 degree point of view from the people she interacts with, as well as her own.

Glorious Indignities, Benito Salinas Jr.

Theses and Dissertations

The purpose of this creative work is to illustrate the relationship between the identity of the Rio Grande Valley as a whole, corporate control, immigration status, and interpersonal connection. This illustration is achieved through a series of interconnected short stories that culminate in a telling of a real-life event, the prison riot in the Willacy County Correctional Facility. This event has ramification for every character in the novel and for an entire county. This work attempts to simultaneously take a birds-eye view and microscopic examination of the events that lead up to the riot over the course of two and …

Gulf Trade Networks And Family Ties: French Migration Via New Orleans To The Lower Rio Grande Valley, 1848-1881, Kristen D. Kline

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis considers economic and social aspects of French immigration to the Lower Rio Grande Valley (LRGV) of Texas during the mid-nineteenth century, with special emphasis on a small group of merchants who left France during the 1850s. It synthesizes the work of several scholars who have focused on French presence in the LRGV with others who have analyzed various economic facets of the LRGV during different periods between the eighteenth and twentieth centuries. This study attempts to situate five families into the context of nineteenth-century European migration to the Americas, as well as into the Gulf maritime economy on …

Oblivion, Angela V. Scardigno

Theses and Dissertations

I believe I am drawn to work with wood because of genetic reasons. My grandfather was a carpenter. I remember him as a hardworking and busy man. As something inseparable and equally inspiring, I remember his studio which was a small house that was full of creativity and great memories. My grandparents’ house is one of my first memories where I learned to create art and collage. I have started to notice, as I get older, that I am constantly trying to bring back an atmosphere that resembles that warm and safe place of childhood. I have also noticed that …

Understanding College Readiness Through The Framework For Success In Postsecondary Writing: An Analysis Of Algebra Writing In High School, Gabriel Cerda

Theses and Dissertations

The topic of college readiness in the United States has become increasingly important as the number of students entering post-secondary institutions has continued to increase. Along with efforts to increase college readiness for students in K-12, calls have been made to better define what it means to be college ready and understand what factors play a role in preparing students for a postsecondary education. This study uses the Framework for Success in Postsecondary Writing as a critical lens and method of analysis to understand how the Framework can broaden our understanding of college readiness. This is a mixed methods study …

Non-Space: The Perception Of Reality, Carlos Limas

Theses and Dissertations

This is a formal study of real-world images that try to convey a clear approach to the way we look and relate to unexpected places that at first glance don’t exist in a metaphorical way or just don’t strike us as interesting or attractive. There’s no particular story to tell only the need to expose a different kind of beauty through my own personal subjective view and sensitivity expanding the criteria of my own esthetic values and context of a captured image in a particular scenario.

The perception of Non-Space relates directly to a well establish photography technique called Deadpan, …

The Prisoner As Object: Rhetorical Agency And The Literacy Of Prison Tattooing, Rebecca R. Reyes

Theses and Dissertations

Prison is an environment by which man is no longer a man. In an institution designed to limit the agency of incarcerated individuals, a literacy event has unfolded through the rhetorical practice of prison tattooing that allows individuals to re/gain their agency. Tattoos allow for the incarcerated, who are seen as state property, to break down the dehumanizing assemblage that has been created. The body, now an object, becomes a site for rhetorical communication where an emergent agency develops within the relationship of all intra-acting factors. I analyze and build upon ambient rhetoric, visual rhetoric, Kairos, and counternarratives to …

South Texas Media Representations Of Rio Grande Valley Mexican Deportation Drives & Repatriation, 1928–1930, Evren John Turan

Theses and Dissertations

This research examines South Texas media coverage of Mexican deportation and repatriation at its genesis in the Rio Grande Valley (RGV) of Texas. Summer, 1928, the RGV became the epicenter for federally ordered mass deportation raids of Mexican agricultural workers. The U.S. Border Patrol first implemented its methods of mass deportation raids and intimidation on the South Texas Mexican national population prior to Los Angeles, Post-Depression. Primary source analysis of Spanish language newspaper, La Prensa, is utilized extensively through translation. Translation of La Prensa articles was conducted by Mrs. Abby Lopez-Turan. Mrs. Lopez-Turan has a B.A. in Spanish from …

Hallo (Que) Por Opino (Que): La Gramaticalización De La Epistemicidad Del Verbo Hallar En Un Corpus Salvadoreño, Luisa A. Valdez

Theses and Dissertations

En este estudio, tomamos una aproximación semántico-pragmática para trazar la gramaticalización de la construcción verbal hallar (que) en el discurso oral de una comunidad salvadoreña. El primer objetivo es llevar a cabo un análisis cualitativo y cuantitativo de los verbos hallar, pensar, creer, opinar, encontrar y parecer en dos corpus de habla (San Sebastián Corpus vs. Brownsville Corpus), para comparar sus funciones léxicas y epistémicas. El segundo objetivo es comparar la construcción salvadoreña hallar (que) con su análogo brasileño achar (que), para determinar el comportamiento y los diferentes canales de gramaticalización epistémica de ambas construcciones.

El …

The Blackbird Blood, Danielle Birnell

Theses and Dissertations

The Blackbird Blood is a novella length piece of young adult fiction. The piece not only includes themes dealing with coming of age such as love, complexities of relationships, and identity, but also touches on issues dealing with race and privilege. This coming of age novella explores these themes through the lens of teen characters navigating life on a military base in a country destroyed by war.

Same Air: Human Relationships In Playwriting, Nicole Cardenas

Theses and Dissertations

The culmination of the creative work and its introduction focus on human relationships, friendships, and the interactions and dynamics of individuals with traumatic experiences. The one act play explores how a secret can strain a group of friends, causing them to create their own realities to cope with the betrayal and guilt cultivated throughout time.

To reach my conclusions, I drew inspiration from various works, playwrights, and the words of other writers. My work is meant to showcase how fragile and resilient friendships are when faced with misunderstanding and lies.

The Soft-Spoken Girl, Ashley Hernandez

Theses and Dissertations

This project is a collection of poetry that celebrates the power of the mujeres fuertes in my life, cultural expectations and prevalent barriers. It is set in the Rio Grande Valley where the unique blend of two cultures, caused much heartache and courage. Each poem in this collection weaves a coming of age story.

The Wound Of The Malinches [Las Heridas De Las Malinches], Leticia Margarita Lowry-Garcilazo

Theses and Dissertations

Since the foundation of Mexico, the Mexican culture has leaned towards chauvinism becoming a cruel and coward spectator of the violence perpetrated against women. As a survivor of violence, I was overwhelmed and tired of being blamed and told that I deserved what my abuser did to me and needed to get over it. I was told that as a woman I needed to suffer in silence – just as La Llorona. Because, as women, we are las Chingadas, we are Eve, we are Las Malinches.

As a statement to fight against my impotence, I created The Wound of The …

A Citrus Wildfire, Mark Anthony Lopez

Theses and Dissertations

An American Dream forged by greed. A family caught in the middle of a race war. A young boy trying to learn how to be a man. A Citrus Wildfire is a fiction novella that tells the story of a Mexican family struggling to survive in the Rio Grande Valley after their only source of income burns down, and the lengths they must go to in order to get the life they were promised.

A small preface from the author proceeds the work. This novella is inspired by many different authors and educators, as well as the Rio Grande Valley …

En La Guarida/Where The Wolves Eat The Lion, Jose Rodriguez Ventura

Theses and Dissertations

En la Guarida/Where the Wolves Eat the Lion is a work in the tradition of Latin-American hybrid literature. It transitions between prose, poetry, and prose-poetry, as it details the family history of its narrator and traces the South-to-North crossing Mexican immigrants undertake in order to pursue a better life north of the Reynosa/Hidalgo border. The thesis details the difficult life mothers, daughters, and sons face as they try to assimilate into the first-world, whether linguistically, or culturally. It is concerned with the power dynamics between men and women, fathers and mothers, and daughters and sons in Mexican American Culture in …

My Culture Art In Healing Action, Fabian Chavarria

Theses and Dissertations

My Culture Art in Healing Action is the study of many visions, processes, and applications of art, the role of culture on the development on a personal, social, and multilevel of society development. Art has a major role in my life and my purpose as an artist is to advocate positive change on the lives of people around me, is my duty to promote the positive image of my people, by using my culture as a jump platform I would promote, family values, social structure, social conflict, social change, and the factors of personal development by incorporating my point of …

Desecration, Natalia T. Arredondo

Theses and Dissertations

Deacon Christopher, a soon-to-be-ordained Catholic priest, is faced with the reality of the sex scandals in the wake of his upcoming ordination.

Music, Dance, And Tourism In Los Cabos, Mexico, Melanie E. Davis

Theses and Dissertations

For a thriving music and dance scene to flourish in tourist destinations, certain factors for performers must be present including economic stability, a baseline level of patronage, resilience to seasonal tourist fluctuations, and adaptation to demographic changes over time. In the Los Cabos arts community, local aesthetics are transformed and embodied by work of performers whose activities are multicultural and multilingual. Over the past fifty years, Los Cabos was transformed from a sleepy fishing village into a major international destination. The island-inspired arts scene includes live performances featuring cultural representations from other lands besides Mexico. Grounded in the humanities, I …

Los Aleluyas: A Socio-Cultural History Of The Apostolic Movement In The Rio Grande Valley, Mauro Sierra Iii

Theses and Dissertations

The history of the Apostolic Assembly of the Faith in Christ Jesus, Inc. of the Rio Grande Valley is one that is unknown by many people. As a matter of fact, even many members of this movement do not know their own history, because it is not something that they are taught to appreciate. The purpose of this thesis is to inform, not only the members of the Apostolic Assembly of their history, but to teach non-members and historians interested in the Rio Grande Valley region the intertwined history of Apostolicos with that of the region and part of the …

Retratos De Las Criollas: Fashioning An Identity In Eighteenth-Century Bourbon New Spain And Peru, Daniel F. Ymbong

Theses and Dissertations

This master's thesis will examine the iconographies of elite Creole women in Bourbon eighteenth-century New Spain and Peru. This paper is a comparative study of the colonial regal portraits of elite Creole women with emphasis on preferences in: dress, hair, and accessories.

Much of the pictorial format is informed by European styles and decorum, that is the Spanish and Italian Renaissance in materiality. The prevailing silhouettes dictated by the French Bourbons are adapted, but strategically morphed an identity for the colonial elites, as there were different preferences for colors, accessories, and hair.

El Profesor De Danza, Jorge Saenz

Theses and Dissertations

Después del crimen cometido donde una familia entera ha sido masacrada, el autor decide entrevistar al criminal Ian Joseph quien ha sido recluido en un instituto psiquiátrico. La novela describe el recuento del paciente y el descenso a su propia locura, al tiempo que el autor va agregando aclaraciones a pie de nota. El lector se entera que una de las razones por las que Ian Joseph perdió la razón fue debido principalmente a la cantidad de libros que leyó. El viaje hacia la criminalidad de Ian Joseph también es un camino literario. En este transcurso y tras un desenlace …