Spanish and Portuguese Language and Literature Commons^™

Literary And Cinematic Representations Of Neoliberal Forms Of Contemporary Violence In Latin America With Special Interest In Mexico And Colombia, Ivan De Jesus Iglesias

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

In the last decades, with an increased rhythm and greater intensity, the so-called neoliberal violence has come to play a relevant role within the history of world societies. The Latin American institutional, political, social, and economic changes of the 1970’s and 1980’s, especially those produced under dictatorships, contributed to create the conditions for the implementation of the processes of economic liberalization and global market as part of the concept of institutional modernization and cultural globalization that gave rise to the neoliberal mentality. In this context, neoliberalism becomes hegemonic as a mode of discourse and is incorporated into the way individuals …

A Scarlet Ending, Alison J. Gibson

Undergraduate Honors Theses

Dancing a duet with my shadow by integrating dance and digital media in an elaborate and entertaining performance.

Para Donde Miran Los Ojos: Confluencias Entre Locura, (Des)Identidad Y Violencia En La Obra De João Guimarães Rosa, Silvina Ocampo Y Luis Martín-Santos, Giseli C. Tordin

Doctoral Dissertations

This dissertation studies the representation of madness in the literary works of three twentieth-century authors, namely, João Guimarães Rosa (from Brazil), Silvina Ocampo (from Argentina), and Luis Martín-Santos (from Spain). The first chapter argues that madness in Ocampo’s “El castigo”, Rosa’s “Buriti”, and Martín-Santos, Tiempo de silencio, reveals a series of conflicts between tradition and modernity, rather than the alleged symptoms of an individual suffering from a mental illness. After comparing the three works, it is evident that the decisions of their characters reproduce certain values idealized by authoritarian cultures. The second chapter discusses Rosa’s “Substância”, Ocampo’s “La casa …

La Nación Está En Otra Parte: Cultura Y Neoliberalismo En México (1977-1996), Rafael Lemus

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation studies a series of cultural products and practices that, between 1977 and 1996, either contributed to the formation and propagation of a neoliberal rationality in Mexico or opposed it. By analyzing objects as diverse as cultural magazines, art exhibitions, literary polemics and social movements, it addresses the reconfiguration of the Mexican cultural field triggered by the neoliberal turn in the 1980s as well as the construction of a new national narrative intended to displace the old revolutionary tale and to rationalize and facilitate the insertion of the country into the global economy.

The first chapter focuses on the …

Elogio Del Amateur: Traducción Y Resistencia En La Era Del Panamericanismo (Ee.Uu. 1889-1945), Maria Soledad Marambio Castro

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

My dissertation explores the notion of amateurism in the context of the translation of Latin American literature in the U.S. at the beginning of the 20^th century. I argue that all literary translators are amateurs in terms of their modes of production, and that this condition allows them to resist the hegemonic projects of their day (In this dissertation, “amateurism” does away with the pejorative connotation that the term has acquired in the common use). With this in mind, I study the work and the career path of two American translators, Alice Stone Blackwell and Isaac Goldberg, and the …

Una Democracia Aterrorrizada: Justicia Y Afecto En Los Textos De La Transición Democrática Argentina, Mariana Graciano

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation analyzes the links between justice and affect in some of the most emblematic texts of the democratic transition in Argentina. Films, novels and photos are incorporated here as texts or complex utterances, as they constitute a framework of signs with a communicative intention that makes sense in a given context. In order to analyze these links, I consider terms from the field of transitional justice (reconciliation, forgiveness, restoration) and specific affects (terror, empathy, guilt, resentment, tenderness, happiness and cruelty).

The key questions guiding this thesis are: what links did visual arts and literature have in relation to the …

Choteo Cubano: Humor As A Critical Tool In Twentieth-Century Cuban Theater, Rebecca L. Salois

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This project analyzes the incorporation of choteo in specific Cuban theater texts written during three distinct periods in twentieth-century Cuban history, all of which coincide with specific moments of social, political, and/or economic unrest or transition. Choteo in the theater has served as a tool to demonstrate discontent and frustration with authority figures in various contexts. As that need has altered over time, so too has the approach that playwrights have taken to speak out about these issues. I suggest that by responding to changing circumstances with choteo, confronting a difficult situation is more palatable to audiences or readers than …

Sacralizar Lo Efímero: Configuración Del Amante Y El Amado En Luis Cernuda Y César Moro, Lena R. Retamoso Urbano

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

In this study I create a dialogue between two poets, Luis Cernuda from Spain and César Moro from Peru. I use two of their most representative books of poetry, Cernuda’s Los placeres prohibidos and Moro’s La tortuga ecuestre, to study the dialectics that take place between the lover and the beloved. My general hypothesis is that Los placeres prohibidos can be read as a prologue to the lyrical discourse of La tortuga ecuestre. To explore the bridge between these two poetic worlds, I analyze the various mechanisms through which Eros expresses itself.

Drawing on the work of Denis …

Diversidad Y Comunidad: La Propuesta Del Grupo De Guayaquil En Tensión Perenne Frente A La Modernidad, Patricio Paúl Peñaherrera Cevallos

Doctoral Dissertations

This dissertation contributes to the study of Ecuadorian literature from the first fifty years of the twentieth century, not just as an isolated discourse, but as part of a multidisciplinary project of re-reading the nation-building project through literature. In that regard, the literary works of The Grupo de Guayaquil are examined as a primary resource to understand how the hegemonic social forces of the period imposed their one-dimensional perspective about the nation without considering the views held by those communities often referred to as subalternized. Special attention is given to how these same works of fiction constituted an expression of …

Desaprendiendo Las Múltiples Significaciones De Emiliano Zapata: Hacia Una Lectura Decolonial., Andrea Perales Fernández De Gamboa

Doctoral Dissertations

My research examines how the image of General Zapata, the southern leader of the Mexican Revolution (1910-1920), has been utilized in diverse representations of Mexican cultural production of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. According to my analysis, the different versions that Zapata has been given correspond to a diverse set of ideologies and local and state values that varied across the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. From the construction of the post-revolutionary state in the 1920s to contemporary literature, the figure of the southern hero has embodied the traits that constitute a national hero, in spite of the fact that he …

Masculinidades Peligrosas: Monstruosidad, Vampirismo, Canibalismo Y Homosexualidad En La Literatura Mexicana De Los Siglos Xx Y Xxi, Jorge Estrada

Spanish and Portuguese ETDs

This dissertation examines public and institutional perceptions of homosexuality in Mexico from the time of Porfirio Díaz’s dictatorship (c. 1880-1910) through the early twentieth-first century. In my introduction, I study diverse representations of the male homosexual as a monstrous figure in Western culture, taking as models gothic images that emerged in the late nineteenth-century as a response to the rise of scientism, industrialization, and urbanization. The models that I utilize include the literal and metaphorical cannibal, the anxiety-causing vampire, and the dehumanized depiction of those who transgress social boundaries of gender and race.

Taking an interdisciplinary approach drawing on critical …

Moving Against Clothespins:The Poli(Poe)Tics Of Embodiment In The Poetry Of Miriam Alves And Audre Lorde, Flávia Santos De Araújo

Doctoral Dissertations

This dissertation examines literary representations of the black female body in selected poetry by U.S. African American writer Audre Lorde and Afro-Brazilian writer Miriam Alves, focusing on how their literary projects construct and defy notions of black womanhood and black female sexualities in dialogue with national narratives and contexts. Within an historical, intersectional and transnational theoretical framework, this study analyses how the racial, gender and sexual politics of representation are articulated and negotiated within and outside the political and literary movements in the U.S. and Brazil in the 1970s and 1980s. As a theoretical framework, this research elaborates and uses …

Monstrous Dolls: The Abject Body In Rosario Ferré’S Works, Mackenzie Fraser

Senior Theses

In this Honors Thesis project, I examine two literary texts, “The Youngest Doll” (1991) and The House on the Lagoon (1995), by Puerto Rican author Rosario Ferré (1938-2016) with attention to her depiction of the abject female body as a figure analyzed by both theories of gender and the subaltern. Using these critical frameworks as well as my own textual analysis, I argue that Ferré offers a postcolonial feminist critique of the double oppression—patriarchal and colonial— operating upon her female Puerto Rican characters. Yet these women also turn this abjection into transgression, allowing Ferré to expose the paradoxes of female …

Diversas De Sí, Entre El Hoy Y El Ayer: Rememoria De Tres Íconos Femeninos Espirituales, La Condesa De Malibrán, Sor Juana Inés De La Cruz Y La Falsa Teresa De Jesús, Ana Gabriela Hernandez Gonzalez 5059749397

Spanish and Portuguese ETDs

This dissertation traces the cultural memory of three magical/religious women of the colonial period: Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz, La Condesa de Malibrán and La Falsa Teresa de Jesús. It studies these icons specifically in three different discourses that construct cultural identities in Mexico: colonial discourse (XVI-XVII Centuries), the discourse of national consolidation (XIX-XX centuries) and postcolonial discourse (XX-XIX Centuries). First I describe how the narratives of the colonial period and of national consolidation employ an official lens to place magical/religious women within traditional gender roles. Then I delineate how historical novels in the 21st century employ a postcolonial …

Mujer, Tradición Y Conciencia Histórica En Gertrudis Gómez De Avellaneda, Ana Lydia Barrios

Doctoral Dissertations

This dissertation studies the historical consciousness in the literary production of Gertrudis Gómez de Avellaneda (1814, Cuba – 1873, Spain). The numerous novels, plays, and legends, as well as articles written by her, display an array of female characters selected from history, traditions, and the Bible. This focus of women undoubtedly shows the author’s concern with the condition of women in society, which transcends her own time and place in history, nineteenth century Spain, as her stories attempt to establish a connection between herself and her readers, and women of different times in history. In doing so, Gómez de Avellaneda’s …

The Net Of Nostalgia: Class, Culture, And Political Alienation And Nostalgia In Contemporary Latino And South Asian American Literature, Farzana Akhter

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Generally thought of as a yearning for recent past, or homesickness, nostalgia is seen as a sentiment that impairs living in the present. And in case of immigrants, nostalgia is thought of as a debilitating form of escapism and an inability to adapt to change and mobility. In this dissertation, contesting against the prevalent concept, I argue that immigrant nostalgia is neither a colored memory (Dyson 117) nor a romance with one’s own fantasy (Boym xiii); rather, immigrant nostalgia has a socio-economic and political underpinning. By exploring the various nuances of immigrant experience delineated in the literary works of South …

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 largely nationalist …

"Ocurrió La Unión Con La Divinidad, Con El Universo": La Representación De La Religión En Los Cuentos De Jorge Luis Borges, Rachel K. West

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Jorge Luis Borges is considered by many to be a pioneering author in 20th-century Latin American literature. Although he had a wide variety of themes and leimotifs in his literature, one of his most apparent was religion. However, given that he was agnostic, the way in which Borges often utilized it varied, creating a tangled web of many different religions and traditions in his literature. Further, the religious representations one sees in his literature serve a greater purpose by allowing him to both uncover his own concept of literary creation while at the same time exploring philosophical and metaphysical themes. …

Con Su Propia Voz: Un Estudio De Cinco Mujeres Mexicanas, Matthew Steven Wilkinson

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Este estudio se centra en las vidas de cinco mujeres mexicanas—Malintzin, Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz, Leona Vicario, Rosario Castellanos y Julieta Venegas—de cinco etapas históricas diferentes de México—la Conquista, el Virreinato de Nueva España, la lucha por la independencia, la modernidad y lo contemporáneo—al estudiar el uso que cada figura hace de su “Voz” según la época. Empieza presentando y descomponiendo el concepto de “malinchismo” revisando los detalles reconocidos de la vida de Malintzin/doña Marina/la Malinche. Después, continúa con un resumen de ciertos aspectos interesantes de las vidas de cada figura, empezando con Sor Juana y concluyendo con …

Culturas Emocionales: Narrativa Escrita Por Mujeres Cubanas Durante El Periodo Especial (1992–2005), Laura Sandez

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation studies the emotional repertories employed in the presentation of the female literary subject in the Cuban special period, a period of rapid ideological shift. It deals with the presentation of the self in a series of fictional autobiographic works whose portraits of history and society allow for the observation of diverse emotional repertories, looking for social and ethical value attributed to emotions such as happiness or nostalgia. The dissertation has two modes, a written one and a visual one I produce using digital media. The written part features a close textual analysis of emotional repertories found in literary …

Letras De Uma Resistência: Fantasmas Transgeneracionais E Ditadura. Brasil, Argentina E Cuba 1964-2002, Fabrício Silva

Theses and Dissertations--Hispanic Studies

During the period of military government in Argentina, Brazil (1964 –1982) and the present day communist Cuban regime, a machinery of cultural repression was established in these countries, these states had a systematic plan of cultural repression of any kind of opposition, dictatorships had an organized and sophisticated operating control over the press and all publications. The dissident writers examined in this dissertation developed strategies of resistance that depended largely on allegory to carry their messages against their respective oppressive regimes. By means of a detailed rhetorical analysis, our study examines the lookings of allegory and cultural resistance under the …

Habla De La Arena (Procesos Contemporáneos De Escritura Poética), Carlos Mijail Lamas

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

Este trabajo se plantea la creación de un poemario que reflexione sobre el poema como un campo de experimentación no solo formal, sino anímico, donde el andamiaje formal y rítmico de cada uno de los textos sea resultado de una indagación de la manera en que nuestra sensibilidad se ha modificado en relación con los estímulos de los entonrnos cibernéticos, la hiperconectividad y la simultaneidad de sus procesos. Las preguntas que se propone responder son ¿De qué manera el poeta puede enfrentar la abundancia y el flujo constante de información? ¿De qué forma el poema puede expresar la alteración de …

Del Otro Lado… Y Más Allá Colección De Crónicas, Oscar Iván Zapata García

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

Del otro lado... y más allá. Colección de crónicas está compuesta por 13 crónicas o textos de no-ficción que a su vez se agrupan en dos partes. La Primera Parte (Del otro lado. Crónicas Fronterizas) está compuesta por 7 crónicas donde se relata la experiencia fronteriza (Estados Unidos-México) en sus dimensiones políticas y sociales desde la perspectiva de un chilango. Para ello hago uso de las técnicas de la crónica, en su acepción de periodismo narrativo y literatura de no-ficción, y del humor y la ironía del altiplano mexicano. La pretensión es hacer agudas y relevantes observaciones geográficas y sociales …

An Echo Of Swelling Voices, A Meta-Fictional Novella, Adolfo Danilo Lopez

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

Horacio P. is an exiled Nicaraguan American poet living and teaching in Austin, Texas since the 1970s. Despite his enormous reputation and highly supportive wife, he feels incapable to write his last, and best, novel. This novel is about the life of Asdreni, an Albanian poet who was also exiled in Romania during the time before World War II, and his quest to find out who sent him a mysterious box containing the unpublished manuscripts of an unknown poet. One day, Horacio himself also receives a mysterious box containing the unpublished manuscripts of an unknown poet. His novel and his …

A Path Of Stories Wrapped Around Itself: A Translation And Aesthetic Reading Of Guillermo Meneses’ Short Story “La Mano Junto Al Muro”, Samuel Rotter Bechar

Senior Projects Spring 2017

Senior Project submitted to The Division of Languages and Literature of Bard College.

"Nobody Knows Me I Speak The Night": A Translation Of Alejandra Pizarnik's Poetry, Lydia Merriman Herrick

Senior Projects Spring 2017

Senior Project submitted to The Division of Languages and Literature of Bard College

A Case For Empathy: Immigration In Spanish Contemporary Media, Music, Film, And Novels, Constantin C. Icleanu

Theses and Dissertations--Hispanic Studies

This dissertation analyzes the representations of immigrants from North Africa, Latin America, and Eastern Europe in Spain. As engaged scholarship, it seeks to better the portrayal of immigrants in the mass media through the study of literature, film, and music about immigration spanning from the year 2000 to 2016. Because misconceptions continue to propagate in the media, this dissertation works to counteract anti-immigrant, xenophobic representations as well as balance out overly positive and orientalized portrayal of immigrants with a call to recognize immigrants as human beings who deserve the same respect, dignity, and rights as any other citizen.

Chapter 1 …

Modernidades Contra-Natura: Crítica Ilustrada, Prensa Periódica Y Cultura Manuscrita En El Siglo Xviii Americano, Kevin R. Sedeño-Guillén

Theses and Dissertations--Hispanic Studies

This dissertation studies the emergence of literary history and criticism in the Americas during the eighteenth century. It focuses upon the study of 1.) Natural history as a matrix of literary history and criticism; 2.) The geopolitical functions of literary history and criticism in the periodical press; and 3.) The recovery of manuscripts as a residual product of modernity. Texts associated with a hegemonic Enlightenment, such as “Disertación sobre el derecho público universal” by Francisco Javier de Uriortúa, are analyzed. Next, we study modern historical-critical thought as emphasized in the periodical press of Bogotá and Quito. Finally, the circulation of …

Degradation And Race In Anacristina Rossi's Limón Reggae, Joseph Timothy Morgan Jr.

Senior Projects Spring 2017

Senior Project submitted to The Division of Languages and Literature of Bard College.

Simulacrum And Post-Dictatorship Representation Of Violence In Argentina: Translation And Critical Reading Of Eduardo Pavlovsky’S Paso De Dos, Liliya Alexandrovna Galenkova-Riggs

Senior Projects Spring 2017

Senior Project submitted to The Division of Languages and Literature of Bard College.