Spanish and Portuguese Language and Literature Commons^™

Commemorative Palimpsests In Post-Authoritarian Argentina: The Case Of Esma, Emily R. Nelsen

Vernacular: New Connections in Language, Literature, & Culture

The authoritarian military regime in Argentina (1976-1983) left lasting impacts on the country’s social, political, and economic way of life. Characterized by thousands of violations of human rights, this period in history is still felt in Argentine society as activists and families search for truth. Simultaneously, other actors prefer to deny responsibility and argue for the need to move on, thus renouncing the legacy of state terror. ESMA, a notorious former clandestine torture center in Buenos Aires, became a site of memory on March 24, 2004, a date that also came to symbolize the anniversary of the coup d’état. Using …

Resituando El Cuerpo Femenino A Través De La Memoria Histórica Y La Ficción: Carlota De Bélgica Y Eva Perón En Las Novelas Noticias Del Imperio De Fernando Del Paso Y Santa Evita De Tomás Eloy Martínez, Krysheida Ayub - Unzon

Doctoral Dissertations

This dissertation analyzes the body and the memory of Charlotte of Belgium and Eva Perón in the historical novels Noticias del Imperio (1987) by the Mexican writer Fernando del Paso and Santa Evita (1996), by the Argentine Tomás Eloy Martínez. Through the conformation of these historical characters as literary protagonists, we observe how both are endowed with a new historical meaning from the articulation of fictional narratives that differ from traditional historiographical texts. From the analysis of the corporality and the memory of the female characters, we will attend to the resignification of the historical texts and their fictional ramifications …

Defining Black Masculinities: Intersectional Analyses Of Gender, Race And Sexuality In Caribbean And Latin American Literature, 1955 To Present, Jerry Eugene Scruggs Jr.

Doctoral Dissertations

The objective of my dissertation is to define and construct parameters for analyzing the Afro-descendant male experience in four specific texts: Mi compadre el General Sol [General Sun, My Brother] (1955), Adire y el tiempo roto [Adire and Broken Time] (1967), Sortilégio II: mistério negro de Zumbi redivivo [Sorcery 2: Black Mystery of Resurrected Zumbí] (1979), and Negro: Este color que me queda bonito [Black: This Color Looks Good on Me] (2013). Black masculinities are distinct and this study sets five parameters: 1) Sexual Prowess, 2) Contentious relationship with the White woman, 3) Violence and Toxic Masculinity, 4) Emotive Numbness, …

Cuerpos Clandestinos E Indocumentados: Narrativas Transfronterizas Centroamericanas En La Literatura Y El Cine, Sara D. Rico Godoy

Doctoral Dissertations

The reality of migration is a phenomenon that has been present in the world for centuries. Latin America is mainly where immigrants in the United States reach high scales. However, Central America explicitly sees a shift in the ways people decide to migrate nowadays, for instance, in caravans with thousands of walkers. This dissertation analyzes six Central American contemporary works in narrative and four film productions: two film features and two documentaries. The purpose is to explore the significance of mobilities and their influence on perspectives of identity and the different narratives of migration and how these are portrayed in …

Voicing Narrative Through Transatlanticism And Transformation In Historia De La Monja Alférez By Catalina De Erauso, Morgan Schneider

Masters Theses

This thesis analyzes various aspects of Catalina de Erauso’s Historia de la Monja Alférez, escrita por ella misma (1829). The first chapter explores notions of interior and exterior as categories that determine not only the protagonist’s movement in space but also their expression of self-identity over the course of the text, focalized through first-person narration. Additionally, the chapter brings to light how the interior narrative parallels Erauso’s desire to share their transformation from nun in a Spanish convent to a soldier in the Americas with picaresque tendencies. Erauso leverages the power of exterior appearances through the self-fashioning of their public …

Misticismo Y Arcadismo En El Villancico Novohispano. Manuel De Sumaya Y Sus Contemporáneos, Luciana Kube Tamayo

Vernacular: New Connections in Language, Literature, & Culture

El siglo XVIII trajo consigo una evolución estilística vertiginosa en todas las artes. La plástica, la literatura y la música confluyen y sirven de soporte a un arte nuevo, el Rococó. La floración churrigueresca está intensamente presente, además de en lienzos y biombos, en el vocabulario de la lírica de la Nueva España; a la vez que se afianzan los modelos religiosos, por un lado, se asientan los modelos pastoriles por otro. En cuanto a la espiritualidad, los modelos se encuentran encajados en la miniatura poética y el ingenio dieciochesco, desbordante de naturaleza y fantasía. En el presente trabajo me …

Desde Hernández Hasta Haraway: Gaucho Y Caballo Como Companion Species, Elisabetta Rodio

Vernacular: New Connections in Language, Literature, & Culture

La siguiente investigación pretende cuestionar el análisis tradicional de la figura del gaucho, desde siempre considerado como un “tipo humano”, para apoyar la idea de que este personaje es una entidad constituida por las intra-acciones entre su esencia humana, y lo no-humano: el caballo, su fiel compañero. Tomando como bases de análisis el Martín Fierro de José Hernández y El Payador de Leopoldo Lugones, el trabajo se enfoca en las relaciones extra-humanas que el hombre-gaucho desarrolla en el entorno de la Pampa, para demostrar que la identidad gauchesca es, finalmente, una esencia posthumana. Más específicamente, el enfoque será puesto en …

Identidad Y Progreso En El Caribe: La Ambigüedad Identitaria De Venezuela Y Puerto Rico, Gerardo Ruz

Vernacular: New Connections in Language, Literature, & Culture

La presencia estadounidense, en naciones caribeñas como Puerto Rico y Venezuela, ha jugado un papel fundamental en el desarrollo de los pueblos del mar desde el siglo XIX. En la mayoría de los casos, esta presencia por parte de las políticas estadounidenses ha creado problemas con la formación de una identidad cultural. La realidad de Puerto Rico es diferente, debido a que esta nación aún no ha alcanzado su independencia y la presencia norteamericana ha influido de manera determinante en la cultura de este pueblo caribeño. José Luis González, en su ensayo El país de cuatro pisos (1980), expone la …

Nationless States And Stateless Beings: The Politics Of Identity And Citizenship In Claudio Mir’S Mondongo Scam And Cheech Marin’S Born In East L.A., Rebecca A. Barnes

Vernacular: New Connections in Language, Literature, & Culture

In the colloquial sense of the term, the word citizen refers to an individual who belongs to a nation, either by birthright or by naturalization. Therefore, citizenship denotes a political and a social belonging, an ideological home, and, in most cases, a strong foundation for the development of one’s personal identity. However, since nations are inherently artificial structures, made only tangible in the present day by a few centuries of recorded history, a philosophical approach to the term citizen complicates this definition. Based off critics including Hannah Arendt, Homi Bhabha, Fernando Ortiz, and Jacques Derrida, this essay seeks to explore …

La Contribución De La Ópera Bufa Manita En El Suelo De Carpentier Y García Caturla En El Debate Primitivista De Principios Del Siglo Xx, Anna M. Martija Perez

Vernacular: New Connections in Language, Literature, & Culture

The present work is an approach to Manita en el suelo, the only opera bufa that Alejo Carpentier created in collaboration with the Cuban musician Alejandro García Caturla. The genuine friendship that united Carpentier and Caturla was the result of their identification not only in their love for music, but also an accentuated interest in all things primitive, together with a deep sense of social justice. At the same time, they are also united by respect for the African heritage and the recognition that it should have in the history of Cuba. In Manita en el suelo, Carpentier …

Re-Reading Alencar's Iracema Through Saer's Lens, Felicia Trievel

Vernacular: New Connections in Language, Literature, & Culture

Abstract:

The topic of European colonization is one that is discussed frequently throughout Latin American literature in a variety of different manners. Two books that discuss the colonization of different countries in extremely different ways are Iracema (1865) by José de Alencar and El entenado (1983) by Juan José Saer. The former examines the colonization of Brazil by Portuguese colonists, taking away much of the culture of the indigenous people previously inhabiting Brazil. El entenado examines the colonization of Argentina by the Spaniards. When one reads these two novels it is impossible not to compare the two due to the …

María Teresa Ramírez Nieva: La Griot De Los Ancestros Y Las Ancestras, Catalina Rojas

Vernacular: New Connections in Language, Literature, & Culture

María Teresa Ramírez Nieva: La Griot de los Ancestros y las Ancestras

La poesía de María Teresa Ramírez es una poesía de resistencia y cimarronaje, de reafirmación de la vida y la libertad, de “recuperación y defensa de los territorios ancestrales” que han sido históricamente amenazados y usurpados en un Pacífico colombiano de abandono, guerra territorial, desplazamiento y muerte. Es a través de sus obras La noche de mi piel (1988), Flor de Palenque (2008), Abalenga (2008), Mabungú Triunfo (2013), Mabungú Triunfo: Cosmogonía Africana Tomo II (2016), como se eleva la voz poética de la ancestralidad Pacífica alrededor de la …

Outperformed: Exploration And Comparison Of The Tongue-And-Cheek Tragedies Of Women-Animal Relationships In Selected Short Stories By Samanta Schweblin And In Apichatpong Weerasethakul’S Film, Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives, Sawnie Smith

Vernacular: New Connections in Language, Literature, & Culture

The unsettling short stories that comprise Samanta Schweblin’s 2008 collection Pájaros en la boca are textured and populated by the flesh of not only humans, but also the skins of species that belong to a wider zoological and mythical scope. Those creatures in Schweblin’s literary output who possess scales, feathers, and wings find themselves variously rubbing up against, crushed under, and orally engulfed by human dermis. This essay seeks to explore the charge of gender politics that courses through interactions between human women and (demi-) animals in two short stories from this collection: “El hombre sirena” and “Olingiris”—animal contact with …

Testimonio, Ficción Y Las Batallas Por Las Memorias En Insensatez De Horacio Castellano Moya, Evelyn Saavedra Autry

Vernacular: New Connections in Language, Literature, & Culture

La novela Insensatez (2005) del escritor salvadoreño Horacio Castellano Moya, se trata sobre una guerra civil en un país centroamericano que no tiene nombre. No obstante, se presume que el texto cuenta parte de la historia del conflicto armado en Guatemala entre los años de 1960 y 1996. Según el informe Guatemala: nunca más, el número de víctimas y desaparecidos fueron de 200,000 aproximadamente y de los cuales los indígenas de origen maya representaron el mayor número de víctimas. La voz narrativa de primera persona en Insensatez da cuenta de la violencia y las atrocidades que vivió la población …

Gabriel Celaya: Vanguardia Y Rehumanización, Ramón Muñiz Sarmiento

Vernacular: New Connections in Language, Literature, & Culture

En este trabajo se analizan, a través de una selección de textos poéticos, las dos etapas fundamentales del poeta vasco. Gabriel Celaya comienza su producción lírica bajo el amparo y la influencia de la estética vanguardista, aspecto que posteriormente cambia, teniendo en cuenta el proceso de rehumanización que vive la poesía española e hispánica en sentido general a partir de la década de 1930. Con una visión trasatlántica, intento comparar los poemas de Celaya con los de sus contemporáneos españoles y latinoamericanos, con el fin de establecer un parangón entre él y sus colegas, y así explicar las diferentes influencias …

El Criollo Y La Esclavitud En Cecilia Valdés O La Loma Del Ángel: Potencia, Resistencia Y Empoderamiento, Elvira Aballí Morell

Vernacular: New Connections in Language, Literature, & Culture

En “El criollo y la esclavitud en Cecilia Valdés o la Loma del Ángel: potencia, resistencia y empoderamiento” analizo las concepciones de lo criollo, principalmente desde el mestizaje en Cecilia Valdés (1882) de Cirilo Villaverde. Propongo una lectura diferenciada de lo criollo, teniendo en consideración que la exégesis de lo criollo desde los predios de lo caribeño presenta algunas divergencias con relación al concepto de lo criollo manejado para la masa continental. Privilegio, igualmente, una concepción de lo criollo desde lo femenino. Creo que una obra como Cecilia Valdés posee suficiente valor historiográfico como para demostrar que existe una …

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 …

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 …

Doña Bárbara Como Ficción Política En El Imaginario Venezolano: Una Perspectiva Diacrónica, Daniel Raso

Vernacular: New Connections in Language, Literature, & Culture

No abstract provided.

Nepantla As Her Place In The Middle: Multilingualism And Multiculturalism In The Writings Of Sor Juana Inés De La Cruz, Nicole Lynn Gomez

Doctoral Dissertations

In this dissertation, I analyze a selection of Sor Juana’s works in the context of bilingual and bicultural studies. I infer that the author’s language acquisition and cultural sensitivity were interrelated, both affecting the other and influencing her writing. I argue that her bilingualism correlated with her cultural sensitivity and sympathy towards marginalized groups. In her works, the author employs a variety of strategies to denounce discrimination and repression as well as rhetoric that promotes tolerance of other cultures and resistance to oppression. I explore these strategies in her texts and apply relevant theory in order to fully analyze their …

Medical Education Through The Fiction Of Julio Cortázar, Blake Barton

Chancellor’s Honors Program Projects

No abstract provided.

Constructing Marianismo In Colonial Mexico, Kathryn A. Buchanan

Chancellor’s Honors Program Projects

No abstract provided.

¿Qué Es La Patria?: Peruvian National Identity And José María Arguedas, Sydney S. Welch

Chancellor’s Honors Program Projects

No abstract provided.

“Una Caja De Plomo Que No Se Podía Abrir”: Una Crítica Del Sistema Militar Estadounidense En Puerto Rico Durante La Época De La Guerra De Corea, Ashton Monks

Chancellor’s Honors Program Projects

No abstract provided.

La Naturaleza En La Literatura Costarricense Pensada Desde La Eco-Culturalidad, Andrew M. Ray

Doctoral Dissertations

Though the topic of the environment in Costa Rican literature is relatively recent, it is by no means insubstantial. In fact, this particular theme is extremely pertinent in our current days of global warming, mass pollution, fracking, and oil spills, to name just a few issues directly relating to the environment. Therefore, as a hotbed of eco-tourism and environmental awareness, Costa Rica’s literature is a prime candidate for exploring the representation of nature, not as the result of a process of progress and modernization, but rather as a grave warning of the negative ecological effects of the coloniality of nature. …

Compositions In Black And Brown: Manifestations Of Afro-Latinity In U.S. Black Latino/A Literary Discourse, Janelle Chevon Coleman

Doctoral Dissertations

Through an analysis of the literature by Afro-Latino writers Junot Díaz, Evelio Grillo, Piri Thomas and Loida Maritza Pérez, my dissertation shows how the multifaceted nature of Afro-Latino/a identity and culture is reflected in the works of three novels written by Spanish-speaking authors who self-identify as Afro-Caribbean Americans. I use criticism from such scholars as Juan Flores, Miriam Jiménez, and Jorge Gracia to show that U.S. Afro-Latinity is not representative of an essence, but rather of a set of common manifestations resulting from conflicting concepts of race and ethnicity. I assert that U.S. Black Latinos not only possess a unique …

Antonio Preciado And The Afro Presence In Ecuadorian Literature, Rebecca Gail Howes

Doctoral Dissertations

This dissertation examines the literary trajectory of Antonio Preciado Bedoya (1941), a major Afroecuadorian writer, poet and diplomat whose work spans more than 50 years. Although relatively unknown outside of Ecuador, this dissertation will address that lack of recognition by studying his work in the more general context of the African Diaspora. It will reflect upon Preciado’s re-definition of Ecuadorian identity in the new millennium. Preciado is a poet who portrays the Afro presence as central to the national experience of ethnic diversity and the construction of a pluricultural Ecuador. He emphasizes that Afroecuadorians be recognized as an integral component …

La Construcción Literaria De La Identidad De Puerto Rico: El País De Cuatro Voces, Lisa Ybonne Figueroa Parker

Doctoral Dissertations

This dissertation studies how language in Puerto Rican literature has been instrumental in reconstructing national identity in the context of the Island’s colonial histories. Bearing in mind that colonialism not only produced economic and political domination, but also epistemic control over cultural values and practices in general, Puerto Rican writers have used language to resignify a national imaginary that continues to be elusive and contradictory. To demonstrate how language in literature has become a site of struggle for decolonization, this study analyzes four representative voices from the nineteenth and twentieth century which construct distinct, yet complementary, identities.

Chapter one focuses …

Reformulando Espacios, Estereotipos Y Discursos: Las Narrativas Femeninas De La Violencia En La Literatura Hispanoamericana Contemporánea., Mara Pereira Borges

Doctoral Dissertations

The dissertation “Reformulando espacios, estereotipos y discursos: Las narrativas femeninas de la violencia en la literatura hispanoamericana contemporánea” analyzes four novels from contemporary Spanish-American literature: Laura Restrepo’s El leopardo al sol (1993), Julia Álvarez’s En el tiempo de las mariposas (1995), Nora Strejilevich’s Una sola muerte numerosa (1997) and Ana Valentina Benjamin’s 7x1: Siete crímenes per cápita (2006). All four novels focus on historical backgrounds marked by violence such as the emergence of the drug cartels in Colombia, the military dictatorship in Dominican Republic during Trujillo’s rule, the Dirty War in Argentina, and a very particular manifestation …