Spanish and Portuguese Language and Literature Commons^™

Anita Brenner’S Vision: A Transnational Search For Mexican Jewish Identity, Gina Malagold

Doctoral Dissertations

This dissertation traces U.S.-Mexico cross-border networks during the cultural Renaissance of early 20^th century influenced by artistic and intellectual encounters in post-revolutionary Mexico. I explore from a transnational perspective the representation of Mexican-Jewish identity in post-revolutionary Mexico through the lens of Mexican-American Jewish anthropologist, artist, and journalist Anita Brenner (1905-1974). In my dissertation, Anita Brenner’s Vision: A Transnational Search for Mexican Jewish Identity, I expand on the notion of mexicanidad and reframe the cosmopolitanism of the time and its manifestation in the United States, arguing that Brenner’s contributions were instrumental in linking Mexico to the larger map of …

Manuel González Prada En La Intimidad: Una Mirada A Su Universo Personal A Través De La Correspondencia De Luis Alberto Sánchez, Alfredo González Prada Y Adriana De Verneuil, Odalis Patricia Hidalgo

Doctoral Dissertations

This dissertation focuses on the epistolary communication between Alfredo González Prada, Luis Alberto Sánchez and Adriana de Verneuil between the years 1925-1943. The correspondence reveals unfamiliar aspects in the life of the controversial Peruvian writer, Manuel González Prada (1844-1918). I argue that in order to better understand his work and personal life it is necessary to study the voices that were close to him, and in charge of the publication of his posthumous work. The correspondence also opens the discussion of the literary work of Luis Alberto Sánchez in Don Manuel (1930). Sánchez’s book constructs Prada’s heroic character within a …

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 …

'Y Mi Rebelión Se Convirtió En Arte’ Raúl Salinas Y Su Poesía Política: Una Historia Literaria Chicana, Santiago Vidales

Doctoral Dissertations

In this dissertation I present a literary history of poet and revolutionary Raúl Salinas. Born in 1934, Salinas left a major legacy for Latinx and Chicanx letters. I focus on narrating, for the first time in Spanish, the relationship between his prison radicalism and his poetic production. The time Salinas spent as a political prisoner in Leavenworth Penitentiary (1967-1972) was foundational to his political transformation and (re)education. Along with members of the Black Panthers, AIM, Puerto Rican Nationalists, and other radicalized Chicanos, these inmates formed study groups, networks of support, and established a newspaper to both combat the oppressive conditions …

Kiskeyanas Valientes En Este Espacio: Dominican Women Writers And The Spaces Of Contemporary American Literature, Isabel R. Espinal

Doctoral Dissertations

We can learn and gain a lot by putting Dominican women writers at the center of our attention. Yet they rarely have that place. This dissertation looks at Dominican women authors who have lived and written in the United States —Josefina Báez, Marianela Medrano, Yrene Santos, Aurora Arias, Nelly Rosario, Annecy Báez, Ana Maurine Lara, Raquel Cepeda— and how they fit within the spaces of contemporary American society, and more broadly within world flows of peoples and cultural productions. I draw on the theories and methodologies of Gloria Anzaldúa and her generation of feminists of color, as well as subsequent …

"Al Gaucho Que Llevo En Mí, Sacramente, Como La Custodia Lleva La Hostia”: Ideología Política Y Literatura Gauchesca En El Contexto Cinematográfico De La Revolución Argentina, Ramiro Garcia-Olano

Doctoral Dissertations

This doctoral dissertation studies Manuel Antín’s Don Segundo Sombra (1969), the cinematographic adaptation of Ricardo Güiraldes celebrated “novela de la tierra” of the same title, in the context of the so called “Revolución Argentina”, the military dictatorship that ruled this country between 1966 and 1973. This investigation seeks to shed light on the political struggle for control of the “gauchesca” literary genre that was taking place at this time in the Argentinean cinematographic field. In a time of rampant nationalism, the different political actors that were vying for political power saw in the “gaucho”, who by then had come to …

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 …

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 …

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 …

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 …

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 …

Documenting The (Un)Documented: Diasporic Ecuadorian Narratives In Southern/Mediterranean Europe, Esther A. Cuesta

Doctoral Dissertations

For several decades, Ecuadorian, U.S. American, and European social scientists have studied Ecuadorian migration to the European Union. Yet little academic research has been devoted to the comparative study of literary and filmic representations of diasporic Ecuadorians. This disparity between social science and literary studies research is especially evident in scholarship published in English, a gap this dissertation proposes to fill. I investigate the discourses, cultural production, representations, and self-representations of diasporic Ecuadorians in Southern/Mediterranean Europe, specifically in Spain and Italy, where the largest diasporic communities of Ecuadorians in the European Union reside. I focus on a selection of works …

En Honor A Elegguá: Máscaras Y Trampas Trazando Los Caminos De Juan Francisco Manzano, Carmen L. Cosme Puntiel

Doctoral Dissertations

La Autobiografía de un esclavo le dio fama internacional a Juan Francisco Manzano cuando fue publicada en Inglaterra en 1840. Sin embargo, en su tierra natal, Cuba, no fue hasta 1937 que su obra fue reconocida como instrumento fundamental para la abolición de la esclavitud en la isla. Pero Manzano como intelectual Afrocubano aún no ha recibido la atención que requiere en el ámbito intelectual Afrolatino. Uso varios métodos de ensamblaje en esta disertación. Analizo documentos de archivo como el manuscrito original en español de la Autobiografía, correspondencias entre el grupo abolicionista cubano encabezado por Domingo del Monte, las cartas …

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 …

Ambigüedades Éticas Y Estéticas: La Narrativa Peruana Contemporánea Y La Violencia Política, Gabriel T Saxton-Ruiz

Doctoral Dissertations

The dissertation “Ambigüedades éticas y estéticas: La narrativa peruana contemporánea y la violencia política” explores the complex relationship of literature and the recent history of Peru by analyzing ideological positions expressed in three novels, Alonso Cueto’s La hora azul (2005), Santiago Roncagliolo’s Abril rojo (2006), and Daniel Alarcón’s Radio Ciudad Perdida (2007), and in a collection of short stories, Jorge Eduardo Benavides’ La noche de Morgana (2005). This dissertation discusses how these authors employ different literary discourses (detective fiction, literature of the fantastic and the dystopian novel) to recreate artistically the period of internal conflict, as well as the ethical …