Spanish and Portuguese Language and Literature Commons^™

Making Machines Learn. Applications Of Cultural Analytics To The Humanities, Javier De La Rosa Pérez

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

The digitization of several million books by Google in 2011 meant the popularization of a new kind of humanities research powered by the treatment of cultural objects as data. Culturomics, as it is called, was born, and other initiatives resonated with such a methodological approach, as is the case with the recently formed Digital Humanities or Cultural Analytics. Intrinsically, these new quantitative approaches to culture all borrow from techniques and methods developed under the wing of the exact sciences, such as computer science, machine learning or statistics. There are numerous examples of studies that take advantage of the possibilities that …

Literatura Hispano-Canadiense De Migración Del Siglo Xxi, Ana Chiarelli

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

This dissertation examines a sample of 21st century Hispano-Canadian literature that focuses on the theme of migration. The first chapter presents a brief historical survey of the migration of Spanish speaking individuals to Canada, as well as the description of the current state of the Hispano-Canadian literature and its challenges. The second chapter explores the representations of the past and the land of origin as well as the representation of Canada that is presented in thirteen short stories. The third chapter analyzes Gabriela Etcheverry’s autobiographical novel Latitudes, both as as a testimony and practice of the poetics of exile, as …

Scintillating Scotoma: Migraine, Aura, And Perception In European Literature, 1860-1900, Janice Y. Zehentbauer

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

This dissertation focuses upon the ways in which nineteenth-century physicians in the emergent field of neurology conceptualized and catalogued the neurological condition, migraine, and the ways in which European literary texts reimagined and interrogated such medical classifications. A recognized condition for hundreds of years, migraine in the nineteenth century became pathological; migraineurs became a “nervous” modern figure that haunted medicine and literary fiction. Anxieties regarding the construction of fragmented vision, bodies, gender, and consciousness render the migraine figure a relevant symbol for the modern era. The nineteenth-century medical treatises by Jean-Martin Charcot, Edward Liveing, and Hubert Airy reveal that a …

Escribir La Propia Vida: Memoria, Confesión Y Autobiografía En Dos Textos Medievales, Maria Carmen Vera Lopez

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

This thesis is a critical study based on a theoretical framework of autobiography based on the deconstruction of the idea that it existed, as a literary genre,in the Middle Ages. This work takes certain characteristics of the term “Self Writing” suggested by Foucault: the first person writing and fragmentary. This model of writing, is seen in two different perspectives in two medieval texts: Memorias by Leonor López de Córdoba and Libro rimado de palacio by Pero López de Ayala, both written in the same historical context.

Notas, Cuentos Y Minificciones: Relatos En Periódicos Mexicanos Del Siglo Xix, Giordano Palma

Modern Languages and Literatures Annual Graduate Conference

Los periódicos de finales de siglo xix alteraron el proceso habitual de lectura; surgieron nuevos géneros y nuevos tipos de textos que buscaban satisfacer los formatos del periódico. Conjuntamente con la transformación de las formas textuales, se dieron nuevas prácticas de lectura, prácticas que premiaban la inmediatez y la brevedad. La empresa periodística estuvo fuertemente relacionada con la percepción de la modernidad, la apertura a nuevos espacios geográficos y la innovación tecnológica. En este contexto es que se comenzó a experimentar con distintos géneros literarios, que pudieran satisfacer esas necesidades. Dentro de estas nuevas formas surgieron las notas periodísticas, lugar …

Microrrelato Del “Saber Vivir” En Su Doble Acepción Normativa-Descriptiva: Más Allá De La Parodia Y Los Finales Sorprendentes; Lo Reflexivo, Ary Malaver

Modern Languages and Literatures Annual Graduate Conference

Tradicionalmente, el estudio del microrrelato se ha centrado en la discusión de aspectos tales como su caracterización, evolución histórica y estatus genérico. Este trabajo parte de la premisa de que son necesarios nuevos enfoques y por ello indaga en algunas cuestiones axiológicas y éticas en torno al microrrelato. Teniendo como punto de partida el concepto del “saber vivir”, según lo propone Ottmar Ette, se plantea la existencia de un microrrelato del saber vivir normativo-descriptivo que difiere de la correlación que Ette establece entre microficción y “saber vivir”. Este tipo de microficción se distingue por la presencia de una voluntad introspectiva …

Producción De La Concordancia En Español Por Hablantes De Náhuatl, Alma P. Ramirez-Trujillo

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

Esta tesis investiga la adquisición de la concordancia de género y número en el sintagma determinante, y de sujeto, verbo y objeto en el sintagma verbal por hablantes de náhuatl que hablan español como L2 (n=19) y por bilingües simultáneos (náhuatl-español) (n=6). Los resultados son contrastados con un grupo de control (n=5).

El español y el náhuatl son muy diferentes. El español dista mínimamente de otras lenguas romances, mientras que el náhuatl es una lengua polisintética sin género, el número está restringido a sustantivos animados, tiene que expresar concordancia de objeto y no tiene verbos infinitivos. La falta de concordancia …

Entre El Juego Y La Memoria: El Detective Y La Ciudad En La Narrativa Neo Policiaca De Paco Ignacio Taibo Ii Y Leonardo Padura Fuentes., Carlos Pardo

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

This dissertation examines the development of the characters in the detective series of Paco Ignacio Taibo II (Mexico) and Leonardo Padura Fuentes (Cuba) and their relationship with their Hispanic-American cities: Mexico D.F. and Havana. To accomplish it, this dissertation initially deals with the connection between the “neo policiaco” and the narrative tradition that precedes it: the classical detective story or whodunit and the American hardboiled crime story, as well as its link with Spanish contemporary detective fiction. As a result, the Hispanic-American “neo policiaco” explores new possibilities of detective narratives in which complex characters and the Hispanic American city as …

Magic(Infra)Realism: Jetztzeiten Of Believability And Latin American History In García Márquez’S Cien Años De Soledad And Otoño Del Patriarca., Katarzyna Jasinski

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

This thesis examines the idea of Colombian history as ‘random coincidence’ in Gabriel García Márquez’s Cien años de soledad and El otoño del patriarca. Walter Benjamin’s Theses on the Philosophy of History and Michel Foucault’s Nietzsche, Genealogy, History provide the theoretical framework for the research. This thesis examines magic realism as a way of representing the true invisible past of Latin America. The combination of Foucault’s concept of genealogy, Walter Benjamin’s ‘messianic historical materialism’ and García Márquez’s ‘magic realism’ demonstrates that the combination of living and telling produce a Jetztzeit of believability that redeems Latin American history from historicism. …

Interstory: A Study Of Reader Participation And Networked Narrative In Media Convergence, Elika Ortega Guzman

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

Recently we have seen the proliferation of narratives developing in media convergence: simultaneously on websites, blogs, multimedia platforms, books, magazines, etc. In this thesis, I propose the term interstory to characterize this narrative tendency. Interstory is a narrative constituted by a network of story pieces published in different media and compiled by readers. To illustrate the concept of interstory I take as a study case Hernán Casciari’s and Christian Basilis’ Orsai, which in two years has incorporated into its narrative three blogs, a print magazine, and a web magazine. Orsai has been a successful project thanks to the formation of …

“Alma” O “Arma”, Evidencia De La Neutralización /L/ /R/ En La Variedad Dialectal Andaluza De Sevilla, Maria De La Esperanza Ruiz-Peña

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

The Andalusian variety of Spanish is characterized by a weakened articulation (Hualde, 2005). The purpose of the present study is to analyze and characterize liquid neutralization in this variety of Spanish. This experiment specifically provides new evidence on lateral rhotic alternation, quantifying the rate of lateral maintenance, substitution of laterals by rhotics, production of in between sounds and deletion in 40 Andalusian speakers of Spanish. In doing so, it rigorously examines the effect of a number of linguistic and extra-linguistic factors. The linguistic factors comprised of number of syllables, stress, position (incomplete neutralization) and across word boundary. The extra-linguistic factors …

Crónicas De Un Nómada: El Humor Como Estrategia Del Recuerdo, Ana Chiarelli

Modern Languages and Literatures Annual Graduate Conference

La primera novela del venezolano A.A. Álvarez, Crónicas de un nómada, memorias de un inmigrante (2009), es la historia contada en primera persona de Carlos Rodríguez, un joven que a temprana edad decide que la emigración es la salida perfecta para escapar de un país que parece derrumbarse ante sus ojos.

La historia de Carlos es contada desde una transterritorialidad que no es sólo espacial, sino que abarca también lo cultural y lo lingüístico, ofreciendo una oportunidad para acercarse a la realidad de los procesos migratorios a través del humor como estrategia para sobrellevar las dificultades de la adaptación, pero …

Interacciones Narrativas Árabe, Cristiana Y Judía: Convivencia Literaria En El Medievo Peninsular, David Navarro

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

This dissertation develops a critical study based on identity theory, intergroup relations, and social discourse of the cultural symbiosis forged between the three religious communities of the Medieval Iberian Peninsula - Christians, Jews and Muslims - as reflected in four books written during this period, from the eleventh to the fourteenth century. In the case of Medieval Iberian literature, Semitic culture and traditions were absorbed along with Christian traditions in the development of a future Spanish identity that was reflected in the literary framework. Through this analysis and this theoretical framework it was possible to determine how intergroup contact affected …

El Modelo De Autorización Del Relato En La Historiografía Medieval Castellana: La Escritura Y Lo Real En La Cronística Alfonsí, Santiago Normann Kalinowski

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

This thesis explores the nature of the relationship between truth and text during a key moment in Castilian culture. Focusing on xiii^th century historiography, supervised by King Alfonso X “el Sabio”, the thesis proposes an evolution of “textual truth” along a set of specific theoretical principles and formal (literary/rhetorical) features. The first part defines “authority” and “authorization” of the written word: Chapter 1 studies the fundamental issues surrounding the writing of History; Chapter 2 provides precedents, starting in the Bible, for an understanding of “sacred” authorship that will be recognizable in the Primera Crónica General; Chapter 3 analyzes …

Blood, Organs And Other Tissues For Sale: Diamela Eltit's Impuesto A La Carne And The Afterwards Of The Neoliberal Development In Latin America., Wanda I. Ocasio- Rivera

Hispanic Studies Publications

Abstract

Blood, organs and other tissues for sale: Diamela Eltit's Impuesto a la carne and the afterwards of the neoliberal development in Latin America.

As Marx elaborated in Capital: Volume I at the moment human labour is sold, the subject participates in an ominous plot where she/he becomes a commodity. In a capitalist mode of production, the subject’s alienation from his/her humanity occurs because the individuals can only express labor through a privately-owned system of production in which he/she is an instrument, an object. This dehumanization process submits the subject under the exchange transactions of the market, where labor value …

Acercamiento Interartístico A La Pintura De Género De Murillo Y El Pícaro Literario Del Siglo De Oro. Personajes Que Reflejan Una Realidad Social, Jimena Zambrano

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

This thesis compares the visual representations of Bartolomé Esteban Murillo and the novels La vida de Lazarillo de Tormes y de sus fortunas y adversidades and Rinconete y Cortadillo, to demonstrate their inter artistic relationship. Utilizing a base of socio-critical and semiotic theories, the construction of a reality within the works through the representations of children characters will be studied.

Baroque Worlds Of The 21st Century, Xavier Gamboa

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

This dissertation furnishes an analysis of the unfolding twenty-first century neobaroque phenomenon. Thus this disquisition delves through assorted cultural artifacts from the current digital era as well as manifestations of neobaroque motifs; these virtual baroques of the twenty-first century range from memento mori, video games, social networking sites and the sponsors of these neobaroque manifestations--the corporations, a baroque legacy. This thesis seeks parallels, as opposed to replications of the first modern global culture--the historical baroque of the seventeenth century; it also provides an extensive etymological research of the international and evolving meaning of baroque, taking also into consideration its political …

Teatralidad, Globalidad Y Tecnología En El Siglo Xxi, Luz Andrea Ávila Becerril

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

The development of a spectacular theatricality that may reflect the aesthetics of a neobaroque society is the outcome of a long process. As any complex system, theatricality endures thanks to its ability to adapt and being resilient. Factors like globalization, research, scientific aproach and risk management have been needed for the theatricality to reach the level we enjoy now. The 3 cases I analyze here (Cirque du Soleil, Robert Lepage and La Fura dels Baus) are good samples of the state of art of the 21st century theatricality and give us an idea where this human expression could be going …

The Gospel According To José Saramago: A Comparative Study Of Critical Reception In Portugal, United States, And Canada, Bruna Reis

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

Portuguese writer José Saramago (1922-2010) is well-known for controversial, challenging, and thought-provoking novels. In this study, I analyze the critical reception of his works in his home country, where The Gospel According to Jesus Christ (1991) was excluded from participation in the European Literary Prize on ideological grounds, and in the United States and Canada, where Blindness (1995) brought a wave of uniformly positive response until the publication of Cain (2010), perceived negatively as a didactic tool to convince readers of the unviability of Christianity.

This examination is framed by Iser’s theory of aesthetic response. More specifically, I focus on …

Orthography-Induced Transfer In L2 Phonological Acquisition Of Spanish, Yasaman Rafat

Research Day (Arts & Humanities, FIMS, and Education)

1. Does exposure to orthographic input promote L1- based phonological transfer, leading to non-target- like productions in English-speaking learners of Spanish?
2. Do condition of learning and production and grapheme-to-phoneme (in)consistency modulate the rate of orthography-induced transfer?

El Gracioso En El Teatro De Calderón: Un Análisis Desde Las Humanidades Digitales, Miriam A. Peña-Pimentel

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

This study has two equally important objectives: firstly, the design of a new methodology for analyzing literary texts that make use of new technologies to facilitate the task of the researcher. Secondly, the application of the methodology to a selection of Calderón de la Barca´s comedies to analyze the central role that the character of the gracioso plays in defining the essential characteristics of such plays.

The methodology presented here helps to manage large amounts of information while maintaining the semantic structure inherent in the dramatic text. It is divided into five distinct phases: manual annotation of the works following …

Mexican Temporary Agricultural Workers In Canada: A Language And Migration Approach, Maria Eugenia De Luna Villalón

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

The purpose of this study is to fill a gap in the sociolinguistic research on language issues faced by temporary migrants. My research involves a compilation and analysis of the sociolinguistic facts relating to the situation of Mexican Temporary Agricultural Workers (MTAW) who come to Ontario and Quebec through the Seasonal Agricultural Workers Program (SAWP). Following an ethnographic approach and methodology, I investigated the following research questions: 1). How do the biographic backgrounds –human capital- of MTAW restrict or allow them to renegotiate their identity and to be able to deal with their new social and linguistic environment? 2). What …

Red De Comunicación Jesuita Desde La Misión De Moxos, Carlos-Urani Montiel

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

The Society of Jesus shared information and generated knowledge through a communication network that made it possible to trace connection patterns. Jesuits used reiterative forms to share messages and to distribute knowledge between their European and American provinces. The aim of my thesis is to account for the scope, impact, and advantages of such communication strategies, which applied in a context where the environment was a decisive factor for the missional ministry. The Moxos Mission on the upper Amazon in what is now modern Bolivia consisted of an array of small urban settlements with strong influence in the Hispanic Kingdom …

Temporalidades Múltiples En La Encrucijada: Representaciones Artísticas De Lo Afro En Latinoamérica Y El Mundo Hispánico Durante La Actual Etapa De Globalización, Eduard Arriaga

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

Nowadays talking about national, racial or gender identities and its representations is quite difficult due to current global-local dynamics of cultural formation. In that sense, approaching to these issues requires the use of comprehensive theories and complex tools in order to forge a better understanding. My dissertation explores the artistic representation of ‘afro’ in the Hispanic world (or the culture built upon the legacies of Africans and African-descendants in the New World and especially in the Caribbean) during the current stage of globalization. In my dissertation, I argue that afro-artistic contemporary representations are overcoming traditional ones -bound to race as …

Latin American And Hispanic Artistic Representations Of Afro In The Globalization, Eduard Alberto Arriaga

Migration and Ethnic Relations Colloquium Series

No abstract provided.

Input Vs Corrective Feedback In The Acquisition Of Spanish Negation, Yolanda Pangtay‐Chang

Research Day (Arts & Humanities, FIMS, and Education)

Input is important and necessary to acquire a language, nevertheless output will tell us in what degree the language has been acquired.

Since other factors such as motivation affect acquisition, what type of feedback is necessary and in what amount to help L2 students correct their proficiency in the target language?

Ellipsis And Agree: Parallelism Effects In Spanish Noun Drop, Joyce Bruhn De Garavito

Research Day (Arts & Humanities, FIMS, and Education)

In Spanish it is possible to drop nouns in order to avoid repetition. Noun drop is very productive (Ticio 2001; 2005).

Given the high level of accuracy in gender concord found in previous studies (Bruhn de Garavito and White 2002; White et al 2004, among others) I predict that adult learners of Spanish have the appropriate representation of number and gender in their L2. They will therefore distinguish between these two features under ellipsis.

La Parte Censurada De La Historia De La Provincia De Francisco De Florencia, Jason Dyck

FIMS Publications

Before the Jesuit Francisco de Florencia was able to publish the History of the Province (1694) he was forced to remove several chapters from the second book of the first volume. The section that was cut out of his manuscript reviews the errors of ancient theories on the environment of the New World, the greatness of Mexico City before the Spanish conquest, and the natural abundance of New Spain. This document is extremely valuable because it demonstrates how colonial historians were restricted by state censorship in what they were able to publish on America. The transcription of this censored section …

La Crónica De Potosí Y Sus Milagros: Complejidad Cultural Y Modelación De Relaciones Simbólicas, Shiddarta Vasquez Cordoba

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

This thesis focuses on an analysis of the religious world of colonial Potosí through the study of the rituals and miracles described in the History of the Imperial City of Potosi written by Bartolome Arzans de Orsua y Vela in the first half of the eighteenth century. After a detailed reading of the text, this works proposes a schema to understand the basic but repetitive ritualistic cycles that organize the life in the city and uses tools such as Topic Maps and the modelling system called NetLogo to visualize the social and cultural networks that give life to the narration. …

Teaching And Learning Spanish In Second Life, Ana GarcíA-AlléN

Research Day (Arts & Humanities, FIMS, and Education)

It is generally assumed that the incorporation of new technologies in the process of language learning leads to better learning, but this is not always tested empirically. The primary goal of this study is to better understand student experiences and learning outcomes when using Second Life (SL) as a Teaching tool.