Spanish and Portuguese Language and Literature Commons^™

Substitute Salvation: An Online Classroom Resource, Rachel Callaly

Honors Theses

As a teacher, not having a plan for days when you are not in the classroom is not an option. Usually, a teacher can plan a few days in advance and be prepared for a substitute teacher to come in. However, more often than not, the substitute is not certified to teach in the subject they are covering, which becomes particularly difficult in a World Language class, such as Spanish. Additionally, some days there is no advanced notice for an absence, and a last-minute plan has to be made. That is where Substitute Salvation comes in. Substitute Salvation is a …

Understanding A Discourse Marker In Quito, Ecuador, Hannah Jesberger

Honors Projects

The present research project examines the possible factors to explain the word-final /f/ in Ecuadorian Spanish including but not limited to: where it is used, who uses it (gender, age ranges, social class), and with which words it is most commonly used. As the first extensive research study on the word-final /f/, the project may lead to other investigations of this phenomenon and other features of Ecuadorian Spanish. In addition, if there are other variations of the marker pues in the Spanish varieties spoken in different regions and/or countries, researchers can use this present study as basis to analyze the …

Self-Esteem In Spanish-Speaking Latinos In Northwest Ohio, Mckenna Freeman

Honors Projects

Self-esteem is a widely-studied construct across many disciplines of social science. However, previous research regarding self-esteem and language barriers has focused primarily on children and adolescent populations, while much less research has examined this relationship among adults. The current study measures linguistic acculturation and self-esteem in both Latino and control adult samples. Hypothesis 1 states that participants in the Latino sample would report significantly lower self-esteem than the control sample. Hypothesis 2 states that linguistic acculturation levels in Spanish speaking Latinos would be positively correlated with self-esteem. Finally, a research question was addressed measuring the differences in self-esteem between foreign …

The Benefits Of Immersion In Learning A Foreign Language, Cassidy Crouch

Honors Theses

The purpose of this study is to measure the linguistic benefits of learning a foreign language in a study abroad immersion program through Western Michigan University’s (WMU) Spanish department. The participants in this study were all participants of the Santander, Spain program of the Summer II semester of 2017. Nineteen students in total went to Spain and eleven of them agreed to participate in this study. During the Spring 2017 semester the eleven participants were given a pre-departure questionnaire and oral interview where they were asked demographic questions as well as program-specific information. During the last week in Santander, Spain …

Going Beyond The Textbook: Revitalizing Culture In The Spanish Classroom, Sarah Basar

Honors Theses

Effectively teaching the culture of a target language in foreign language classrooms can be a rather difficult and time-consuming task. Most often, culture is placed somewhere on a spectrum of either being a minor supplement to acquiring and learning the target language or utilizing culture as the direction through which grammar, vocabulary, and conversational practice are attained. Teachers’ beliefs, experiences, and resources all play a significant role in how culture is defined and taught in the schools of a country where globalization and immigration are quickly beginning to change the sociopolitical and demographic dynamics of our society. Thus, it is …

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 …

The Use Of Visual Arts In World Language Instruction To Increase Student Motivation And Attitude, Marilena Bevilacqua Martello

Boise State University Theses and Dissertations

Because of the complexity and changeability that characterize languages, language learners face a number of various factors in their quest to acquire a new language. Nevertheless, it is the level of motivation and personal attitude toward language learning that will determine their rate of success (Dörnyei & Csizér, 1998). The purpose of this study was to find out (1) whether there was a relationship between the use of visual art in world language instruction and student motivation, and (2) whether student writing skills improved when visual art was used for Content Based Instruction. The study used a mixed method research …

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.

Las Lágrimas Y El Corazón De Mi Identidad: Bruna Husky, La Posthumana De Rosa Montero, Elizabeth Montero Mattos

Theses and Dissertations

Este proyecto pretende el análisis de dos obras de ciencia ficción de la escritora española Rosa Montero, Lágrimas en la lluvia y El peso del corazón. Teniendo como eje principal el proceso de obtención de la identidad de una posthumana, la protagonista de ambas obras literarias, Bruna Husky. Si bien la naturaleza posthumana ha desafiado y quebrantado la noción de identidad en sus individuos, mediante la experiencia de una vida alrededor de otros que pueden formar una parafamilia se obtiene un espejo visionario de sí mismo necesario para la obtención de dicha identidad. En el primer libro, esta posthumana …

Madness In The Quijote: Don Quijote As Alonso Quijano's True Self, Paul J. Schmidt

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis examines the dichotomy of locura/cordura in Miguel de Cervantes' Don Quijote de la Mancha (1605/1615), specifically the nature of the madness of the titular character. Two different aspects of the Quijote are discussed: (1) the dual nature of the personality of Don Quijote/Alonso Quijano as being "sanely insane," that is, that although Don Quijote exhibits symptoms unmistakably indicative of madness, he maintains his sanity underneath this mad façade; the dedicatory sonnets that precede Part 1, the epitaphs that follow the end of Part 1, and the two poems that serve as an epilogue to Part 2 are examined …

Analyzing Young Readers' Empathetic Responses To A Mexican American Historical Narrative, Yvette Rivera

Theses and Dissertations

Empathy and cultural understanding of groups that are marginalized due to religious, ethnic or sexual background is essential for peace in schools, neighborhoods, and society at large. Literacy classrooms can be a safe environment in which students can develop their own understandings and empathies. Although worthwhile, much of the research lacks details of student reactions to the people and cultures read about in historical narratives, as well as a focus on pedagogical practices that could give students a deep understanding of the culture. This study analyzed the empathetic responses of 13 sixth grade students to themes presented in a Mexican …

"It's Not Me, It's /U/: An Acoustic Analysis Of Target-Language Immersion's Effect On L1 English Speakers' Spanish Vowel Production" And "Tener: ¿Lo Tenemos Entendido?", Tanner Charles Linton

Theses and Dissertations

Within the field of second language acquisition of phonology, the role of immersion experiences on language learners' pronunciation has recently become a topic of greater interest. While students of a foreign language with study abroad experience (one to six months) have shown relatively little progress in pronunciation gains, language learners group with extended immersion experience—approximately 24 months abroad—have demonstrated more native-like pronunciation. This study compares the pronunciation of L2 Spanish /u/ among native English speakers enrolled in the same third-year Spanish course who belong to two different groups based on the context of their previous language learning: extended immersion in …

Atrición Del Español Como Lengua Materna: Diversidad Y Sofisticación Léxicas, Martha Alexander Walch

Theses and Dissertations

Es natural que la lengua materna de un bilingüe cambie. Sin embargo, si un individuo vive en un contexto donde se habla su segunda lengua como lengua mayoritaria, si usa constantemente su segunda lengua y si el uso de su lengua materna ha disminuido, es muy probable que se vea afectado por la atrición de las habilidades lingüísticas. Esta investigación se concentra en el estudio de la atrición léxica del español como lengua materna. Los participantes son mexicanos adultos con educación universitaria entre los 25 y los 35 años de edad, los participantes del grupo experimental (n=10) inmigraron a los …

Tragicomic Transpositions: The Influence Of Spanish Prose Romance On The Development Of Early Modern English Tragicomedy, Josefina Hardman

Doctoral Dissertations

The critical origin story for early modern English stage tragicomedy has frequently centered around Italian playwright and theorist Giambattista Guarini, who offered a tragicomic model in his play Il pastor fido (The Faithful Shepherd) and in his treatises on the genre. While Guarini’s impact on playwrights such as John Fletcher is undeniable, tragicomic critics have generally ignored the pervasive influence of Miguel de Cervantes’ work on seventeenth-century English playwrights. This project is the first sustained study of the influence of Cervantean prose romance on the development of early modern English tragicomedy. By looking at English tragicomedies with Spanish …

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 …

Continuidad Y Cambio En Los Condicionantes Lingüísticos Y Socio-Demográficos Del Uso Del Pronombre Sujeto En El Español De La Primera Generación En Nueva York, Lorena García-Barroso

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

In situations of bilingualism in the United States, it has been shown that speakers who alter their grammar (syntax or morphology) are mostly second generation, that is, Latinos born in the United States (Flores-Ferrán 2004; Montrul 2004 ; Silva-Corvalán, 1994). Research about Spanish in the US shows that second generation speakers have different features from those of the first generation who are Latinos born in Latin America. However, is it possible that all the speakers of the first generation behave grammatically in the same way due to the fact of being born in Latin America regardless of the amount of …

Arte De Resistencia De Escritoras Latinas En Los Estados Unidos: Magali Alabau Y Carmen Boullosa, Agustin De Jesus

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

In my dissertation, I focus on the literary production of Latina authors, who live and write in the United States. By using the notion of the art of resistance, I explore the works of Magali Alabau, Hemos llegado a Ilión, Volver and Amor faltal, and Carmen Baullosa, Texas. Both writers clash about the discourses linked to segregation. Pondering on their works, I propose to extend the current idea of the art of resistance, associated with political views, to one that opposes all kinds of segregation. In Part I, taking into consideration the debates regarding truth and fiction, …

El Español De Canarias Y La Canariedad En La España Autonómica: Un Estudio Glotopolítico, Pablo Guerra

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

In this dissertation I intend to analyze the abundance of discourses about the Spanish from the Canary Islands from the 1980’s to present day. I have identified two key processes that are part of the consolidation of an autonomous field of reflection on language in the Canary Islands: the development of descriptive studies of the Spanish spoken in the Canary Islands carried out in the Department of Spanish Language at the Universidad de La Laguna (Tenerife) during the first twenty five years of democracy in Spain, as well as the creation of the Canarian Academy of Language in the year …

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 …

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 …

Genre, Representation, And Memory In Spanish Civil War Texts By Women From Spain And The United States, Jennifer Prince

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation seeks to addresses a lacuna in the androcentric Spanish Civil War literary canon by recovering women’s voices writing about the war from the 1930s to the present. It also examines the war stories women tell and how they represent themselves and others when writing about the Spanish Civil War. All of the seven authors examined here write through the lens of some distance—either as American citizens observing the war or as the descendants of the war’s survivors—but each with an intimate connection rooted in biology or ideology. The foundation of this dissertation is close reading and textual analysis …

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 …

A Portfolio Of Lesson Plans For A High School Spanish Classroom With Critical Reflection, Jasmyn Chacko

Honors Capstone Projects - All

This Capstone projects features a portfolio of lesson plans along with assessments of these lesson plans, written by a site supervisor, and journal entries, written personally after teaching the lesson in the classroom. After reviewing and analyzing all of these documents, general reflections were written to show the changes I made over time and to consider what future improvements I commit to make. These general reflections will be supplemented with current research in the field of second language pedagogy and the critique written by my site supervisor. Overall, the goal of this Capstone project is to produce useful materials in …

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 …

Back From Oblivion: Society And Literature In Ventura Ruiz Aguilera’S Ecos Nacionales And Proverbios Ejemplares, Bruce Milton Cole

Doctoral Dissertations

Ventura Ruiz Aguilera (1820-1881) enjoyed great popularity and influence throughout the mid- 19th century in Spain. He was most famous for his book of poems Ecos nacionales (1849), which was inspired by the people. Although he continued to attract attention amongst literary critics, shortly after his death Aguilera’s popularity declined. This investigation explores the representation of society in both Aguilera’s Ecos nacionales and his prose collection Proverbios ejemplares (1864). By reexamining these two texts, I reveal how Aguilera’s works partake in discussions of both literary and social issues with an emphasis on progress and modernity.

When Aguilera published Ecos nacionales …

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 …

Using A Project-Based Language Learning Approach In The High School Spanish Classroom: Perceived Challenges And Benefits, Lisa D. Collier

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis documents the action research study done to investigate the perceived challenges and benefits of a project-based language learning (PBLL) approach in a high school Spanish classroom. The research involved four high school Spanish 3 classes taught by the same teacher. Two classes formed an experimental group and were taught one thematic unit using a PBLL approach, while the other two classes formed the control group and were taught by the same approach that had been used the rest of the year. Two of the objectives of the study were to see how the PBLL approach affected the achievement …

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 …