Spanish and Portuguese Language and Literature Commons^™

Antes Muerta Que Sencilla: Language And The Construction Of Feminine Beauty In The Spanish-Speaking World, Eva Michelle Wheeler

International Journal of the Linguistic Association of the Southwest

Much has been written on the topic of feminine beauty, and existing studies suggest that ideas about beauty are a powerful cultural mirror that reveal what we value as a society and how we are valued by society (e.g., Etcoff 1999; Rhodes 2006; Whitefield-Madrano 2016; Wolf 2002). Despite critical advances made in beauty research, few existing studies in this area explicitly examine the lexicon of beauty as a critical site of analysis (e.g., Démuth et al. 2022; Gladkova 2021; Gladkova & Romero-Trillo 2021; Miller & Stevens 2021; Tayebi 2021; Wong & Or 2021). In the context of Spanish, no existing …

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 …

Ships In Houston, Nadia Villafuerte, Julie Ann Ward

Undiscovered Americas

Ships in Houston by Nadia Villafuerte, translated by Julie Ann Ward, is a harrowing and heartrending collection of fifteen stories that bring to life characters who, though they exist independently from one another, inhabit the same world: Mexico’s southern border. Using acute attention to language, such as various dialects and slang, to create a nuanced and varied mood and setting, Villafuerte’s stories track exotic dancers, sex workers, truck drivers, drug dealers, immigration officials, and even a mayor’s daughter to create compelling fictions rooted in the harsh realities of borderlands that many choose to overlook. While the US’s southern border with …

Times Of Crisis: A Comparative Discourse Analysis Of U.S. And Mexican Presidential Rhetoric, Kassandra Gonzalez-Ramos

LSU Master's Theses

Language is a communicative tool that in the possession of politicians holds the power to be persuasive and aggressive, empowering and uniting, or disruptive and dividing. Previous research has relied on numerous methodological approaches to analyze political discourse from different viewpoints to reveal the manner in which politicians as part of political institutions transform and manipulate language. The current investigation performs a critical discourse analysis (CDA) based on the framework developed by Van Dijk (1993,1997) in order to demonstrate the speech act realization in a total of 14 political speeches delivered by American presidents Biden, Trump, and Obama and Mexican …

Ignacio M. Sánchez Prado, Editor. Mexican Literature As World Literature. Bloomsbury Academic, 2022., Caroline E. Tracey

Studies in 20th & 21st Century Literature

Review of Ignacio M. Sánchez Prado, editor. Mexican Literature as World Literature. Bloomsbury Academic, 2022. 266 pp.

Ya Llegamos | We Are Here, Audrey Hermila Salgado

Senior Projects Spring 2023

ya llegamos | we are here, a Senior Project submitted to The Division of Arts of Bard College, is piece on gender and migration. It is a play that explores how family dynamics, class issues, education, and gender play a role in why people leave their home country. It explores the journey and relationship of Saturnina and Francisco as they travel across the Mexico/U.S. border.

Drugs And Addiction In The Work Of Carlos Velázquez, Brandon Bisbey

World Languages and Cultures Faculty Publications

Coahuilan author Carlos Velázquez is one of the latest in a long line of Mexican writers who have portrayed intoxicated and addicted subjectivities in their country. Velázquez in particular centers addiction as part of a critique of the effects of neoliberal capitalism in northern Mexico. His work politicizes addiction by invoking the importance of social structures in its genesis through grotesque and dark sa?re as well as a self-conscious dialogue with metropolitan cultures that echoes that of much La?n American literature. In this way, his work transcends facile divisions between the “producing” Global South and “consuming” North and lays bare …

Beyond "Viuda De": Practical Approaches To Promoting Mexican Books Printed At Women-Owned Businesses, Taylor Leigh, Colleen Barrett

Library Presentations

Women print shop owners have existed for much longer than most people realize; the first examples in Mexico date to the seventeenth century. Unfortunately, these texts are not always clearly described in a way that is findable beyond searching “viuda de.” Though many title-pages describe their businesses in terms of being a widow of their husband, these business owners deserve credit for their entrepreneurial efforts and should be findable in their own right. This poster would highlight the strategies and steps taken by a Hispanic Studies Librarian and a Rare Books Librarian to better promote these types of works held …

Comparing Spanish L2 Use Of Regional Phonemes After Study Abroad In Spain And Mexico, Katherine R. Lindley

Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports

The present study analyzed the use of regional phonemes by native-English speakers before and after spending a year abroad in either Spain or Mexico. The variables selected were the interdental voiceless fricative [θ] and the uvular voiceless fricative [χ], along with their variations. Semi-structured oral interviews were used to elicit data before their sojourn and at the end of their stay. Results show that many participants used [θ] and [χ] more after spending a year in Spain and participants preferred [s] and [h] after spending a year in Mexico. Data on social networks were collected throughout the study for the …

Science Under The Microscope And Legality On Trial: How Female Authors In Latin America Confront And Challenge The Patriarchal Control Of Science And Legality In The Representation Of Women, Anna Bellum

Spanish and Portuguese ETDs

In this dissertation, I analyze a selection of works by eight Latin American female authors in order to explore how they represent the process of the social construction of women’s identities and roles in the male-dominated social, institutional, familial, and personal spaces that force women into particular positions of subordination. This analysis will focus, in particular, on how women writers represent the hegemonic systems of legality and science in order to highlight their role in the reproduction of values, practices, and institutions that maintain male control and female exploitation.

Each of the authors I analyze addresses the construction of women’s …

Rielle Navitski. Public Spectacles Of Violence: Sensational Cinema And Journalism In Early Twentieth-Century Mexico And Brazil. Duke Up, 2017., Ernesto R. Acevedo-Muñoz

Studies in 20th & 21st Century Literature

Review of Rielle Navitski. Public Spectacles of Violence: Sensational Cinema and Journalism in Early Twentieth-Century Mexico and Brazil. Duke UP, 2017. xiv + 344pp.

Globalization’S Effects On Mexico, Andrew Barry

Williams Honors College, Honors Research Projects

This research paper aims to investigate the effects of economic globalization on the Mexican economy. To contextualize the research presented, a brief historical summary is presented. Economic globalization is examined through trade and foreign investment in México, including Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) and portfolio investment. The Mexican economy is measured by Gross Domestic Product (GDP) and Purchasing Power Parity (PPP). This research paper uses data from The World Bank to examine how economic globalization indicators affect the indicators chosen to measure the Mexican economy. The findings of this paper show that there is evidence that the Mexican economy has grown …

Postcolonial Pandemics And Undead Revolutions: Contagion As Resistance In Con Z De Zombie And Juan De Los Muertos, Sara A. Potter

Alambique. Revista académica de ciencia ficción y fantasía / Jornal acadêmico de ficção científica e fantasía

Argentinian director Alejandro Brugués’s 2011 Cuban-Spanish film Juan de los muertos and Mexican playwright Pedro Valencia’s 2013 play Con Z de zombie spring from similar roots: both initially place the blame for each country’s zombie apocalypse at the feet of the United States. In Brugués’s film, the accusation is clear but never proven: news reports interspersed through the film state that the country is being invaded by “dissidents” paid by the U.S. government, though there is no political or military U.S. presence in the film beyond the symbolic presence of the country’s flag. In Valencia’s Mexico, the cause is entirely …

From Borderlands To Border Islands: Intersections Between Anzaldúa's Chicana Feminist Theory And U.S. Latina Literature From The Hispanic Caribbean, Cristina Gonzalez Martin

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis studies three texts by three U.S. Latina authors from the Hispanic Caribbean through the lens of Chicana feminist border theory. The works analyzed are How the García Girls Lost Their Accents (1991) by Dominican author Julia Alvarez, Dreaming in Cuban (1992) by Cuban-American novelist Cristina García, and the memoir Almost a Woman (1998) by Puerto Rican author Esmeralda Santiago. The theoretical framework used is Gloria Anzaldúa’s Borderlands/La Frontera: The New Mestiza. The objective is to show how these texts manifest the formation of a hybrid, diasporic, in-between identity that corresponds with Anzaldúa’s definition of mestiza consciousness or la …

El Futuro Ya Está Aquí: A Comparative Analysis Of Punk In Spain And Mexico, Rex Richard Wilkins

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis examines the punk genre's evolution into commercial mainstream music in Spain and Mexico. It looks at how this evolution altered both the aesthetic and gesture of the genre. This evolution can be seen by examining four bands that followed similar musical and commercial trajectories. In Spain, Kaka de Luxe and Radio Futura; in Mexico, Size and Ritmo Peligroso. Since punk music's gesture is both visceral and political, various methods of suppressing or containing the punk gesture arise. For both Spain and Mexico, containing the punk gesture was a matter of government censorship in the early years of punk. …

La Reina De Los Carteles: Los Beneficios Y Los Peligros, Emily Monac

Honors Theses

This paper examines the experiences of women in real life and television programs involved with drug cartels in Mexico. For women, life centered on narcotic trade in Mexico may be framed by both terror and abuse. However, there also exists a certain power dynamic achieved by women in positions of power in cartels. These real life women are known as “Las Flacas,” a self-given label that affirms both their reclamation of sexuality and also their acquiescing to a patriarchal society. Narcofiction exists as a new art form of processing and reacting to a life heavily influenced by drug trade in …

La Economía De La Violencia: La Ciudad Juárez Y El Mercado Libre De La Muerte, Kritika Amanjee

Honors Theses

This thesis explores the utilization of human life to further the parallel economies of manufacture and narco-trafficking in Mexico. It begins by recalling the impacts of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) on Mexico’s local economies. Shifts in economic dynamics that resulted from NAFTA internally displaced thousands of impoverished Mexicans, ultimately pushing them into the growing economies of manufacture and narco-trafficking. The manufacture industry and its effects on the common people are examined with a specific focus on Ciudad Juárez, a border city in the state of Chihuahua. The growth of maquiladoras attracted thousands of young women to work, …

La Genara: La Libertad Falsa De La Mujer Elite En México, Emily Sullivan

Honors Theses

The goal of feminism is to ensure the equality of all genders. This goal means that women are supposed to be seen as equal to men in society. However, despite the many feminist efforts to bring this equality into reality, many in the world still believe that women are inferior to men. This belief stems from historical oppression of women that has continued up until modern day times. In Mexico, there is still strong beliefs that exist that prevent women from achieving liberation and freedom in society. Ideas related to traditional family values, machismo, and internalized misogyny all act as …

The Indigenous Archive: Religion And Education In Eighteenth-Century Mexico, Mónica Díaz

Hispanic Studies Faculty Publications

This article argues that eighteenth-century native elites played a significant role in the larger intellectual scene of colonial Mexico by participating in the same debates as their creole and European counterparts. I contend that the documentation produced by native elites related to the indigenous schools (colegios), convents, and seminaries during the eighteenth century provides an important context for understanding the ways in which knowledge circulated between natives, creoles, and Europeans. In addition, when this "indigenous archive" is read in tandem with more traditional historiographical native sources, we can better appreciate the indigenous roots of the dominant narrative of …

Los Códices: An Exhibit Of Illustrated Books From Indigenous Mesoamerica, Jacob S. Neely

Hispanic Studies Student Research

This is an exhibit of facsimile codices housed in the University of Kentucky Libraries Special Collections Research Center.

The exhibit is on display in the Great Hall on the second floor of the Margaret I. King Library at the University of Kentucky from September 17, 2018 to November 9, 2018.

The exhibit is also available online.

Mexican Working-Class Literature, Or The Work Of Literature In Mexico, Eugenio Di Stefano

Foreign Languages and Literature Faculty Publications

Working-class literature has never had a wide audience in Mexico, always overshadowed by other types of literature, such as the novel of the Mexican Revolution, the regionalist novel, and the indigenous novel. Nevertheless, there is no better place, as this chapter will suggest, to consider the status of literature and its relationship to history and ideology than from the genre of work and the worker. Approaching working-class literature as an evolving genre in relation to different modernization projects, this chapter will map out similarities and point to differences between various labor literatures—including proletarian literature in the 1930s, the testimonio (a …

Migration And Injustice In The Neoliberal Era: A Comparative Analysis Of Migratory Laws And Sweatshop Labor Conditions In Argentina And The United States, Kelly L. Johnson

Spanish Honors Papers

In the contemporary neoliberal era, the global phenomenon of migration dominates the international political discourse and generates empirical and normative questions regarding the admission, rights, and realities of migrants who leave their home countries to live elsewhere. Argentina and the United States are countries in which migration was, and continues to be, a main factor in shaping the nation’s identity. Despite the similar migratory phenomenon in both of these countries, their migratory policies vastly differ—Argentina considers migration to be a right, but the United States constantly strengthens its efforts to deter migrants from entering the country. Even though migratory policies …

The Construction Of A Transatlantic Subject: Family And Nation In "Sola" By María José De Chopitea, Valeriya F. Fritz

The Coastal Review: An Online Peer-reviewed Journal

This article explores the articulation of exile identity in the novel Sola by María José de Chopitea published in Mexico in 1954. Until now, critics have approached this text as lacking ideological argument. I propose an alternative reading of the novel as an ideologically charged narrative that articulates the nation beyond state borders and in terms of a transatlantic bond between Mexico and the Spanish Republic. Sola creates space in the nation for Catalan female writers who were previously excluded due to both their gender and their status as political exiles and cultural minorities.

La Representación De La Violencia En México Contemporáneo - The Representation Of Violence In Contemporary Mexico, Taylor Brackett

Honors College

La violencia no es un problema nuevo para México. Incluso antes de que Hernán Cortés y sus hombres pusieron un pie en el país y redujeran el imperio azteca a cenizas, la violencia de la guerra y de sangrientos sacrificios de seres humanos jugaron un rol importante en la sociedad de la región. Desde entonces, el problema de violencia ha seguido creciendo aparentemente sin fin, convirtiéndose en un asunto muy discutido además de un tema examinado por muchos escritores, músicos, y directores mexicanos. En este trabajo, examino la representación de la violencia como tema en tres productos culturales: la literatura, …

Crossing Language Barriers: Using Translation To Bridge Socioeconomic, Cultural, And Gender-Based Gaps, Audrey L. Cannon

Senior Honors Projects, 2010-2019

The purpose of this thesis is to show to process required to translate a previously untranslated work of literature from Spanish to English. After the introduction, it begins with a study of literary translation focusing on John Biguenet and Rainer Schulte’s The Craft of Translation, a compilation of essays by scholars in the field of translation. The thesis includes the English translation of two full chapters of Mexican author Elena Poniatowska’s novel Paseo de la Reforma. Prior to the two chapters is a section outlining specific examples of the research and decisions made during the translation process. The …

Considering Triple Self-Portraiture In The Work Of María Izquierdo, Brooke Lashley

The Quiet Corner Interdisciplinary Journal

This paper looks to María Izquierdo’s paintings, Prisioneras (Prisoners) of 1936 and Sueño y presentimiento (Dream and Premonition) of 1947, as case studies for activating a theory of triple self-portraiture. The theory reflects how plurality arises in the singular or in single significations of the self and disrupts homogeneity in thinking about identities for the self and others within the genre of self-portraiture. In activating a theory of triple self-portraiture, I found three forms of the self in Izquierdo's works: the self as oppressed (the past); the self as oppressing (the current); and the self as an emancipator (future). Although …

Un Cuento Satírico En Medio Del Debate Sobre El Darwinismo En México, Miguel A. Fernández Delgado Mafd

Alambique. Revista académica de ciencia ficción y fantasía / Jornal acadêmico de ficção científica e fantasía

Charles Darwin's theory of biological evolution of species was accepted or rejected by Mexican scientists, including Gabino Barreda, representative of Comte's philosophy. It was also included by Justo Sierra in a history book for the Escuela Nacional Preparatoria, a decision which raised a lot of criticism from conservative groups. It is also discussed the implications of social Darwinism in the early Twentieth Century Mexico. The document we offer is a satire published in those years, which resembles the tone of Swift's Gulliver Travels.

Una Mirada Histórica Y Cultural Del Movimiento Lgbttti Mexicano, Juan Carlos Rocha Osornio

Juan Carlos Rocha Osornio, Ph.D

No abstract provided.

Pégame Pero No Me Dejes: La Disputa Entre El Espacio Buga Y El Gay En Quizás No Entendí (1997) De Gerardo Guiza Lemus, Juan Carlos Rocha Osornio

Juan Carlos Rocha Osornio, Ph.D

Relocating The Cowboy: American Privilege In "All The Pretty Horses", Maia Y. Rodriguez

Global Tides

American novelist Cormac McCarthy published the first installment of his Border Trilogy, a novel entitled All The Pretty Horses, only a decade before the turn of the 21st century. Within a few months, essays by Alan Cheuse and Vereen M. Bell would set the tone for scholarship on McCarthy's work for the decade to follow. However, in 2012 Jordan Savage revolutionized the conversation on the concept of "border" within the Border Trilogy, identifying it as an ideological myth. This paper will further Savage’s analysis using Jacques Derrida’s Deconstructionist theory in order to analyze the binaries created by the border …