Latin American Literature Commons^™

Juan Bautista Aguirre (1725-1786) Y Los Orígenes De La Nación Ecuatoriana, Alex Paul Lima

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

The purpose of this study is to demonstrate how mid-eighteenth century notions of patria, nación, and Nuestra América predate latter nation-building constructs, particularly at the turn of the 19th century. Benedict Anderson's (1991) assertion that Spanish-American Creoles attained a sense of belonging to an "imagined community", towards the end of the 18thcentury,fails to take into account the limitations of print capitalism due to extremely low literacy rates and rare access to the printing press. This dissertation focuses on the life and work of Jesuit poet, orator, and philosopher Juan Bautista Aguirre (Daule [Ecuador], 1725-Tivoli [Italy], 1786). His poems and sermons, …

The Ties That Bind: Gender, Race, And Empire In Caribbean Indenture Narratives, Alison Joan Klein

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation traces the ways that oppressive gender roles and racial tensions in the Caribbean today developed out of the British imperial system of indentured labor. Between 1837 and 1920, after slavery was abolished in the British colonies and before most colonies achieved independence, approximately 750,000 laborers, primarily from India and China, traveled to the Caribbean under indenture. This is a critical but under-explored aspect of colonial history, as this immigration dramatically altered the ethnic make up of the Caribbean, the cultural norms and traditions of those who migrated, and the structure of British imperialism. I focus on depictions of …

The Literary Representations And Interpretations Of La Matanza, Roxana Zuniga

Wayne State University Dissertations

This dissertation examines the literary representations and interpretations of La Matanza, a Salvadoran massacre that occurred in 1932. A peasant-led uprising resulted in the assassination of thousands of campesinos and indigenous people by General Maximiliano Hernández Martínez's repressive military regime. As a result of government repression and censorship, the events surrounding La Matanza were intentionally omitted from Salvadoran history for many decades. Despite these censorship efforts, writers like Roque Dalton, Claribel Alegría, Salarrué and Manlio Argueta defied authoritarian government repression and incorporated the events of La Matanza into their writing. The literary texts that this dissertation analyzes are: Salarrué's "Mi …

The Role Of Nostalgia In The Literature Of The Caribbean Diasporas – Linking Memory, Globalization And Homemaking, Lukasz Dominik Pawelek

Wayne State University Dissertations

My dissertation, The Role of Nostalgia in the Literature of the Caribbean Diasporas – Linking Memory, Globalization and Homemaking, investigates diverse manifestations of nostalgia in the literature of Puerto Rican, Cuban, and Dominican diasporas. My study offers a comparative analysis of Esmeralda Santiago’s Cuando era puertorriqueña (1994), Gustavo Pérez Firmat’s Next Year in Cuba (1995), and Junot Díaz’s The Brief and Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao (2008).

My approach to the notion of nostalgia as a syndrome of globalization offers a valuable contribution to the Caribbean diasporic narrative and by extension to the canon of the U.S. Latino/a Literature. The …

Review Of Spanish New York Narratives 1898–1936: Modernization, Otherness And Nation, By David Miranda-Barreiro, Iker González-Allende

Spanish Language and Literature Papers

This book analyzes the representation of New York City in the Spanish narrative during the first three decades of the twentieth century. Miranda-Barreiro argues that New York emerges in this literature as a symbol of modernity, as an image of Otherness and a threat to Spanish values and society. The author connects this reaction with the crisis of Spanish national identity triggered by the end of the Empire in 1898, but he also points out that the Spanish case was not isolated, since European texts show similar anxieties about US modernization. One positive aspect of the book is the study …

Espacios Literarios: Textos Y Contextos En La Escritura De Beatriz Sarlo Y Ricardo Piglia, Paula Oliva- Fiori

Wayne State University Dissertations

El propósito del presente trabajo es acercar la obra de Beatriz Sarlo y Ricardo Piglia en un análisis de contrastes y variaciones a partir de los núcleos que forman la política y la ficción dentro de las tradiciones literarias argentinas y la experiencia de la literatura como espacio de resistencia y debate. Para ello, analizo el contexto generacional de ambos autores -y su participación en la dirección de dos revistas emblemáticas de los años setenta del siglo pasado: Los libros y Punto de vista-, la relectura crítica que formulan del canon literario argentino y la presencia de la ciudad de …

A Monastery For The Revolution: Ernesto Cardenal, Thomas Merton, And The Paradox Of Violence In Nicaragua, 1957-1979, Brendan Jordan

Undergraduate Theses, Professional Papers, and Capstone Artifacts

In 1957, a young Nicaraguan poet named Ernesto Cardenal, recently graduated from Columbia University, entered the Trappist Abbey of Gethsemani, located outside Louisville, Kentucky. There he met a prominent Catholic thinker and pacifist, Thomas Merton, who soon mentored young Cardenal. Though Cardenal departed Gethsemani in 1959, Merton continued to counsel him in spirituality, poetry, and social activism until Merton’s death in 1968. While Cardenal during these earlier years was a committed pacifist, his experiences after returning to Nicaragua in 1965 radically altered his view of social action. Cardenal established a semi-monastic community in the Solentiname islands in southern Nicaragua, and …

For The Love Of Robots: Posthumanism In Latin American Science Fiction Between 1960-1999, Grace A. Martin

Theses and Dissertations--Hispanic Studies

Posthumanism—understood as a symbiotic relationship between humans and technology—is quickly and surely becoming an inextricable part of daily life. In an era where technology can be worn as an extension of—and an enhancement to—our bodies, traditional science fiction tropes such as robots and cyborgs resurface and reformulate questions on critical aspects of human experience: who are we and what do our (imagined) technologies say about our world? Such questions are far more complex than they appear. Their answers should not come from one source alone, as humanness is experienced differently across time and cultural systems. In this sense, it is …

Largo Viaje En Breve. La Minificción De Max Aub, María Luisa Elío Y José De La Colina En El Exilio, Gonzalo Hernández-Baptista

Theses and Dissertations--Hispanic Studies

A pesar del interés que suscita, la minificción del exilio republicano español en México ha sido mayormente ignorada por la crítica y, cuando se ha reparado en ella, su acercamiento descontextualizado ha provocado inexactitudes que se reflejan en el canon minificcional propuesto para la Península. Por ello, examino algunas vías de contacto entre el exterior y el interior de España y propongo una primera aproximación a un corpus de autores en exilio, entre los que destacan Max Aub, María Luisa Elío y José de la Colina.

Además, el estudio de estos tres autores revela una minificción que no está ubicada …

Las Etapas De Transformación De La Figura Femenina En El Exilio En Primavera Con Una Esquina Rota, "Geografías" Y "Como Greenwich" De Mario Benedetti, Maria Liliana Labrador Morales

All Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Other Capstone Projects

During the decade of the 1970's in South America, people saw the governments become overrun by dictatorships. These dictatorships destroyed the fabric of democracy. The horror of these new politics brought destroyed men and women in many different ways. These policies included such things as torture, censorship, impositions of patriarchal ideas, exile, and even included imprisonment and disappearance.

The purpose of this study is to analyze the importance of the stages of transformation of women in the works of Mario Benedetti and how these stages reflect on the process of adaptation to exile. This analysis centers on four characters who …

Punto Ciego, Adelmar Alvin Ramirez

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

Ciudad Juarez, another type of history shown through newspaper articles and headlines, going against the stereotypical values of violence and feminicides.

“Man? Where’S A Man? Don’T Let Him Go!”: Molina’S Trans/Gender Web In Interpretation And Performance, Bella V. Smith

Calvert Undergraduate Research Awards

Using perspectives typical of English and theatrical fields of study, this capstone project interprets Molina from Manuel Puig’s 1976 novel Kiss of the Spider Woman as a heterosexual transgender woman and then investigates why such an interpretation does not exist in performance adaptations. Although Molina has been called a transgender woman in recent criticism, there is a conflation of gender and sexuality that has been uninvestigated in this text. It has not been addressed how Molina constructs her identity or how this interpretation might be employed in performance, which this essay seeks to confront. The first half of the project …

Una Disciplina De Guerra: Henríquez Ureña Y El Latinoamericanismo, Fernando Degiovanni

Publications and Research

Este trabajo examina el lugar de Pedro Henríquez Ureña en la construcción del campo académico del Latinoamericanismo a partir de la consideración de las variables que intervinieron en su nombramiento como catedrático Norton de la Universidad de Harvard a comienzos de la Segunda Guerra Mundial. El análisis de fuentes nunca antes exploradas por la crítica –conferencias universitarias, discursos públicos, cobertura periodística y correspondencia personal– ofrece un nuevo punto de vista sobre el rol de Henríquez Ureña en la consolidación de la política del Buen Vecino. Palabras clave: Latinoamericanismo, Hispanismo, industrias culturales, derechos civiles, democracia, Pedro Henríquez Ureña.

Perspectivas Dialógicas En Colección Privada De Ramón Cote, Diego Fernando Burgos-Gomez

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

Este trabajo ofrece un acercamiento crítico al libro Colección privada (2003) del poeta colombiano Ramón Cote Baraibar. Partiendo de la propuesta del propio Cote, quien pide en la “Entrada” de su libro que se lo acepte como una sala de exhibición donde los poemas son equivalentes a las obras de arte, propongo una aproximación desde dos perspectivas dialógicas: una interna y otra externa. Estas perspectivas dependen básicamente de la distancia que existe entre el hablante con su objeto y con su interlocutor. Para este acercamiento he elegido un corpus de cuatro poemas que representan diferentes modalidades de estas dos perspectivas …

La Manzana Mordida: Sexo Y Religión En El Cine De Luis Buñuel, Micaela Downey

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

La extensa y variada obra fílmica de Luis Buñuel permite observar la repetición obsesiva de motivos, imágenes y objetos que constituyen lo que podría denominarse el universo personal de Buñuel. La proliferación de zapatos, pies, cajas misteriosas y armas de fuego (sin olvidar los tambores de Calanda, los insectos y las gallinas) ha atraído la atención de la crítica convirtiéndolos en objetos detallados de análisis. Este ensayo no intenta proponer una “obsesión” más, sino reparar en un motivo que, a pesar de su recurrencia (y, por lo tanto, de su importancia) ha pasado inadvertido: la reescritura de la historia bíblica …

Politics Of Writing: Latin American Testimonio, Brazil's Literatura Marginal And The Question Of Neoliberalism, Ana Maria Todescan Young

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

In the light of Latin American testimonio theoretical approach, which includes questions such as the cultural production under the intensification of neoliberal policies and the inquiry of the complicity between literary practices and the state as formulated by Rama in The Lettered City, this study examines the novel Capão Pecado, representative work of the writer and cultural activist Ferréz, and the potential relation to the formal elements of the former criticism. By thinking alongside John Beverley's case study on I, Rigoberta Menchú's testimonial narrative and Ferréz, prominent author of the contemporary production of literatura marginal and representative of the expression …

Historias Mínimas. Los Caminos De La Ciencia Ficción En La Historieta Argentina Contemporánea, Lucas Berone

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

El presente trabajo parte de la distinción entre mundos ficcionales realistas y mundos ficcionales fantásticos; y presenta y aborda contrastivamente, luego, un corpus de historietas de ciencia ficción recientemente producidas y publicadas en Argentina, a partir de dos ejes de análisis (las formas de la imaginación acerca de los vínculos entre el hombre y la tecnología y la construcción narrativa de sociedades utópicas o futuras), preguntándose fundamentalmente por las posibilidades que tienen dichas historietas de significar lo nuevo en el seno de una cultura periférica de Occidente.

La Revolución Zombificada. La Alegoría Del Trauma Cubano En Juan De Los Muertos, De Alejandro Brugués, Antonio Cardentey Levin

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

A partir del concepto “momento alegórico”, de Adam Lowenstein, me he planteado analizar críticamente la alegoría sociopolítica latente en la comedia Juan de los Muertos(2010), del cubano Alejandro Brugués, en relación dialógica con la zombificación y sus implicaciones argumentales. Siguiendo algunas de las ideas del Manifiesto Zombi, de Sarah Juliet Lauro y Karen Embry, advierto una construcción psicoanalítica del inmovilismo nacional en el contexto de la llamada Primavera Árabe, en el cual se rodó la película. A mi modo de ver, la figura del zombi constituye aquí una variante del tema del doble, en la medida en que alude …

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.

Neviditelné Násilí. Politické Násilí V Hispanoamerické Literatuře, Claudia García, Karina Elizabeth Vázquez

Latin American, Latino and Iberian Studies Faculty Publications

V období mezi lety 1950 a 1980 země v různých částech Latinské Ameriky zaznamenaly nebývale dramatický společenskopolitický vývoj, jehož důležitým mezníkem byla kubánská revoluce. Tato skutečnost se odrazila i v oblasti kultury. Na levicově orientované politické scéně vládlo přesvědčení o nevyhnutelnosti ozbrojeného boje za lepší společnost, přičemž klíčová úloha se přisuzovala cheguevarovské doktrině „nového člověka“. Tímto směrem se obraceli především ti, kteří ve své zemi chtěli svrhnout vládnoucí diktaturu a kořeny četných problémů tehdejší společnosti spatřovali především v sociální nerovnosti. Celou Latinskou Ameriku zachvátily revoluční myšlenky.