Arts and Humanities Commons^™

"Un Pedacito De Nuestro Pais": Salvadoran Rootedness In Central Los Angeles, Ericka Arias

Latin American Studies ETDs

How has the Salvadoran Market contributed to a sense of cultural rootedness in Central Los Angeles? This thesis project examines the ways in which an informalized street vendor market has employed Latino Urbanism and Placemaking practices to foster a sense of cultural rootedness and belonging for the local Salvadoran community. Through community- based approaches and analysis, this thesis addresses the sociocultural importance of street vendors for immigrant communities and analyzes the ways in which this Salvadoran market facilitates placemaking practices that (re)unite Salvadorans with their cultural roots. This research contributes to subfields of Latino Urbanism and Informality, within Urban Studies, …

Bloody Rationality: The Dialectic Of Modern Reason And Sacrifice In Hegel, Adorno, And Horkheimer, Cara S. Greene

Philosophy ETDs

In my dissertation, I argue that Hegel, Adorno, and Horkheimer develop theories of modern sacrifice grounded in their critiques of modern reason—what Hegel calls “the Understanding” and Adorno and Horkheimer call “instrumental reason.” I contend that these thinkers recognize the process of rational cognition, which abstracts conceptual data from empirical reality and establishes the dominance of the universal over particular phenomena, as a sacrificial process—a view supported by their routine description of this process using the language of violence and death. However, this sacrificial conception of modern reason isn’t metaphorical: when read alongside their analyses of discursive cunning, an instrumental …

The Haunting Aesthetics Of Empire: Filipinx America, Us Empire, And Cultural Production, Alana J. Bock

American Studies ETDs

Throughout this dissertation, I argue that US imperial knowledge production affirms US exceptionalism by disavowing the imperial violence wrought on the Philippines and its people. This disavowal not only renders the Philippines and Filipinx bodies illegible, but also haunts the Filipinx American diaspora. I argue that the haunted logics of empire are a set of relations, rather than specters of specific times and places, in which knowledge and power work together to continually produce and reproduce a specific and limiting reality and sensorium through which to view the world. In my interrogation of empire’s haunted logics, I not only look …

Witchy Politics: Witches And Witchcraft As Political Tropes From Malleus Malleficarum (1487) To Les Sorcières De La République (2016) And The Mercies (2020), Mallaury Joëlle Marie Gauthier

Foreign Languages & Literatures ETDs

The focus of this thesis are two recent novels featuring witches: Chloé Delaume’s Les Sorcières de la République(The Witches of the Republic, 2016) and Kiran Millwood Hargrave’s The Mercies (2020). The first is a futuristic dystopia set in 2062, during the witch trial of the Sibyl of Cumae. The second is a work of historical fiction based on witch trial records and set in seventeenth-century Finnmark (Norway). Both are feminist novels, and both emphasize the political valence of the witch as a gendered figure. This figure emerged from the misogyny of early modern demonology but acquired its contemporary contours …

Paradigms And Logical Morphology In Wittgenstein’S Philosophy, Idris Robinson

Philosophy ETDs

This dissertation investigates the notion of a paradigm and its related morphological method through the lens of the philosophy of Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889–1951). At once exegetical and philosophical, it is a project that aims to trace the progression of Wittgenstein’s thought, from his early to his mature phase, in order to arrive at a twofold conclusion regarding the ontological status of paradigms and a closely related approach to logic grounded in morphology.

Digitally Rural: Identifying How Technological Inequity Impacts Rural Students In First-Year Writing Courses, Jo Anna M. Nevada

English Language and Literature ETDs

To teach composition in this era means to engage students with technology; it is all but an unspoken requirement at the majority of universities. This dissertation theorizes, however, that the imbricated use of technology in first-year writing (FYW) classrooms places rural students at an inherent disadvantage, with issues of inadequate technological proficiency and inconsistent access causing a substantial learning disparity between this student population and their urban peers. Through mixed-methods data analysis of student survey responses and final FYW course portfolios, this study reveals that the expectation of technological access and presumption of digital literacy is detrimental to rural student …

Long In The Tooth: The Commodification Of Teeth, Land, And Character; Resistance To British Oral Culture In Nineteenth-Century Britain, Ireland, And The Americas 1770-1900, Emma B. Mincks

English Language and Literature ETDs

This dissertation is about teeth- rather, how they are portrayed in British colonial discourses of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century and their development as a commodified material object associated with purity, lands, and visceral emotionality. What do teeth specifically, and orality more generally, mean to eighteenth and nineteenth-century readers in relation to the logics of white possession? How did objectified subjects react to and respond to the affective tension created by this objectification? Teeth are represented in relation to feminine purity throughout British writing from at least the 1600’s. However, between 1770-1900, teeth gain additional cultural meanings, most …

Resistance Narratives: Storytelling Of Transnational Insurgencies In 1960-70s Us And Mexico, Tania Libertad Balderas

English Language and Literature ETDs

Resistance Narratives: Storytelling of Transnational Insurgencies in 1960-70s US and Mexico emphasizes how the narratives from the Mexican Insurgency, the American Indian Movement (AIM), and the leftist faction of the Chicana/o Movement in the 1960s and 1970s articulate intersecting notions of resistance, liberation, and transnational solidarity. The comparative analysis of the testimonial novel Las mujeres del alba (2019) by Chihuahuan novelist Carlos Montemayor, the autobiographies Lakota Woman (1991) and Ohitika Woman (1993) by Sičháŋǧu Lakȟóta writer and AIM militant Mary Brave Bird (formerly Crow Dog), and the memoirs and plays by the San Diego-based group Teatro de las Chicanas, collected …

Ayllus And Haciendas: Social Reproduction Of Community And Reciprocity In Nineteenth Century Ecuador, Laura Powell

History ETDs

This dissertation argues that indigenous peons of nineteenth-century Ecuador maintained ayllu practices of community and reciprocity through the reconfiguration of kinships networks and the reinterpretation of reciprocity within the context of the hacienda system. This argument challenges prevalent beliefs that indigenous networks of kinship and reciprocity largely dissolved with the rise of the hacienda system and the oppressive exploitation of the institution of debt peonage known as concertaje. However, a close reading of the hacienda records shows that, first, indigenous peons used their ability to accrue debt in order to build and maintain communities of both real and fictive kinship …

Slavery And Architecture Across The Mediterranean, John Behnken

History ETDs

Enslaved people as architectural material, found in the cultural examples of the Great Mosque of Cordoba and the Hagia Sophia, provide a lens from which scholars can re-envision the historical narrative. The scholarship surrounding the development and transition of the Great Mosque of Cordoba from a mosque to a church, elicits new research into what medieval people thought about race, race-making, and cultural ownership. The conceptions of race are evident through the medieval paradigms of enslavement. Who could and could not become enslaved establish social, cultural, and phenotypic classifications which in turn become race. The work of scholars such as …

“That Felt Weird”: International Graduate Students’ Emerging Critical Awareness Of Their Experiences With Microaggression, Romaisha Rahman

Language, Literacy, and Sociocultural Studies ETDs

The purpose of this phenomenological study was to uncover and understand international graduate students’ experiences with microaggressions that stem from native speaker fallacy; microaggressions are the subtle discriminatory behaviors executed toward marginalized groups and native speaker fallacy is the false belief that only some “native” English speakers are effective teachers and users of the language. Put simply, this research aimed at unveiling the subtle language-based discriminations that international graduate students experience in their day-to-day lives in U.S. educational settings. To collect data for the study, the Critical Incident Technique (CIT) was utilized. CIT is a method that allows the …

Sociolinguistics Of Saudi Vision 2030: Paradigm Shift Through English Faculty’S Perspectives Of Translanguaging At A Saudi University., Naif Masrahi

Language, Literacy, and Sociocultural Studies ETDs

Many educational systems around the world insist on applying an English Only Policy (EOP) when teaching the English language at universities without addressing their contextual needs. In Saudi Arabia, this problem leads to reduced satisfaction among faculty regarding students’ English level (Alharbi & Alqefari, 2022; Alkhairy, 2013; Alqahtani, 2020; Alsaawi, 2019; Alshammari, 2022; Altale & Alta’ani, 2019; Alzahrani, 2019; Elyas & Picard, 2010). However, the new educational transformation promised by Saudi Vision 2030 (2016) supports the Arabic language as a mother tongue for Saudis, English as an important language, and the teaching of critical thinking to respond to current global …

Queer Crises: Movements From Queerness And Feelings Of White Religion In The United States, Austin Williams Miller

Communication ETDs

Anchored by contemporary crises surrounding queer and trans people in the United States, I employ movements from queerness within an affective queer phenomenological framework to understand how arrangements of “white religion” (Schaefer, 2015, p. 63), a process whereby U.S. American Christian forms escape ideology into religious affective economies in the United States, relegate queer people “to the background… to sustain a certain direction” (Ahmed, 2006, p. 31). I assemble a queer rhetorical context analyzing white religious space in documentary film, secular sexual regulation through contemporary U.S. legal contexts around marriage, and settler colonial Christian nationalist political imaginations to critique how …

Returning To Northern New Mexico. A Study Of The Nuevomexicano Lexicon., Guevara Del Angel

Spanish and Portuguese ETDs

Spanish in New Mexico prior to the 1900s was the predominant language of the region that began to be displaced with the growth of the English-speaking population during the 20th century. In this dissertation I refer to the Spanish language variety that has had the longest historical presence in northern New Mexico and Southern Colorado as Traditional New Mexican Spanish (TNMS, as per Bills & Vigil, 2008). This study aims to document aspects of maintenance and change regarding TNMS. The traditional heritage variety of New Mexican Spanish is changing in many ways, evolving from what has been documented in the …

Tragic Fate And History In Thomas Hardy's "The Return Of The Native", Tristan Pageze

Foreign Languages & Literatures ETDs

This thesis explores the operation of the tragic in Thomas Hardy’s The Return of the Native by taking as a starting point the formalist approach to the genre of tragedy, before extending its definition to encompass the key concept of tragic conflict. This thesis argues that Hardy’s tragic vision takes for object human history, and especially the effects of new, unveiled knowledge on the human psyche, thus locating the root cause of tragedy in these contingencies. This continuum between individual action and the larger historical causes that shape it is expressed via the narrator’s discourse, and the discrepancy between his …

Cinematic Camouflage, Jared Valdez

English Language and Literature ETDs

There is a war for recognition happening on the Hollywood battlefield. Traditionally, in every war there is an enemy and an alley; in this study, the enemy is systemic racism, and the alley is Black culture. That is, this dissertation seeks to detail the past, present, and future implications of this battle for truth, inclusion, and recognition in American pop culture. This discussion examines how various multi-media forms like literature, film, television, and comic books work as tools to combat racism in American society. More importantly, the theories presented in this text are all linked to actual tactics of military …

Composition Portfolio, Gabriel I. Gonzales

Music ETDs

This composition portfolio consists of a series of works written during my master’s program at the University of New Mexico. Each chapter in this collection includes a brief description of its corresponding piece. The compositions featured in this portfolio are: Axaxaxas Mlö (2020), for live bass with fixed audio accompaniment; Conflagrations (2020), for fixed audio-visual media; Fumiko/Yukio, Mov. I (2021), for six voices, Preliminary Materials for a Piece About a Drum (2021), for live bodhran with fixed audio accompaniment and sound-processing; Everyday War, Pt. 1 (2022) for fixed audio, and Everyday War, Pt. 2 (2023) for live found percussion with …

"It Was Really Up To Us": The History Of The Black Berets Of Albuquerque In The Chicana/O Movement Of New Mexico, Jerome J. Chavez

Chicana and Chicano Studies ETDs

This study examines the history of the Black Berets of Albuquerque and their role in the Chicana/o Movement of New Mexico. The Black Berets of Albuquerque were part of a trend in the Civil Rights and Chicana/o Movement era that saw militant youth-based community groups in urban areas form in response to racial discrimination, poverty, educational and health disparities, and police brutality. The issues the Black Berets formed to confront were based on the unique urbanization process that Albuquerque went through that created political and economic disempowerment for the Chicana/o people but made the city a major site for Chicana/o …

Polyscopic Spectatorship, Creative Cartography, And Post-Cinematic Refractions In The Age Of Neo-Liberal Travel: An Investigation Of Youtube Travel-Vloggers, Niko T. Doezema

Foreign Languages & Literatures ETDs

One of the most popular forms of travel “literature” consumed today is the travel-vlog. YouTube is awash in these travelers, the most successful of which even make a career out of their travels through monetization of their content, allowing them to pay for traveling by traveling. My project is a three-fold investigation into the nature of this genre, the first two branches of which are genealogical and diagnostic, the third of which is speculative and potentially transformative. My first inquiry examines the historical and generic conditions at the crossroads of travel literature and empire that have led to the present …

“Great Excitement”: Violent Incorporations Of The American Southwest, Joseph Hall-Patton

History ETDs

This dissertation studies various incidents of violence throughout the Southwest from 1848-1919, often called “great excitement,” revealing a “Western Civil War of Incorporation.” US incorporation designated whether people would be included or excluded from the American body politic. Violence in the Southwest between the mid-nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries exposes deep change fueled by a relentless US drive to swallow and digest its people and resources, profiting handsomely in the process. Each chapter is a case study, culminating in a conclusion that ties them together to gain a greater understanding of American violence. They are the 1858 San Luis Obispo vigilantes, …

From Peer Review To Peer Conference: Increasing Collaboration In Asynchronous And Synchronous Computer-Mediated Modes In A Technical And Professional Communication Class, Sofia Tarabrina

English Language and Literature ETDs

The purpose of this study was to investigate the influence of different modes of peer review on students' interactions through a mixed-methods case study. The researcher recruited six students and conducted three peer review sessions in the asynchronous anonymous, asynchronous identifiable, and synchronous mode. The data sources were student pre- and post-peer review drafts, peer review comments, and the researcher's observations of student interactions. The data analysis included transcribing, coding, enumeration, classification, ethnographic analysis, and comparison.

The data analysis showed that tension in peer review interactions that might have caused dissatisfaction in students could be reduced if students performed more …

Challenging The "Unexceptional": Marguerite Of Provence, Thirteenth-Century Queenship, And Power, Katie Despeaux

History ETDs

Marguerite of Provence, wife to Saint Louis IX of France, has long been overlooked or negatively characterized by historians. Due to the unique circumstances of her mother-in-law’s political reach and her sister’s role as queen of England, Marguerite was limited by her husband and his court in her access to power. Traditionally understood as a passive queen, Marguerite’s expression of power through motherhood, curated images, and emotional performance can be better understood through Theresa Earenfight’s paradigm of gender and power. In a series of comparisons between Marguerite and her mother-in-law, sister, and Egyptian counterpart during the Seventh Crusade, Marguerite’s role …

Marie De France And The Wife Of Bisclavret: A New Understanding, Katie Despeaux

Foreign Languages & Literatures ETDs

Marie de France’s werewolf lai, Bisclavret, was met with immediate and long-lasting fascination, replication, and criticism. As part of what Caroline Walker Bynum calls “the werewolf renaissance,” the story breaks with traditional understandings of werewolves: Bisclavret is not the villain of the story but presents instead as a sympathetic character, victimized by his wife’s collaboration with another man who steals his clothes and prevents him from regaining his human form.

Modern scholarship generally falls within two opposite camps: those for whom the wife is disloyal to her husband; and those for whom Marie herself was disloyal to her gender. …

Smokebox: Writing Into Embarrassment, Julia Storch

Theatre & Dance ETDs

Engaging with theoretical concepts and dramaturgical tools, this essay follows my journey through The Dramatic Writing MFA program at the University of New Mexico, focusing on the production of my thesis play, Smokebox. In Part I, I give the background and development of my journey as a playwright, exploring the obstacles I faced and overcame through my engagement with coursework and staged readings. I map out the development of Smokebox, from its humble beginnings as a class assignment, to its transformation through workshop, and finally its realization through an intense rehearsal and production process. In Part II, I …

Aging And Learning: Community Engagemente And Self-Efficacy In L2 Teaching To Elderly Learners, Leticia Rinaldi Souza

Spanish and Portuguese ETDs

The elderly population (60 years or older) has been increasing during the past decades around the world and is expected to reach two billion by 2050 (Scult, Haime, et al 2015). However, the misconception that elderly people are uncapable, or incompetent is still part of the imaginary constructed around such populations (Minichiello and Coulson, 2005). Older adults present powerful functional capacities and social activities lead to better performance and slower decreases in their memory and executive function (Scott, Masser, & Pachana, 2020). Thus, second language learning plays an effective role in enabling active and regular engagement in social and psychological …

The Manito Topos Project: Place Naming And Toponymic Silencing In The Sierras Of Northern Nuevo México And Southern Colorado, Len N. Beké

Spanish and Portuguese ETDs

This dissertation reports on documentary research on vernacular toponymies in Manito communities in Nuevo México and Colorado. These toponymies are erased, obscured and delegitimized in official maps. Within the study area, vernacular antecedents for 49.5% of official names for natural features were documented, along with 280 previously unmapped names. These data were compared to the state-sanctioned toponymy to determine a typology of linguistic mechanisms of toponymic silencing. While a majority of official toponyms are based on Manito oral tradition, only 15.4% of the labels for natural features represent unaltered versions of names in that tradition. This dissertation theorizes the conceptual …

Cautividad: Deconstructing Notions Of Race And Nation In Argentina 1776–1840, Whitney Rue Wagner

Latin American Studies ETDs

This project is an exploration of the construction and contestation of whiteness in Argentina through the lens of women’s captivity in the middle period. This research explores how representations of captive women were used to construct a national identity via gender, race, and ethnicity, exploring some of the foundational work that would lead to the myth of Argentina as a white nation. By focusing on the various roles these captive women played and centering the complex liminal spaces they negotiated this work seeks to challenge elite historical representations of captive women by highlighting their nuanced socio-political role amongst Indigenous, specifically …

Eco-Anxiety And Heteronormativity In Dystopian Novels, Léa M. Briere

Foreign Languages & Literatures ETDs

For marginalized communities, such as women and queer individuals, survival in their environment has always been a matter of adapting to social norms and expectations. However, the challenges have become even more complex in the face of climate change and environmental catastrophes, which often affect these communities disproportionately. While modern dystopian stories often evoke eco-anxiety by portraying societies at the mercy of their environment, Michelle Tea and Wendy Delorme have found an opportunity to break free from societal norms and heteronormative expectations in the speculative worlds they create in Black Wave (2015) and Viendra le temps du feu (2021), respectively. …

The Intersection Of Racism And Ableism In Disability Support Services, Carrie E. Mulderink

Communication ETDs

The websites of disability resource centers at six universities are used in a discourse analysis to forefront ways in which the Whiteness of disability is upheld. The main research question, built using a DisCrit (Disability/Critical Race theory) lens, is: how do the institutional discourses of disability resource centers reproduce or challenge particular identities for college students with disabilities? The research sub-question explored in this dissertation that built off of this wider scope is: how are the politics of intersectionality addressed in such discourses? Then, in the second analysis chapter, two more analytical categories are discussed that were generated from my …

A Medieval Pirate's Life: The Role Of Piracy In Medieval Life Versus Its Role In Modern Historiography, Leah Lam

History ETDs

Medieval piracy is a mysterious phenomenon that is interwoven within the politics, culture, economic histories of the Middle Ages. Its presence throughout the Middle Ages is not questioned, yet it is rarely researched thoroughly. The subject of medieval piracy falls prey to the biases and assumptions that modern historians carry towards piracy as a whole, making the subject be under researched and improperly utilized. In this thesis, I will be highlighting the role that piracy played in medieval life and the way that modern historiography has neglected it. To do so thoroughly, I have pulled examples from different times, regions, …