Latin American Languages and Societies Commons^™

Segunda Parte De La Historia General Llamada Índica (1572) De Pedro Sarmiento De Gamboa. Estudio Y Edición Anotada., Aleksín H. Ortega

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Pedro Sarmiento de Gamboa’s History of the Incas (1572). A Critical Study and Annotated Edition.

by Aleksín H. Ortega

Pedro Sarmiento de Gamboa wrote his polemic and undoubtedly political History of the Incas at the request of Francisco de Toledo (Viceroy of Peru, 1569-1581). Toledo wanted to deliver to the Spanish King a version of Incan history which could subsequently be used as an ideological tool in the search of legal and moral arguments to defend the Andean colonization by the Spanish monarchy. Since his arrival to the Peruvian territories, Toledo embarked on a long personal visit to …

Contesting Representations Of Gender And Womanhood In Mexico The Photomontages Of Lola Álvarez Bravo, 1935–1958, Alana Hernandez

Theses and Dissertations

Lola Álvarez Bravo (1903–1993), a Mexican photographer, photojournalist, portraitist, and teacher created approximately thirty photomontages during the span of her fifty-year career. This thesis argues that Álvarez Bravo turned to photomontage during targeted periods of her career in order to contest and challenge prevailing discourses on motherhood and femininity. A close analysis of eight photomontages produced between 1935 to the last printed in 1958 make evident the manifold ways Álvarez Bravo represented gender as a contested, political, and personal concern.

Exhibit Curriculum For El Músico Y El Pintor/The Musician And The Painter: Lesson Outline (1 Of 2), Sarah Aponte, Dania Diaz

Open Educational Resources

With the use of primary source materials from the Dominican Archives collection housed at the CUNY Dominican Studies Institute, students at the middle and high school level will learn about two Dominican artists who made an enormous contribution to the world of music and art in the early twentieth century.

Exhibit Curriculum For El Músico Y El Pintor/The Musician And The Painter: Lesson Outline (2 Of 2), Sarah Aponte, Dania Diaz

Open Educational Resources

With the use of primary source materials from the Dominican Archives collection housed at the CUNY Dominican Studies Institute, students at the middle and high school level will learn about two Dominican artists who made an enormous contribution to the world of music and art in the early twentieth century.

Exhibit Curriculum For El Músico Y El Pintor/The Musician And The Painter: Lesson Overview, Sarah Aponte, Dania Diaz

Open Educational Resources

The exhibit El Músico y el Pintor/ The Musician and the Painter: An Exhibit Documenting the Lifetime, Work, and Artistic Trajectory of Two Early Twentieth Century Dominican Artists in New York consists of documents, photographs, musical scores, and paintings from the Dominican Archives collections that highlight the careers of musician Rafael Petitón Guzmán (1894-1983) and painter Tito Enrique Cánepa (1916-2014). Both were enormously influential in their chosen professions, contributing to the development of new hybrid artistic forms that combine traditional and modern elements and incorporate styles from different cultures. Cánepa used his art to express political themes, chiefly his opposition …

Jenyffer Nascimento’S Epic Poetry Of Black Female Empowerment Jenyffer Nascimento: A Poesia Épica De Empoderamento Da Mulher Negra, Sarah S. Ohmer

Publications and Research

This article presents results of auto-ethnography, literary analysis, and fieldwork research to answer an underlying, perhaps unresolved, concern, relevant to this dossier: how can we produce an ethical dialogue as transnational Black Feminists, among Black Brazilian women, and North American Black women, in an ethical manner, while realizing that one may (not ever) be a part of the “carnival without you in it.” Fertile Earth/ Terra Fertil tells a long overdue epic story to an audience within the poetry: Black women, family members, other times a Black man, Brazil, white women, or “you,” undefined. Joy to pain to chaos, sensuality, …

Español (Y Castellano), José Del Valle, Vitor Meirinho

Publications and Research

El significando y traducibilidad de «español» está indefectiblemente ligado al vocablo «castellano», cuyo significado y traducibilidad resultan también inaccesibles si se ignoran los de aquel. Cualquier relato que persiga trazar la historia de este idioma y, especialmente, determinar su origen se encuentra con la coexistencia de, al menos, estas dos palabras. Esta sinonimia, que como tal se manifiesta imperfecta e incómoda, revela también la condición política de la lengua que designa, es decir, su participación en la construcción y cuestionamiento de subjetividades políticas –ya sean regionales, nacionales o sociales–. Es precisamente la condición política de la palabra –de «español», de …

The Afterlives Of Julia De Burgos, Vanessa Pérez-Rosario

Publications and Research

This essay—a response to a discussion of the author’s 2014 book Becoming Julia de Burgos: The Making of a Puerto Rican Icon—focuses on the importance of generations, intellectual genealogies, iconicity, and the afterlives of Puerto Rican poet and writer Julia de Burgos.

Rodríguez Studies America’S Image Of Cuba And Of Itself, Aldemaro Romero Jr.

Publications and Research

“It has to do with my emotional DNA— storytelling and maternal love are linked together. I was brought up by women who read to me as a kid. I love storytelling because I associate it with love, and that has carried over tremendously throughout my life.” That is how Dr. Rick Rodríguez explains his love for literature.

A native of Havana, Cuba, Rodríguez went on to receive his bachelor’s in English from Florida International University and his doctorate, also in English, from the University of Chicago. Today he is an assistant professor in the Department of English of the Weissman …

Desire, Curiosity, And The Search For Truth In Proust, Moreno, And Bechdel, Santiago Parga Linares

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Marcel Proust’s influence on twentieth century literature is broad and has been well documented. This dissertation attempts a comparative reading of À la recherche du temps perdu that places it in contrast with Colombian writer Marvel Moreno’s 1987 novel, En diciembre llegaban las brisas, and Alison Bechdel’s 2006 comic memoir, Fun Home. Starting from a Deleuzian reading of the Recherche, this dissertation proposes the notion of the “proustian truth seeker”, a thematic and stylistic phenomenon which can be traced in all three writers. The characteristics of the truth seeker can be used to understand the ways in …

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 …

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 …

Of Stars And Solitude: Two Mexican Documentaries, Paul Julian Smith

Publications and Research

By happy coincidence, Mexico in 2016 yielded two expert and moving documentaries on women, sex, and aging: María José Cuevas’s Bellas de noche (Beauties of the Night) and Maya Goded’s Plaza de la Soledad (Solitude Square). Both are first-time features by female directors. And both are attempts to reclaim previously neglected subjects: showgirls of the 1970s and sex workers in their seventies, respectively. Moreover, lengthy production processes in which the filmmakers cohabitated with their subjects have resulted in films that are clearly love letters to their protagonists.

Closer Ties: The Dutch Caribbean And The Aftermath Of Empire, 1942-2012, Chelsea Schields

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation examines the unique trajectory of decolonization in the Netherlands and its former Caribbean colonies and argues that sexual and reproductive politics have played a pivotal role in forging a postcolonial commonwealth state. Using sexual politics as a lens, “Closer Ties” explores how postcolonial ties between the Netherlands and its former Caribbean dependencies have strengthened rather than severed in the aftermath of colonial rule. This alternative ending of empire challenges the assumed trajectory of decolonization and locates the drama of imperial dissolution in debates over sexual and reproductive rights in Europe. Looking to the circuits of trans-Atlantic exchange across …

Culturas Emocionales: Narrativa Escrita Por Mujeres Cubanas Durante El Periodo Especial (1992–2005), Laura Sandez

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation studies the emotional repertories employed in the presentation of the female literary subject in the Cuban special period, a period of rapid ideological shift. It deals with the presentation of the self in a series of fictional autobiographic works whose portraits of history and society allow for the observation of diverse emotional repertories, looking for social and ethical value attributed to emotions such as happiness or nostalgia. The dissertation has two modes, a written one and a visual one I produce using digital media. The written part features a close textual analysis of emotional repertories found in literary …

Subversion And Transcendence In The Latin American Modern Travel Novel (1928-1976), Andrea Babsky

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

The focus of this dissertation is the role that travel plays in Latin American novels that stem from 1928 to 1976, specifically, Macunaíma, Los pasos perdidos, El reino de este mundo, and Mascaró, el cazador americano. Departing from the fact that this period of time in history was marked by political and cultural change and upheaval, different aspects and interpretations of travel as manifested in the novels of the corpus are explored as a means of subversion and transcendence to hegemonic discourses. Travel is viewed as a means of disruption, particularly of limits and borders, be they geographical, …

Lectores Retratados: Antonio Berni Y Las Visualidades De Lo Impreso En La Cultura Argentina, Fernando Degiovanni

Publications and Research

No abstract provided.

Documenting Internationalism: The Instituto Cubano Del Arte E Industria Cinematográficos As A Cultural Extension Of Cuban Foreign Policy, Vella V. Voynova

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis examines the connection between the Instituto Cubano del Arte e Industria Cinematográficos and the Cuban Revolution's internationalism and argues that it made ICAIC documentarians, their methods of production, and their documentary films a valuable asset to Cuban foreign policy in the 1960s and 1970s.

Lgbt In Colombia: A War Within, Monica Espitia

Capstones

On the surface, Colombia appears to be at the vanguard of the gay rights movement, having extended legal rights to same-sex couples and transgender people in recent years. But for many of the nearly five million Colombians who are LGBT, these rights have been largely meaningless as a result of the deep-rooted prejudice that often results in violence.

Gay, lesbian and transgender Colombians have been actively persecuted by armed groups involved in Colombia’s decades-long civil war. Members of the LGBT community are four times more likely than the rest of the population to be threatened and abused by both legal …

Agitando Lo Cotidiano. Una Conversación Sobre El Desafío Ⓐnarquista Frente Al Sexismo En El Lenguaje, Mariel Mercedes Acosta Matos, Ernesto Cuba

Publications and Research

Ernesto Cuba entrevista a Mariel Acosta acerca de los hallazgos en sus tesis de maestría, que aborda las propuestas de morfemas de género inclusivo en publicaciones anarquistas de habla hispana, entre las que se halla el uso de " @ " , " x " y otras innovaciones ortográficas que buscan desafiar el sesgo androcéntrico de la lengua. Palabras clave: Lenguaje no-sexista; anarquismo; ortografía; sociolingüística; estudios de lenguaje y género; español.

Ernesto Cuba interviews Mariel Acosta about the findings in hers master's thesis, which addresses the proposals of inclusive gender morphemes in Spanish-language anarchist publications, among which is the use …

On The Hispanophone Caribbean Question, Vanessa Pérez-Rosario

Publications and Research

This essay introduces the special section “The Idea of Hispanophone Caribbean Studies” with a focus on hispanopone Caribbean literature and how it is situated in the region and in the diaspora. The essay suggests the need for creating spaces of dialogue and communication, translation and multilingualism, that are interdisciplinary and intertextual, if we are to deepen our critical frames of reference and complicate and invigorate new creative and analytic discourses.

(Sub)Versions Of Banditry: Ferréz’S Re-Appropriation And Redefinition Of The Marginal Identity, Marissel Hernández-Romero

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This study examines how Ferréz’s work is related to the 19^th and early 20^th century banditry narrative. The current study examines the evolution of the work of Ferréz and discusses his relevance in Brazilian and Latin America literature. However, this dissertation examines in what extent Ferréz’s work transgresses the genre in that he breaks its rules and departs from its traditions. Rather than being the voice of the elite put into the mouth of a lower-class bandit character, Ferréz’s bandits speak with the voice of the oppressed and subversively criticize the elite. His work is not viewed through …

Testimonios (Re)Creados: La Nueva Novela Testimonial Latinoamericana, Reynaldo Martinez

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

In the last twenty years, the writing of testimonial literature in Latin America has gradually declined due in part, because civil war struggles in Central and South America have ceased and the misrepresentation of facts in testimonial narratives have discouraged readers and critics from studying testimonial literature with the same enthusiasm as previously done. Another contributing factor is the question of authorship of these narratives because of problematic issues in identifying whether or not the informant or the transcriber authored the work. Furthermore, scholars realize that at times the transcriber interrelate fact and fiction to the extent of creating a …

Dinámicas Políticas Y Proyectos Culturales En La Posrevolución Cubana (1989-2015): Paideia, Diáspora(S), And Generación Cero, Walfrido Dorta

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation examines the relations between the projects Paideia, Diáspora(s), Generation Zero, and the cultural politics of the Cuban State. Through the analysis of a wide range of objects, such as programmatic documents, journals, literary works, blogs, and online magazines, the research focuses on the ways through which certain alternative projects intervene in state cultural politics. The first chapter concentrates on the project of cultural politics undertaken by Paideia (1989-90). I argue that Paideia introduces an antagonistic relationship between intellectuals and the State, questioning the institutional system of culture and restoring critical agency to intellectuals in order to obtain higher …

Fragmentation And Multiplicity In Cuban-American Identity: In Cuba I Was A German Shepherd By Ana Menéndez And Memory Mambo By Achy Obejas, Daimys E. Garcia

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Maria Lugones offers a new way of perceiving the world, which makes visible that fragmentation is not a valuable and transgressive understanding of identity, as Western philosophy and some political theory suggests. What Lugones believes in, as a strategy of resistance to the dominant gaze, is multiplicity – mestizaje. Using Lugones’s framework, this thesis will look at the different aspects of Cuban-American characters in In Cuba I was a German Shepherd by Ana Menéndez and Memory Mambo by Achy Obejas. Each novel offers insight into how characters develop and understand themselves (and others) when they use language that shows that …

El Narrador En La Ciudad Dentro De La Temática De Los Cuentos De Emigración Y Transición Puertorriqueña (1948-1968), Sandra Margarita Stern

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

As a result of the political and economic upheavals in Puerto Rico’s governing structures during the mid-twentieth century, changes occurred in the social and cultural contexts as well. Rapid industrialization and installation of modernity became the goals for the island, which resulted in mass movement of people from agricultural rural communities to cities, namely, San Juan and New York. A reflection of this phenomenon appears in different genres of literary production during this time. This new form of writing, with its innovative approaches, grew and found preference mostly in the short story.

This dissertation focuses on the stories of this …

Lectores Retratados: Política Visual, Espacio Doméstico Y Discurso De Las Pasiones A Comienzos Del Siglo Xix, Fernando Degiovanni

Publications and Research

No abstract provided.

Afroreggae And Grupo Cultural Afro Reggae: A Study Of The Early Years, Sarah S. Ohmer

Publications and Research

The following study of AfroReggae and Grupo Cultural Afro Reggae (GCAR) calls attention to Brazilian presence and community organizing in the field of Hip Hop studies with a long memory framework: placing AfroReggae and GCAR in a long history of Africana resistance through music in Latin America. !990s GCAR group arises when reggae and Hip Hop music had become new global forms of solidarity among urban marginalized youths worldwide, making use of old and new strategies of social healing (Fernandes 2011). A close look at lyrics from the Hip Hop fusion band and the associated nonprofit organization shape the concepts …

Beauty Practices Among Latinas: The Impact Of Acculturation, Skin Color And Sex Roles, Angelica Flores

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This study sought to explore if and how Latinas use of beauty products (cosmetics) was influenced by their degree of acculturation to U.S. American culture, their phenotype (skin color and facial features) and sex role orientation. While beauty practices are often regarded as trivial, they are important because they reflect women's internalization of societal values and speak to the importance placed on impression management. Although it can be easily observed that people go to great lengths to decorate their exteriors in order to manage others perceptions of them, very few studies look at variables that influence these behaviors. Also, while …

A Light In The Darkness: Argentinian Photography During The Military Dictatorship (1976-1983), Ana Tallone

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

In 2006, on the thirtieth anniversary of the military coup that brought Argentinian democracy to a halt, a group of photojournalists put together an outstanding exhibition of images from the dictatorship. This dissertation critically engages with the most enduring photojournalistic works produced during this period and featured in the landmark retrospective. By researching the historical context of these photographs, I aim to underscore the important contributions photojournalists made not only during the dictatorship, but also in its immediate aftermath, when the most iconic images were republished in printed publications including newspapers, magazines and books. As a starting point, I review …