Latin American Languages and Societies Commons^™

Las Filipinas: The Persistence Of Spain In Jessica Hagedorn's Dogeaters, Blake Seana Locklin

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

This essay argues for the significance of the legacy of Spain in Jessica Hagedorn's Dogeaters. Critical analyses have explored many aspects of the novel's portrayal of relations between the Philippines and the United States, a more recent colonizer whose influence on politics and culture is prominent in Dogeaters. The effects of Spanish colonization are more subtle in the novel, but pervade its representation of characters, language, and society. While highlighting the fragmentation of individual and national identities, Dogeaters depicts a Philippines in which many social and political problems have roots in the Spanish colonial era. Building on the …

Women’S Bonds And Chance Encounters: An Analogical Reading Of The Book Of Ruth And Joshua Marston’S Film Maria Full Of Grace, Luigi De Angelis Soriano

Journal of Religion & Film

This article offers an analogical reading of the biblical book of Ruth and Joshua Marston’s 2004 film Maria Full of Grace, examining how both narratives portray migrant women who form strategic social bonds to navigate precariousness within limiting power structures. While Ruth and María inhabit vastly different cultural and historical contexts, their stories meet in their emphasis on female solidarity and human agency. Focusing on key verses from Ruth and pivotal scenes from Maria Full of Grace, this study highlights how emotional and ethical relationships among women—whether covenantal or born of desperation—become sources of strength in the absence …

Wide Screen With Critical Essay "Translating A Poetry Of Cinema"., James L. Richie Iv

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation combines the creative task of translating Víctor Cabrera’s poetry collection WIDE SCREEN (2009) from Spanish into English with a critical study that analyzes the volume to highlight the uniqueness of his writing, the importance of translating such a work for an Anglophone audience, and the challenges that occur in translating this complex collection. Moreover, Cabrera’s writing engages with a variety of cultural works in ways that challenge preconceived notions of language, culture, and medium. The poetry in WIDE SCREEN draws inspiration from the films of American filmmaker Jim Jarmusch, while frequently putting these films into dialogue with works …

Food Insecurity In Latin America: Climate Change, Industrial Agriculture, And The Case For Regenerative Solutions, Leila Hernandez-Webster

CISLA Senior Integrative Projects

This study critically analyzes the nexus between climate change and food insecurity in Latin America, with a particular focus on Costa Rica’s agricultural sector. It interrogates how industrial agricultural practices, deforestation, and trade liberalization have contributed to environmental degradation and heightened socio-economic vulnerabilities, especially among smallholder farmers. Through the lens of political ecology, this research situates these dynamics within the broader context of neoliberal and neo-extractivist development paradigms, which have systematically eroded food sovereignty. This study also evaluates agro-ecological responses, particularly agroforestry, as viable strategies for promoting ecological resilience and socio-economic equity. In doing so, it underscores the imperative of …

Latin American Culture, Bernardita Llanos Mardones

Open Educational Resources

This course examines a series of contemporary cultural and social issues in Latin America through the study of case studies in Mexico, Argentina, Colombia, Nicaragua, Chile, Peru and Bolivia. Among the topics we will analyze are: feminicide- or the killing of women due to their gender, abortion rights, historical and cultural memory, peace and war, sexual abuse and male power, politics and corruption, machismo and racism. The course ends with the ethics and life style based on the community practiced by the Andean world and summarized in the thirteen principles of “el buen vivir o Sumak Kawsay.” Through the readings …

Revelations: Spirituality As Privileged Perspectivism In Magical Realist Distortions, Isabella Scala-Kazanecki

Dissertations and Theses

This thesis examines the role of spiritual beliefs in the literary mode now known as magical realism in Cuban Alejo Carpentier’s The Kingdom of This World (1949), Indian-Born British and American Salman Rushdie’s The Satanic Verses (1988), and a lesser-known novel, Household Saints (1981) by Francine Prose, an American writer. The Kingdom of This World, itself the originator of the mode of magical realism, has allowed me to conclude with Carpentier that magical realism arises from “privileged revelations,” as he notes in the preface to his seminal book. But these revelations in magical realism are not necessarily always of the …

Spn 122 - Latin American Language And Culture, Salvador Salazar

Open Educational Resources

Spanish 122 provides an overview of Latin American cultures. Students will analyze and discuss representative texts and other forms of cultural production (film, visual art, music, etc.) from various regions and time periods to better understand and appreciate the diversity of Latin American history and society. The course will be conducted in Spanish.

Todo Sobre América Latina, Kayla Madeline Schwartz

World Languages and Cultures

This project attempts to inform a Spanish-speaking audience about the humanities of Latin America. The format is a blog which solicits more engagement with the embedded research and written text. Colorful photos and informative videos attract the attention of a general public that may otherwise not be interested in learning extensively about history and culture. Such focus is important because Latin American past has great bearing on the lives of much of the Latinx community today—in many regions.

Specifically, this blog contains articles about history, literature, movies and shows, dance, and travelling. The audience can learn about a broad timeline …

Navigating Boundaries: Challenges And Strategies In Exhibiting Brazilian Art Globally, Bruna Ribeiro Schnor

MA Theses

This thesis critically evaluates key initiatives in New York from 2002 to 2023, notably "Brazil: Body and Soul" and "Tarsila do Amaral: Inventing Modern Art in Brazil" at institutions like the Guggenheim and MoMA, highlighting potential shortcomings in representing Brazilian culture accurately. Additionally, it discusses exhibitions like "Bárbara Wagner and Benjamin de Burca: Five Times Brazil" at the New Museum and “The Yanomami Struggle” at The Shed for their unique approaches to showcasing Brazilian art. The methodology involves analyzing significant exhibitions in New York from 2000 to 2023, evaluating their efforts to globalize Brazilian art, and understanding their global impact. …

Love And Solitude In Latin America: An Actor’S Take, Performing Graciela In Diatriba De Amor Para Un Hombre Sentado By Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Claudia C. Sevilla

Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports (ETD)

In this thesis I take a journey through twentieth century Latin America through inhabiting the role of Graciela created by the late great Gabriel Garcia Marquez in his only work of theatre. Through detailed historical research I explore human topics such as marriage and isolation embodied in Graciela that in a sense mirror a people and a continent. The challenges of producing a play with no budget or partners and the freedoms and constraints of performing a one-person show, which included an audience that does not speak the language the play is written in. How does an actor adapt to …

Making And Taking: Evaluating The Ethnographic Gaze In Graciela Iturbide’S Los Que Viven En La Arena, Lauren Gonzales

Theses and Dissertations

Graciela Iturbide’s career-defining engagement with indigenous subjects began with a commission by the Mexican government's Instituto Nacional Indigenista (INI) to document the Seri people. This thesis contextualizes the resulting photobook, Los que viven en la arena (1981), within the history of indigenous representation in Mexico and the controversial policies of the INI.

The Domestic Worker In Latinx Fiction: The Discursive Formation Of Latinidad, Constance Von Igel De Mello

English (MA) Theses

The figure of the domestic worker in Latinx and Latin American fiction is a prominent character, permeating multiple genres and geographic locations. Post-colonial and feminist engagement with literature begs us to engage with the racialized and gendered constraints of this character in order to understand the borders of latinidad as based on the exclusion of certain bodies, predominantly black ones. Using the domestic worker characters from Julia Alvarez’s How the García Girls Lost Their Accents (1991) and Edwidge Danticat’s The Farming of Bones (1998), and underscoring their historical and socio-political background of Hispaniola, we can understand the embodied context of …

Bananas Vs. Coffee: Why Did One Instigate Violence And The Other Community?, Sydney Stark

Undergraduate Research Symposium

Violence. Nationalism. Racism. A community ripped apart by multinational corporations. These are likely not the words and ideas associated with bananas. However, in Costa Rica and other South American countries, these words only begin to describe the history surrounding this fruit. Community. Fair Trade. Globalization. A nation brought together by a simple drink. These words all describe none other than our beloved drink coffee. Costa Rica relies heavily on the exports of coffee and this crop has actually helped produce an entire subculture, known as café cultura, which promotes community and belonging. But why are these two crops vastly …

Cartografías Cosmopolitas: León De Greiff Y La Tradición Literaria, Marco Ramírez Rojas

Purdue Studies in Romance Literatures

Cartografías cosmopolitas: León de Greiff y la tradición literaria analyzes the poetic works of this twentieth-century Colombian writer as a manifestation of cosmopolitanism, global cultural cartographies, and a self-fashioned poetic genealogy. Ramírez Rojas approaches de Greiff’s poems as cultural maps that reveal both a desire of connectivity with the world and a need for reorganizing the imaginary library of world literature. From a self-assumed position of eccentricity, de Greiff builds a network of global connections and disputes the binary division of cultural centers and peripheries, revendicating marginality as a productive condition. The study of this alternative cosmopolitanism brings de Greiff’s …

The Lettered Barriada: Workers, Archival Power, And The Politics Of Knowledge In Puerto Rico [Book Review], Mariel Acosta Matos

Publications and Research

En su más reciente libro The Lettered Barriada: Workers and the Politics of Knowledge (La barriada letrada: los obreros y las políticas del conocimiento), Jorell Meléndez-Badillo (University of Wisconsin-Madison) nos presenta una historia de la producción subalterna de conocimiento obrero en Puerto Rico, desde los primeros años de colonialismo estadounidense en el archipiélago, a finales de siglo XIX, hasta la primera mitad del siglo XX. Los protagonistas de la misma fueron un grupo de obreros que creó redes de aprendizaje, conocimiento y transmisión de información de manera autogestionada y a los márgenes de las elites ilustradas. Tomando como referente conceptual …

Revolutionary Visions: Jewish And Politics In Latin American Film, Mirna Vohnsen

Articles

Stephanie Pridgeon’s Revolutionary Visions, a book that deals with the intersection of Jews and revolutionary politics in films from Latin America, is a welcome addition to the growing scholarship on Latin American Jewish studies. As the author herself notes, the cinematic depiction of Jewish experiences with revolutionary movements in Latin America has not received, until now, the scholarly attention it deserves, a neglect that Pridgeon has set out to remedy in her volume. The book brings to our attention the significance of the Latin American revolutionary culture of the 1960s and 1970s not only to Jewish life in the region …

Span 290 - Survey Of Spanish-American Literature Ii, Mariana C. Zinni

Open Educational Resources

This course is designed for any student interested in Spanish American literature. No previous knowledge of it is needed. However, a good command of written and oral Spanish is indispensable. We will examine several literary periods, topics, artifacts and works from 20th and 21st centuries. We will watch a series of movies and documentaries related to specific topics and events.

Destination Icaic: Cosmopolitan Intellectuals, Documentary Film And The Image Of The Cuban 1960s, Gabriel Arce-Riocabo Rollins

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This study analyzes the interaction between foreign intellectuals and ICAIC (Instituto cubano de artes e industrias cinematográficas) in shaping the image of Cuba in the 1960s. I make the case that the idea of Revolution was a product of cosmopolitan intellectual engagement and that in this process documentary film was a privileged medium. By tracing the development of normative stories of commitment, cosmopolitanism, and aesthetic experimentation embodied both in written texts and travel essay films, I argue that such circulation destabilizes fixed ideas of Cuban, Revolutionary or Intellectual. The archive of Danish filmmaker and ICAIC collaborator Theodor Christensen as well …

The Beehive, The Favela, The Castle, And The Ministry: Race And Modern Architecture In Rio De Janeiro, 1811–1945, Luisa Valle

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation deploys a multidisciplinary and decolonial framework to investigate the architecture of cortiços, the Favela Hill, the Castelo Hill, and the Ministry of Education and Public Health (MES) building as constitutive of the history of modernization and modernity in the Centro (city center) of Rio de Janeiro, 1811-1945. The first three chapters investigate the distinct geographies, formal and material qualities, and populations of cortiços, the Favela Hill, and the Castelo Hill, as well as their racialization and essentialization by the “unsanitary” and “degenerate” labels bestowed upon these landscapes by the state. Traditional narratives and practices of modern architecture and …

Boundary As Borderland: Mexico City’S Central Plaza And The Politics Of Presence, Re'al Christian

Theses and Dissertations

In the postcolonial era, the land surrounding national borders—the borderland—has inherited a specific identity and relationship with those who navigate it. While national borderlands are oft discussed amid conversations on globalization, land disputes, and war, the Spanish colonization of the Americas in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries saw the new establishment of borderlands from within in the form of segregative boundaries that purported to separate Indigenous and European peoples. This thesis concerns the manifestation of the borderland as not only an external entity, but an internal one as well. Using Mexico City, the center of the Spanish colonial empire, as …

Catholicism In Context: Religious Practice In Latin America, Gustavo Morello Sj

Journal of Global Catholicism

A critical problem to study Catholicism in the context of Latin American modernity, is that the conceptual tools we use to study religion were designed to understand the transformations that modernity provoked in European religiosity. Studies on the religion of Latin Americans have largely explored the religiosity of the population through surveys that measure attendance, adherence and affiliation. While some anthropologists have explored religious practices among particular groups, we do not know how ordinary, urban Latin Americans practice religion. To fill this gap, a group of researchers from Boston College, Pontifical Catholic University of Peru, Catholic University of Córdoba, and …

Editor's Introduction, Mathew N. Schmalz

Journal of Global Catholicism

No abstract provided.

Minerva Cuevas: Disidencia, Alaina Claire Feldman, Clayton Press, Solange Farkas, Gabriel Bogossian

Publications and Research

Bilingual catalogue for the exhibition "Minerva Cuevas: Disidencia" presented at Baruch College's Mishkin Gallery.

Popular Feminism(S) Reconsidered: Popular, Racialized, And Decolonial Subjectivities In Contention, Janet M. Conway, Nathalie Lebon

Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies Faculty Publications

This issue is concerned with the salience of “popular feminism” as an analytic category for naming the myriad contemporary forms of gendered awareness and agency appearing among Latin America’s poor, working-class and racialized communities. Although we have an analytic agenda, our underlying concern here is with the politics of feminism—the construction of intersectional feminist praxes of gender, race, and economic justice and their relation to other projects for social justice. Our focus on popular feminism addresses the relationship between the subaltern subjectivities of marginalized women, their relation to feminist political agency, and the relation of both to mixed-gender efforts for …

Seeking Asylum In A Modern Society: Global Responses To Latin American Migration, Rebecca Dickinson

Senior Honors Projects

The United States is no stranger to asylum seekers and refugees. The most famous seaport in the country houses a 305-foot-tall statue of a woman bearing a torch with words from the poem The New Colossus by Emma Lazarus etched at her feet: “‘Give me your tired, your poor, /Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free.’”^[1] The Statue of Liberty is a symbolic representation of open arms to immigrants from all walks of life. But if everyone is welcome, why do so few actually gain entrance?

US interventionism policies in the 20th century have defined the lives of millions …

Arteletra: The Sixties In Latin America And The Politics Of Going Unnoticed, Jason A. Bartles

Purdue Studies in Romance Literatures

ArteletrA analyzes the Sixties in Latin America in order to revisit the core claim of literary and cultural studies to political relevancy in the contemporary world: the task of making visible the invisible. Though visibility can secure rights for the disenfranchised, it also risks subjecting them to the biopolitical and capitalist arrangements of space. What is at stake in this book is a series of aesthetic and ethical tools for engaging in politics—defined here as the potential to disagree—without first passing through visibility. These tools cohere around a practice Bartles calls “the politics of going unnoticed,” which he derives from …

Latin America & Caribbean Collection, Zach S. Henderson Library Special Collections

Finding Aids

This collection, assembled by Dr. Corinna Zeltsman of Georgia Southern University, consists of items from Latin America and the Caribbean dating from 1692 to 1985. Materials include political pamphlets, newsletters, ephemera, sheet music, published books, and other materials. The subject matter includes U.S.-Latin American relations, popular culture, and revolutions.

Find this collection in the University Libraries' catalog.

¿Cómo Traducimos "Ni Una Más" Al Inglés?: Latin American Manifestation Of The Phenomenology Of Femicide, And The United States’ Subsequent Internal Neglect, Suemi Mendez

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This paper aims to tackle two components in analyzing the phenomenological concept of femicide, most simply known as the killing of women because they are women through structural violence and oppression. First, it will develop its deployment within the Latin American framework as it has been adapted to function within the regional lexicon, both socially and legislatively. This assessment will serve to address the successes and failures thus far in tackling femicide as the location with the highest statistics globally. Through this foregrounding, it will lead into how this revised deployment of femicide fits into the context of Global North …

Femicides In Latin America, Sedrick Ruiz Martinez, Shannon Polchow

University of South Carolina Upstate Student Research Journal

Femicide is the killing of a woman by a man solely on the account of her gender. It is the ultimate form of gender violence that includes sexual, mental, or physical suffering. It derives from a distorted sense of ownership, hatred, and entitlement from men. Femicides can stem from violent relationships; however, they can be targeted despite having no connection at all to their perpetrator. It has become an indisputable problem throughout Latin America without an end in sight. The purpose of this work is to introduce and identify the underlying factors that contribute to the occurrence of femicides within …

Understanding Populism Through Difference: The Significance Of Economic And Social Axes. An Interview With Kenneth Roberts, Cornell University, Kenneth Roberts, Kayla Bohannon, Alina Hechler

disClosure: A Journal of Social Theory

Kenneth M. Roberts is the Richard J. Schwartz Professor of Government and Binenkorb Director of Latin American Studies at Cornell University. His research and teaching interests focus on party systems, populism, social movements, and the politics of inequality in Latin America and beyond. He is the author of Changing Course in Latin America: Party Systems in the Neoliberal Era (Cambridge University Press) and Deepening Democracy? The Modern Left and Social Movements in Chile and Peru (Stanford University Press). He is also the co-editor of The Resurgence of the Latin American Left (Johns Hopkins University Press), The Diffusion of Social Movements …