Caribbean Languages and Societies Commons^™

La Voz Fall 2017, El Instituto: Institute Of Latina/O, Caribbean, And Latin American Studies

La Voz

In this issue:

• Mark Overmyer-Velazquez
• Feria Internacioinal de Libros
• Racismo y Lenguaje
• Pre-doctoral research funding
• Tinker Field Research
• Latino Fraternities
• Latino Sororities
• Daisy Reyes
• DACA
• Hurricane Study
• La Comunidad Intelectual
• Maria del Mar Olmedo-Malagon

H.V.: The Cuban Revolution Through One Man’S Life, Isabel Valiela

Spanish Faculty Publications

This paper aims to illustrate the many ways in which the Cuban Revolution shaped the lives of the Cuban people by focusing on one man’s life from his childhood in the early part of the revolutionary period to his final departure from Cuba in 2006. H.V., as I call him, now lives in Barcelona, Spain. He is a man of humble rural origins who moved to Havana in his youth, where he benefitted from various government programs related to education, sports and job training. He and his family were initially very pro-revolutionary, but in the 1980’s he began to observe …

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 …

Afro-Caribbean Immigrant Faculty Experiences In The American Academy: Voices Of An Invisible Black Population, Dave A. Louis, Keisha V. Thompson, Patriann Smith, Hakim Mohandas Amani Williams, Juann Watson

Africana Studies Faculty Publications

Afro-Caribbean immigrants have been an integral part of the history and shaping of the United States since the early 1900s. This current study explores the experiences of five Afro-Caribbean faculty members at traditionally White institutions of higher education. Despite the historical presence and influence of Afro-Caribbean communities and the efforts within education systems to address the needs of Afro-Caribbean constituents, Afro-Caribbean faculty members continue to be rendered indiscernible in higher education and to be frequently and erroneously perceived as African–Americans. The study examines the lived experiences of these individuals in the hegemonic White spaces they occupy at their institutions with …

Frida's Daughter, Myrta Vida

Theses

The purpose of my creative writing is to highlight a group of U.S. citizens still woefully underrepresented in literature proper: the Latinx middle class. I’m keenly interested in exploring Puerto Rican and first- and second-generation Latinx immigrant stories. Even though some of the experiences from these groups have been elegantly visited by writers such as Giannina Braschi, Sandra Cisneros, Junot Diaz, Julia Alvarez, and others, there are nuances to the Latinx middle class experience that are yet to be uncovered. Being stuck in the cultural, linguistic, socio-economic, and political middles in a country that has recently taken a largely nationalist …

La Voz Spring 2017, El Instituto: Institute Of Latina/O, Caribbean, And Latin American Studies

La Voz

In this issue:

• Contested Citizenship Conference
• John N. Plank Cuban Lecture Series
• Borderlands Symposium
• York County PA Detention Center

Artistic Film Interpretation Of Literary Piece: Yo Fumo Puros Como Mi Abuela, Katrina Abad

Latin American, Caribbean, and U.S. Latino Studies Symposium

The 10-minute short film described below is narrated in Spanish but will also be available with English subtitles by the end of production.

Yo fumo puros como mi abuela

Inspirado por “Mi abuela fumaba puros” de Sabine Ulibarrí

or

I Smoke Cigars Like My Grandmother

Inspired by Sabine Ulibarrí’s “My Grandmother Smoked Cigars”

Written and produced by Katrina B. Abad and Inés García-Rojas

The moving short story “Mi abuela fumaba puros” (1992) by Mexican-American author Sabine Ulibarrí depicts the fortitude of a matriarchal grandmother from the eyes of her grandson at different stages of tragedy in their life. In this …

The Gospel Of Colonization: The U.S. Colonization Of Puerto Rico As A Protestant Missionary Projec, Jorge Juan Rodriguez V

Latin American, Caribbean, and U.S. Latino Studies Symposium

One year after the Spanish-American War, representatives from nine major Protestant denominations* met in New York City to discuss the “new mission field” of Puerto Rico. While they were eager to “evangelize” these “un-churched” Puerto Ricans, Protestant leaders shared concern about “stepping on each-others toes” in this new religious marketplace. As a result, representatives established a Committee Agreement that carved the island and set parameters on where each particular denomination could evangelize and establish institutions. Presbyterians took the West, Disciples the Mid-North, Baptists parts of the island’s center, etc. Their mission was clear: “to inaugurate a work that assures the …

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 …

Loiza Pa', Milan Bird-Riacoko

The Hilltop Review

No abstract provided.

Haitian History And Culture: A Selection Of Online Resources, Marjorie Charlot

Touro University Libraries Publications and Research

The author describes several useful internet resources for researching Haitian history and culture.

Cruise Lines, Christine Vassallo-Oby

Latin American, Caribbean, and U.S. Latino Studies Faculty Scholarship

Cruise lines are companies that operate cruise ships. Carnival Corporation & plc, the world’s largest cruise ship corporation, operates nine cruise lines globally with four headquartered in the United States. These four U.S.-headquartered cruise lines represent Carnival Corporation & plc’s North American segment: Holland America Line, Carnival Cruise Lines, Princess Cruises, and Seabourn Cruise Line. As the example of Carnival Corporation & plc’s North,American market illustrates, cruise lines operate in geographical segments, each segment consisting of its own unique branding. This branding schema is tailored to fit unique socioeconomic markers of these geographical segments. Cruise lines function directly with the …

On Making A Difference: How Photography And Narrative Produce The Short-Term Missions Experience, Joshua Kerby Jennings

Theses and Dissertations--Community & Leadership Development

Short-term missions participants encounter difference in purportedly captivating ways. Current research, however, indicates the practice does not lead to long-lasting, positive change. Brian M. Howell (2012) argues the short-term missions experience is confined to the limitations of the short-term missions narrative. People who engage in short-term missions build assumptions, seek experiences, understand difference, and convey meaning, as a result of this narrative. The process of telling and retelling travel stories is integral to the short-term missions experience. Drawing upon literature on tourism, narrative, development, and photography, this study intends to evaluate the inefficacy of short-term missions through the stories which …

The Socio-Political And Economic Causes Of Natural Disasters, Nicole Southard

CMC Senior Theses

To effectively prevent and mitigate the outbreak of natural disasters is a more pressing issue in the twenty-first century than ever before. The frequency and cost of natural disasters is rising globally, most especially in developing countries where the most severe effects of climate change are felt. However, while climate change is indeed a strong force impacting the severity of contemporary catastrophes, it is not directly responsible for the exorbitant cost of the damage and suffering incurred from natural disasters -- both financially and in terms of human life. Rather, the true root causes of natural disasters lie within the …

Spiritual Journeys: A Study Of Ifá /Òrìṣà Practitioners In The United States Initiated In Nigeria, Tony Van Der Meer

Antioch University Dissertations & Theses

The purpose of this study is to understand the culture of one of the newest branches of traditional Yorùbá Ifá/Òrìṣà practice in the United States from practitioners born in the United States that were initiated in Nigeria, West Africa.The epistemology of the Ifá/Òrìṣà belief system in the United States has been based on the history and influence of Regla de Ocha or Santeria that developed out of Cuban innovation and practice.This is an ethnographic and auto-ethnographic study that pulls from participant observation, field notes, interviews, and photos as data.The central question of this dissertation is what are the challenges and …

A Poetics Of Food In The Bahamas: Intentional Journeys Through Food, Consciousness, And The Aesthetic Of Everyday Life, Hilary B. Booker

Antioch University Dissertations & Theses

This research explores intentional food practices and journeys of consciousness in a network of people in The Bahamas. Intentional food practices are defined as interactions with food chosen for particular purposes, while journeys of consciousness are cumulative successions of events that people associate with healing, restoration, and decolonization personally and collectively. This research examines (1) experiences and moments that influenced people’s intentional food practices; (2) food practices that people enact daily; and (3) how people’s intentional food practices connect to broader spiritual, philosophical, and ideological perspectives guiding their lives. The theoretical framework emerges from a specific lineage of theories and …

Ironie Et Autoréflexivité Dans Un Dimanche Au Cachot De Patrick Chamoiseau, Olga Hel-Bongo

Présence Francophone: Revue internationale de langue et de littérature

Social pressures in Patrick Chamoiseau’s novel, Un dimanche au cachot, can be read not only in the theme of slavery, but also as a discourse on the narrative text itself, in which the essay plays an important role, and in the author’s denial of his art and status. Chamoiseau’s intention of subversion is omnipresent through parody or renunciation of all forms of excess. The offensive concerns, on the one hand, the memory of slavery as a social and historical institution transmitting values of order, hierarchy and traumatism in the minds. It concerns the whole narrative act and the relation between …

Alfred Alexandre : Écrivain « Post-Créol(Ist)E » ?, Françoise Simasotchi-Bronès

Présence Francophone: Revue internationale de langue et de littérature

Alfred Alexandre’s novels Bord de canal (2004) and Les villes assassines (2011) are set in the poorest urban slums of Fort-de-France. In both novels, the marginal characters exemplify the paradoxes of a Martinican society shifwrecked under the flow of rampant globalization. Alexandre’s portrayal of a decadent urban humanity stands far from the Creole community codes as imagined by the novelists who have preceded him, and signifies his intention to break away from their recurring themes. My purpose, here, is to assess what is truly innovative in this newly labelled “post-Creole” writing. It seems that investing those markedly social and scriptural …

Teachers’ Nascent Praxes Of Care: Potentially Decolonizing Approaches To School Violence In Trinidad, Hakim Mohandas Amani Williams

Africana Studies Faculty Publications

Zero tolerance, punitive and more negative peace-oriented approaches dominate school violence interventions, despite research indicating that comprehensive approaches are more sustainable. In this article, I use data from a longitudinal case study at a Trinidadian secondary school to focus on the role of teachers and their impact on school violence; I show that institutional constraints are not fully deterministic, as teachers sometimes deploy their agency to efficacious ends. In combining Noddings’ postulations on care and Freire’s notions of praxis as a symbiosis of reflection and action, I explicate the nascent praxes of care of six teachers at this school, as …

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.

Santería And Resistance In Tomás Gutierrez Alea And Juan Carlos Tabío’S Strawberry And Chocolate And In Fernando Pérez’S Life Is To Whistle, David S. Dalton

Journal of Religion & Film

The 1990s were a politically, socially, and economically turbulent decade for Cuba. It is neither surprising that it was during these years that the state amended its approach to religious freedom nor that it was during this time that Pope John Paul II made his historic visit to the island. Following the pontiff’s visit, the state amended the constitution and declared itself secular rather than Marxist, thus removing much of the stigma that believers had previously faced. In this article I analyze the relationship between the national cinema and religious freedom by showing that many Cuban directors challenged official constructs …

Heroísmo Y Conciencia Racial En La Obra De La Poeta Afro-Cubana Cristina Ayala, Maria A. Aguilar

Languages, Literatures and Cultures Faculty Scholarship

This article examines the poetry of Cuban writer Cristina Ayala emphasizing the political value of her use of a rhetoric of heroism, a discursive device that masks her demands for recognition of women’s rights and those of Afro-Cubans. The analysis of her poetry suggests that the symbolic manipulation of the “hero” and the representation of “colored” women as intellectuals and “heroes” expressed her desire to intervene in the public arena. By positioning herself within a political discourse that reconstructed slavery’s past, she narrated the revolutionary vicissitudes and created a utopian vision of the future for the Afro-Cuban community. Ayala expresses …

Haitian Entanglements: Émile Nau's Histoire Des Caciques D'Haïti In Manuel De Jesús Galván's Enriquillo, Thomas Genova

Spanish Publications

This article deconstructs the racially exclusive national narrative presented in Dominican Manuel de Jesús Galván’s 1882 Enriquillo: leyenda histórica dominicana by putting the novel in dialogue with Haitian Émile Nau’s 1854 Histoire des caciques d’Haïti, considering how the former work simultaneously resists and inscribes itself within the metanarrative of New-World antislavery that the latter presents. Although both texts draw on the colonial crónicas to tell the story of an Amerindian uprising led by the cacique Enrique on the island of Hispaniola during the early sixteenth century, they deploy that history to different ends: Nau situates the rebellion at the beginning …

La Voz Fall 2016, El Instituto: Institute Of Latina/O, Caribbean, And Latin American Studies

La Voz

In this issue:

• Tinker Foundation Field Research Awards
• NECLAS
• Robert G Mead Lecture
• Nuevo California

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 …

A National Bilingual Education Policy For The Economic And Academic Empowerment Of Youth In St. Lucia, West Indies, Gabriella Bellegarde

Capstone Collection

This campaign portfolio argues the case for a national bilingual education policy on the island of St. Lucia, where youth speak both St Lucian Creole and St. Lucian standard English. The portfolio consists of a policy paper and brief, an advocacy plan, a communications plan, monitoring and evaluation plan. The Bilingual Education Taskforce (BET), made up of teachers, parents and principals, is an advocacy organization that discovered the need for a bilingual education intervention when they observed, assessed and analyzed the written work of struggling readers at their school, the Anse la Raye Infant School on the west coast of …

Ciudad Letrada Y Poder En La Novela Del Caribe Hispánico Contemporáneo: La Noche Oscura Del Nino Avilés, Bachata Del Ángel Caído Y La Cazadora De Astros, Amilkar Ernesto Caballero

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation analyzes Edgardo Rodríguez Julia’s La noche oscura del Niño Avilés, Pedro Antonio Valdez’s Bachata del ángel caído, and Zoé Valdes’s La cazadora de Astros from the perspective of the intersection between intellectuality and power. Its main thesis is that these three writers are “political” writers who postulate “possible worlds” to reconfigure the divisions of the Social world carried out by power vectors in their respective nations. These reconfigurations are based on “detour” strategies that attempt to deconstruct the canonical aesthetic forms and the discourses of truth established by those vectors. The first chapter analyzes the way the three …

(Re)Imagining Haiti Through The Eyes Of A Seven-Year-Old Girl, Iliana Rosales Figueroa

Journal of International Women's Studies

Haitian-American author Edwidge Danticat’s new novel Claire of the Sea Light (2013) explores themes of love, loss, and death. The first character that is presented to us is Claire of the Sea Light, a seven-year-old girl, whose mother died giving birth to her and who is missing. It is at the intersection of this little girl’s loss that all the other characters and topics unfold. Madame Gaëlle, an upper class woman who has a fabric shop in Ville Rose, decides to adopt Claire in order to give her a better life. In this essay I demonstrate that Edwidge Danticat articulates …

Reassessing Caribbean Migration: Love, Power And (Re) Building In The Diaspora, Andrea Natasha Baldwin, Natasha K. Mortley

Journal of International Women's Studies

Traditional research has framed Caribbean migration as a socio-economic issue including discourses on limited resources, brain drain, remittances, and diaspora/transnational connection to, or longing for home. This narrative usually presents migration as having a destabilizing effect on Caribbean families, households and communities, more specifically the impacts on the relationships of working class women who migrate leaving behind children, spouses and other dependents because of a lack of opportunities in Caribbean. This paper proposes an alternative view of migration as a source/manifestation of women’s power, where women, as active agents within the migration process, in fact contribute to re building relationships, …

Claiming The Politics Of Articulation Through Agency And Wholeness In Two Afro-Hispanic Postcolonial Narratives, Silvia Castro Borrego

Journal of International Women's Studies

Following a context-based approach and the tenets of post-positivist realist theory, this paper will analyze two post-colonial Afro-Hispanic novels immersed in their articulation of moving towards Caribbeanness within the phenomenon of Diaspora Literacy: María Nsue Angüe’s Ekomo (1983) and Michelline Dusseck’s Caribbean Echoes (1997). As part of the Diaspora Literacy, these texts will be read employing the search for wholeness as a theoretical tool, towards an epistemology of anti-colonial feminist struggle. These texts take active part in a decolonizing process that fosters a definition and vision of agency which makes wholeness possible, becoming an active expression of black women’s spirituality …