Modern Languages Commons^™

La Maleta Siempre Lista: Libertad, Identidad Y Legado Político Dentro De Una Familia Cubanoamericana, Aidan H. Jammer

World Languages and Cultures

This project explores how memories of the Cuban Exile are transmitted through generations and how these memories can influence a Cuban American family’s cultural identity and political beliefs. The documentary was based around interviews with members of my family from different generations. My investigation was mainly centered around the generation that lived through the Cuban Revolution and Exile, immigrated to the US and started a family in another country, sharing their memories, values and beliefs of Cuba with their children and grandchildren.

In addition to the interviews, the project incorporates historical research about the Cuban Revolution, the first waves of …

Black Lives Still Matter: Freedom Schools As An Embodiment Of Critical Literacy Through Reflection And Action, Elena M. Venegas, Lakia M. Scott

Bilingual and Literacy Studies Faculty Publications

The continuation of racial inequities in the United States has ignited the recent Black Lives Matter Movement, a protest of police brutality and gun violence. Black lives matter in public school classrooms, too—where students of color face barriers to equitable educational experiences. The Children's Defense Fund Freedom School program is a major component in developing critical literacy skills through critique, inquiry, and transformation through social justice and action. Critical literacy is enacted through identity—mainly as difference, self, consciousness, narrative, and positionality. Historical and contemporary relevance of Freedom Schools connects to the urgency of the Black Lives Matter Movement.

Codeswitching In The Egyptian Arabic Movies: How Do Social Variables Trigger Codeswitching?, Randa Hassan

Theses and Dissertations

Abstract

This is a qualitative study designed to examine the growing linguistic practice of codeswitching in a sociolinguistic context. For this purpose, 7 Egyptian Arabic films were purposefully selected to investigate what social variables and contexts can be associated with codeswitching. Data was sampled in 43 experts from the 7 films. The data was analyzed in terms of the social variables of education, social class, identity, stance, and age, within the theoretical framework of the critical discourse analysis, the accommodation theory, and the social arena theory. Although the study started with these social variables in mind, data analysis revealed two …

Las Voces Desde La Liminalidad Sino-Peruana: –Una Lectura Comparativa De Mongolia Y La Vida No Es Una Tómbola–, Jing Tan

LSU Master's Theses

Chinese immigrants first arrived in Peru in the mid-19th Century. Since then, the Sino-Peruvian community has lived through myriad vicissitudes. Today, despite its indisputable influence in Peru’s history, it is still largely invisible in society, just as the concept of an Asian Latin American identity remains elusive in the national consciousness. In the literary and academic world, the scarcity of a voice highlighting Chinese legacies in Peruvian literature is echoed by the dearth of such a voice in the criticism regarding works by Sino-Peruvian writers about Sino-Peruvian experiences.

This comparative analysis engages with two novels that evince deep parallelism with …

Transgressing Boundaries Of Identity, Geography And Time In Transmutadxos And La Mucama De Omicunlé, Lucinda Smith

Tête à Tête: Journal of Francophone Studies

The literary works of Rita Indiana (1977) and Yolanda Arroyo Pizarro (1970) are recognised for exposing and challenging hegemonic ideas of identity, sexuality and power. The transgression of boundaries appears time and again in the fiction of both writers, whether these be boundaries of sexual or gender identity, desire, geography, time or even life and death. Using Rita Indiana’s novel La mucama de Omicunlé (2015) and Arroyo’s collection of short stories Transmutadxs (2016), the authors’ representations of such transgressions are the focus of this essay.

Further to addressing similar themes in their texts, both Rita Indiana and Arroyo Pizarro were …

Identities Development Of Adult Chinese Heritage Language Learners From Southeast Asian American Families, Feng Liang

Journal of Southeast Asian American Education and Advancement

Although linguistic and cultural varieties exist among Chinese Heritage Language Learners (CHLLs), little attention has been given to how adult CHLLs with non-Mandarin backgrounds attempt to negotiate their identities when they learned Chinese. Grounded in He’s (2008, 2016) theory of Chinese heritage language (CHL) development, this study explored the construction of identities of Chinese adults with non-Mandarin backgrounds in the process of Chinese heritage language learning. Three adult CHLLs in the United States participated in a multiple case study that lasted for six months. Data collection included interviews, journals, observations, and informal communications. Findings suggest that CHLLs of non-Mandarin backgrounds …

Desde El Fuego Que En Mí Arde: Performance, Literatura Y Cine Afro-Latinoamericano Producidos Por Mujeres Afrodescendientes En Perú, Cuba Y Brasil (1960–2000), Elena Ekatherina Chavez Goycochea

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation examines different films, literary, and performance art pieces created by contemporary afro-descendant women from Peru, Cuba, and Brazil after the sixties with emphasis on the most relevant works of Conceição Evaristo, Sara Gómez, Victoria Santa Cruz, and Lucía Charún-Illescas. I focus my research on the crucial role these artists played in the cultural identity formation of Latin America when inserting ‘race’ as a category of socio-political analysis and cultural production. How did their films, performances, and texts challenge national narratives and imaginaries after 1960? Although in the sixties, women improved their civil rights in different countries, the ‘mujer …

Untitled: Deconstruction And Reconstruction Of Identity In Le Chevalier De La Charrette And The Romance Of Tristran, Devin Louise Moulton

Department of Modern Languages and Literatures: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

Questions of identity are a central source of tension within the genre of the chivalric romances. Even among the large collective that is King Arthur’s court, innumerable romances recount the tales of individual knights in search of individual glory and of some way to distinguish their names among the masses of the court and the group of knights across chivalric traditions while simultaneously bound by the confines of that same group and its structures. For most, such a feat is impossible and many knights, though they may earn a name in the course of a single romance, never truly break …

Indexation And Ideologies: Latinx And Nahuatl Terms In Our Identity Journey, David Martinez-Prieto

Bilingual and Literacy Studies Faculty Publications

In this essay, I challenge unreflective linguistic indexation of Latino academia; specifically, the suppression of the inflexion “o” in generic nouns (as in Latinx) and appropriation of Nahuatl nouns. To do so, I analyze these two linguistic features in terms of historical macro- and micro-linguistic levels and, for the case of Latinx, I situate this socio-cultural practice in relation to Spanish morphology and semantics. Finally, I question if these linguistic practices of Latino (Latinx) scholars enhance group identity and social justice or, on the contrary, if this linguistic indexation merely isolates a selective group of U.S.-centered scholars.

Remaking Identities, Reworking Graduate Study : Stories From First-Generation-To-College Rhetoric And Composition Phd Students On Navigating The Doctorate., Ashanka Kumari

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation responds to the decreasing number of first-generation-to-college doctorates in the humanities and the limited scholarship on graduate students in Rhetoric and Composition. Scholars in Rhetoric and Composition have long been invested in discussions of academic and/or disciplinary enculturation, yet these discussions primarily focus on undergraduate students, with few studies on graduate students and far fewer on the doctoral students training to become the next wave of a profession. In this dissertation, I argue that if we engage intersectional identities as assets in the design of doctoral programs, access to higher education and academic enculturation can become more manageable …

From Davao City To Daly City: Examining Translanguaging And Transnationalism In The 1.5-Generation Filipin(A/O) Americans Of Daly City, Rita Ewing

Master's Theses

In the field of migration studies, research on transnationalism has been well

established. Applying an intersectional framework of post-colonial narrative and

linguistic anthropology to transnational migration, this research allows us to better

understand how the transnational immigrant deploys language. Through a nostalgia

studies approach, this study is able to analyze how transnational immigrants place value

on their heritage and second languages, and reflexively deploy their language sets to

reflect their unique positionality. This paper is a case study examination of five adult

members of the 1.5-generation of Filipin(a/o) American immigrants, who immigrated to

the US before the age of eighteen …

El Tango Y La Cultura Popular En La Reciente Narrativa Argentina, Monica A. Agrest

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

The aim of this doctoral thesis is to show that Tango as scenario, background, atmosphere or lending its stanzas and language, helps determine the tone and even the sentiment of disappointment and nostalgia, which are in much of Argentine recent narrative. In addition, this thesis aims, to answer questions like: How is it possible for Tango to transform itself into a literary component, and to be considered essential to Argentinean identity? Which of its characteristics allow it to provide literary language, atmosphere and even inspiration to the narrative’s creative process? How is the intertextual dialogue between its lyrics and the …

Book Review: Mitchell, R., Tracy-Ventura, N., & Mcmanus, K. (Eds.). (2015). Social Interaction, Identity And Language Learning During Residence Abroad., Roswita Dressler

Comparative and International Education / Éducation Comparée et Internationale

No abstract provided.

A Culture, A People, A Nation - Understanding Of A Culture Through Icons And Symbols., Adrienne J. Royo

Faculty Works

Addresses the global issues of icons and symbols as a tool for the definition that society ascribes to a particular culture, people, or nation, followed by a specific focus on Spain and Spanish culture.

The icons and symbols include such figures as Don Quijote, Reina Sofía, and Andrés Segovia, as well as, the Roman Acqueduct of Segovia, the Moorish fortress of Granada. The heritage of Toledo.

Coming Home: The Latina/O Queer Zone Of Comfort, Rita Urquijo-Ruiz

Modern Languages and Literatures Faculty Research

An autobiographical account about accepting and utlilizing the multifaceted aspects of one's identity as queers of color in order to transform one's community.

Part(Iend)O El Alma: Rebirthing The Self, Rita Urquijo-Ruiz

Modern Languages and Literatures Faculty Research

No abstract provided.

Pre-Imposition Vs. In Situ Negotiation Of Group And Individual Identities: Spanish And English In Us Service Encounters, Laura Callahan

Modern Languages & Literature

This paper examines the supposed opposition between essentialist or positivist approaches to identity—which categorize group and individual members by a priori properties of sex, race, ethnicity, and native speakerhood—and constructionism, which views such properties as relational and negotiable. Even when categories such as sex, race, ethnicity, and native speakerhood are considered to have been imposed a priori, there nonetheless persists a general recognition that these are at least to some extent social constructs—if not the categories themselves, the ideas we have about them. Using data from previous empirical work in Spanish and English code-choice in US service encounters, this paper …

Undocumented And Queer: Carlos Manuel’S La Vida Loca, Rita Urquijo-Ruiz

Modern Languages and Literatures Faculty Research

No abstract provided.

Infallible Texts And Righteous Interpretations: Don Quijote And Religious Fundamentalism, Matthew D. Stroud

Modern Languages and Literatures Faculty Research

Religion in Don Quijote has been a frequent subject of inquiry over the past century. As a "vehicle for religious expression," to use Ziolkowski's terminology (1), Cervantes's masterpiece has been studied as an analogy of the relationship between religious faith and the world around it (Ziolkowski 8), as a manifestation of the historic clash between the secularization of the modern era and the waning medieval domination by "religious institutions and symbols" (Ziolkowski 9, citing Berger 107), as a vessel of both the spirit and the letter of selected pronouncements of the Council of Trent (Descouzis 479), as a text that …

Metaphors Of Mathematics In Corneille's Theater, Nina Ekstein

Modern Languages and Literatures Faculty Research

Mathematical metaphors are a distinctive and characteristic feature of Corneille’s theater, closely tied to his dramatic aesthetics. I divide these metaphors into two groups, identities and combinatorics. The field of identities deals with different kinds of equations, from the level of language, where elements are equated or placed in some other relationship that can be expressed mathematically, to the level of plot, where, for example, the search for identity (e.g. who is Héraclius?) resembles an algebraic equation. Combinatorics involves the arrangements and combinations of elements, and finds its greatest application here in the question of the constitution of couples to …

Uncertainty In Corneille's Héraclius, Nina Ekstein

Modern Languages and Literatures Faculty Research

Scholars agree that Héraclius (1646) occupies the extreme point of plot complication in the Cornelian oeuvre. Numerous events have occurred prior to the action of the play, events that are necessary to the spectators' understanding of what transpires onstage. Twenty years before the play opens, Phocas assassinated the emperor Maurice as well as his sons and took his throne. Léontine, the royal governess, switched the youngest of Maurice's sons, Héraclius, with her own son, thus sacrificing the latter's life so that the royal blood of Maurice might survive. Not long after, Léontine made a second substitution, this time switching …

Performativity And Sexual Identity In Calderón’S Las Manos Blancas No Ofenden (White Hands Don't Offend), Matthew D. Stroud

Modern Languages and Literatures Faculty Research

Spanish comedia brims with examples of fluid gender identification. Not only do women frequently dress as men, but other characters almost always accept them as men or women depending solely on the clothes they wear. Is gender so superficial in these plays that it is merely a function of one's choosing the signifiers one wants to wear? Or is there an essentialism to gender that forces each character to assume the gender that corresponds to his or her sex in order to have a happy ending? Or is it something else, perhaps more reflective of Judith Butler's investigations into the …

Women's Images Effaced: The Literary Portrait In Seventeenth-Century France, Nina Ekstein

Modern Languages and Literatures Faculty Research

The literary portrait was extremely popular in France for a number of years during the mid-seventeenth century. With roots in salon society, the portrait became a genre in its own right during this period and was eventually incorporated in numerous other genres such as novels, memoirs, theater, and sermons. In this study, I will consider the close association between the initial vogue of portraiture and women, and examine the advantages and problems posed by the genre for women authors. I will trace the evolution of the literary portrait during the seventeenth century, in particular, the manner in which women were …