Spanish and Portuguese Language and Literature Commons^™

"El Corregidor" At The Crossroads: Desire, Law, And Coloniality In Martel's Zama, Leisa Kauffmann

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In "'El Corregidor at the Crossroads: Desire, Law and Coloniality in Martel's Zama" Leisa Kauffmann discusses Lucrecia Martel's filmic adaptation of Antonio DiBenedetto's 1952 novel, Zama. Highlighting the director's emphasis on the psychoanalytic (as opposed to the existentialist) dimensions of the novel, the essay follows the titular characater's unravelling and shows how Martel's film allegorizes colonial(ist) subjectivity. In Kauffmann's essay, various psychoanalytic theories (such as the work of Bhabha, Fanon, and Žižek), and critiques centering the notion of race in the Lacanian tradition are applied. In addition, differences between the novel and film, particularly regarding Zama's mutilation and …

The Call Of Cucurrucucú, Rachel Olivia Blair

Dissertations and Theses

This is a site of geologic excavation; where charged voices like porous monoliths and forked-tongue shapeshifters call out in fragmented polyphony. What lies broken or misshapen, what can be pieced back together.

What is purity when the body that is being inherited is drowning in murky waters.

The Extraction Unconscious: Solar-Powered Utopias In Catching The Sun (2015) And In The Name Of Lithium (2021), Isidora Cortés-Monroy

Critical Humanities

By comparing the depictions of future energy regimes in the two ecodocumentaries, Catching the Sun (2015) and In the Name of Lithium (2021), this article explores representations of post-carbon futures from the US and Argentina. Read closely alongside Frederic Jameson’s notions of utopias, the article delineates the extent to which a solar powered future challenges and reiterates current neocolonial extractivist structures. Basing myself on Patricia Yaeger’s concept of an “energy unconscious,” I argue that these solar utopias maintain an “extraction unconscious” that continues to produce sacrifice zones where primary commodities needed for the energy transition can be found. By analysing …

On The Edge Of The Abyss: Cultural Responses To Extractivism In The Andes, Jack Martinez Arias

Critical Humanities

This work examines the contemporary cultural productions of Cerro de Pasco, a city in constant destruction due to an ever-expanding open pit mine that has grown to over a mile wide since the 1950s. Drawing on Latin American environmental humanities and discursive analysis, I conduct a close reading of poems, stories, performances, and audiovisual works by local artists responding to this largely overlooked apocalyptic scenario. By analyzing narrative strategies such as repetition and irony, I identify recurring themes and establish common concerns related to extractivism, urban extinction, illness, and death. This study seeks to understand how these cultural productions envision …

La Representación Del Exilio En “Como Greenwich” De Mario Benedetti, María Elizabeth Nuño Plascencia

Homage to Alexander von Humboldt: Travels to and from Spain Throughout the Centuries / Homenaje a Alexander von Humboldt: Viajes hacia y desde España de todos los siglos

El proyecto estético del escritor Mario Benedetti se construyó en torno al exilio. El presente artículo analiza la representación del exilio en el cuento “Como Greenwich”, estableciendo un diálogo con postulados de Joseph Brodsky, Edward Said y María Zambrano. El relato de Benedetti explora la sensación de no pertenencia a una geografía específica, la dificultad de integrarse en una sociedad diferente y la alienación respecto a la identidad. La protagonista sufre la confusión ideológica derivada de conflictos políticos familiares, impactando en su visión del mundo y por los desafíos que conlleva el exilio. en sí mismo. Benedetti construye el relato …

Alexander Von Humboldt: Rescate Patrimonial Y Escritos Para Una Memoria De Justicia Social Latinoamericana, Gladys Ilarregui

Homage to Alexander von Humboldt: Travels to and from Spain Throughout the Centuries / Homenaje a Alexander von Humboldt: Viajes hacia y desde España de todos los siglos

Un códice, una estatuilla en piedra, un dibujo estelar en un papel plegado, el ocre y el rojo ladrillo decorando figuras extrañas. Un grupo familiar en una ceremonia, mujeres con glosas que salen de la boca, rostros con orejeras, el humo de los tiempos. Estas cosas agujereadas, maltratadas por la humedad y muchas veces rotas han soportado ya varios siglos, pero el coleccionismo europeo de la Ilustración las revisa, selecciona e interpreta. Desde la modernidad que Byung- Chul-Han describe como el momento de las “no-cosas”, cuando las cosas que estabilizaban la vida humana y le daban continuidad pierden su efecto …

Between Word And World: Textual Space In Modern Sephardic Literature, Inci Cetin

Comparative Literature M.A. Essays

In the context of modern Sephardic literature, this paper defines “textual space” as the narrative’s self-conscious arrangement of its own textual elements such as time, space, and language to negotiate a position vis-à-vis the nation-state that is neither fully subsumed within nor completely outside of it. Textual spaces neither conform to the nation state’s borders even though they write from it, nor to nationalist temporalities as they continue a narrative thread that reaches back to 15th-century Spain. Through Myriam Moscona’s Tela de sevoya (2012) and Mario Levi’s Istanbul Was a Fairytale (1999), this paper investigates how textual spaces are deliberately …

Imágenes De Silencio, Compromiso, Persecución Y Tortura: La Teología De La Liberación Y Su Encrucijada Con Las Dictaduras Del Cono Sur Desde Una Representación Cinematográfica, Marcial Martínez

Spanish and Portuguese ETDs

This dissertation examines the interaction between liberation theology and the

dictatorships of the Southern Cone from the 1960s to the 1980s through cinematic

representation. Filmmakers from Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Paraguay, and Uruguay

depict the political upheavals of the time, including the rise of leftist movements,

military regimes, and the influence of liberation theology, a progressive religious

ideology advocating for the oppressed. The study focuses on what is defined here

as the "cinematic canon of liberation theology," a body of films and documentaries

that legitimize, contest, or obscure ideologies tied to this movement vis-à-vis the

dictatorships. These films contest the silence …

Voices In The Borderlands: Reimagining Identity, Cultural Belonging, And Dystopian Spaces In Anzaldúa’S Borderlands And Viramontes’S “The Cariboo Café”, Oralia G. Ramos

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis explores how Gloria Anzaldúa’s Borderlands/La Frontera (1987) and Helena María Viramontes’ short story “The Cariboo Café” (1985) portray marginalized individuals navigating liminal spaces of identity, oppression, and survival. Borderlands/La Frontera and “The Cariboo Café” show how systematic violence and displacement shatter the self, pushing characters to navigate trauma in a dystopian space. Sonya, Macky, the café owner, and the grieving mother represent Anzaldúa’s concepts of borderland subjectivity, betrayal, and spectral haunting.

Sonya and Macky, two undocumented children, represent Anzaldúa’s borderlands subjects and reside in a state of nepantla, an in-between space of cultural dislocation. The café owner …

Maria Firmina Dos Reis: The Erasure Of An Author And The Recuperation Of A Legacy, Anderson Gomes Barbosa

Spanish and Portuguese ETDs

The very first woman to write a novel in Brazil was Afro-Brazilian: Maria Firmina dos Reis published Ursula in 1859. The novel, published with her own savings, was the first abolitionist piece ever written in the country in which Black enslaved characters were treated as equals to white ones. Tragically, the book disappeared from shelves in Brazil for almost a century. Maria Firmina was not only Afro-Brazilian and a woman, but also from Nordeste, a region that is discriminated against by other parts of Brazil. I believe her erasure in the Brazilian literary canon was not a mere …

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 …

Anotaciones De Un Viaje Sin Carreteras, Julio Alejandro Barrera Moreno

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

“Viajaremos juntos, tú y yo, en carro, desde Miami hasta Nueva York”, me prometió mi papá, poco antes de desaparecer, presuntamente muerto en los Estados Unidos por traficar con drogas, hace tanto tiempo que ya casi ni lo recuerdo. “Viajaremos juntos, tú y yo, en carro, desde Miami hasta Nueva York”, le prometí a mi hijo, poco antes de abordar el avión que me trajo hasta los Estados Unidos, hace ya tres años, tanto, que cada vez que nos reencontramos, no lo reconozco de lo tanto que crece. Y desde entonces, un imposible nos atraviesa, una promesa que solo a …

Efecto De Soles, Natalia Soriano Moreno

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

En este texto quiero exponer cómo fue el proceso de creación de Efecto de soles, el cual se desarrolló entre los años 2022 y 2025. El libro presenta la cotidianidad de un barrio que un día se ve afectado por distintos cambios en la naturaleza cuando aparece un fenómeno particular: los soles de algunas casas se vuelven cuadrados y aumentan su nivel de alumbramiento. Esto hace que el entorno natural del barrio comience a cambiar: aparecen gusanos fosforescentes, las flores pierden su olor, la lluvia se vuelve negra, las mariposas se van y a los árboles les salen hojas de …

Pedro Aceves Mfa Thesis, Pedro M. Aceves

Electronic Theses, Projects, and Dissertations

My Work is about looking at Cruising through a queer decolonial lens. Using multiple mediums such as photo, glass, Augmented reality, and film, I explore these queer histories and aesthetics through not just an anthropological approach but also an artistic epistemological approach weaving together narratives of prehispanic and modern queer Latinidad.

Del Policial Clásico Al Post-Neopolicial: La Estética Del Crimen En La Narrativa Mexicana, 1940–2020, Maria Carpio-Manickam

Purdue Studies in Romance Literatures

Del policial clásico al post-neopolicial: La estética del crimen en la narrativa mexicana, 1940–2020 is a comprehensive study of Mexican crime fiction from cultural, gender, social, political, and literary perspectives. This book covers the different phases Mexican crime fiction has evolved through in the past eighty years: classical detective fiction (1940–1960s), género negro (1970s), neopolicial (1980–2000), narconarrative (1990s to the present), and post-neopolicial (2000 to the present). The first half of the book offers an overview of the development of crime fiction in the United States, how it was adopted by Mexican writers in the 1940s, and the changes it …

Culpa, Redención Y Determinismo: Una Lectura De El Llano En Llamas De Juan Rulfo, Cristina Gomez Sanchez

Vernacular: New Connections in Language, Literature, & Culture

Este artículo analiza tres relatos de El llano en llamas de Juan Rulfo —“No oyes ladrar los perros”, “Acuérdate” y “Diles que no me maten”— para explorar cómo los personajes lidian con la culpa y la búsqueda de redención. Se estudia cómo sus decisiones pasadas condicionan sus acciones y relaciones presentes, poniendo énfasis en las dinámicas de causa y efecto que estructuran sus destinos. Se investiga el determinismo social presente en estos relatos, mostrando cómo las condiciones rurales y las limitadas oportunidades afectan las posibilidades de redención de los personajes. A través de este análisis, se examina …