Spanish and Portuguese Language and Literature Commons^™

Género Y Sexualidad En Seis Novelas Del Siglo Xxi, Sandra Chang Raak

Dissertations

From its inception Latin American literature has used gender and sexuality as rhetorical devices to approach the topic of cultural identity. For instance, Hernán Cortés in his Cartas de Relación embodies a type of masculinity that overdetermined the lives of the Amerindian people. Centuries later, the modernismo movement headed by Rubén Darío reacted to a Latin American societal shift towards the prevalence of a materialistic culture brought about by the advent of industrial civilization. During the 1960s Latin American literature experienced a rapid blooming that has come to be known as El Boom. Both landmarks, modernism and El Boom …

The Minatory Minotaur: Demythologizing Myth In “The House Of Asterion”, Evan Chiovari

The Pegasus Review: UCF Undergraduate Research Journal

Recent critics of Jorge Luis Borges’s “The House of Asterion” (1947) have traced the author’s revisions in the original manuscript, charting his changing arrangement of information through the text. This essay investigates the information itself through structuralist and historicist theory. A structuralist reading analyzes Asterion’s worldview and shows how various narrators dock the integrity of his voice. Historicism probes aspects of religion, biology, and architecture to limn the true complexity of Asterion’s ties with society. Together, these theories reveal a trove of intricate intrigue and doubt. In this study I examine how Asterion, a reinvention of the Minotaur, is painstakingly …

Disrupting The (Post) Neoliberal Order In Latin America Through The Representation Of Fictional Corporate Office Narratives In Argentina And Mexico (2007-2010), Juliana Todescan

Spanish and Portuguese ETDs

Due to the expansion of the neoliberal and global order in Latin America in the 1990s, national states and citizens are subjected to the free market interests regulated and managed by for profit corporations and the financial industry. Considering this a critical change in the social organization of Latin America, I compare narratives from Argentina and Mexico that imagine cosmopolitan cities being colonized by the corporate logic of profit. My analysis focuses on the representation of low level office workers in Antonio Ortuño’s novel Recursos humanos (2007), Guillermo Saccomanno’s novel El oficinista (2010), and Aníbal Jarkowski’s El trabajo (2007), and …

Vínculos Amorosos/Lazos Virtuales: De Los "Cuartos Obscuros"A Grindr En Las Narrativas De J.Marchant Lazcano, A. Fuguet Y P. Fernández, Fernando A. Blanco

Faculty Journal Articles

This article analyzes the gay imaginaries of cruising depicted by three Chilean novels.

Re-Reading Alencar's Iracema Through Saer's Lens, Felicia Trievel

Vernacular: New Connections in Language, Literature, & Culture

Abstract:

The topic of European colonization is one that is discussed frequently throughout Latin American literature in a variety of different manners. Two books that discuss the colonization of different countries in extremely different ways are Iracema (1865) by José de Alencar and El entenado (1983) by Juan José Saer. The former examines the colonization of Brazil by Portuguese colonists, taking away much of the culture of the indigenous people previously inhabiting Brazil. El entenado examines the colonization of Argentina by the Spaniards. When one reads these two novels it is impossible not to compare the two due to the …

María Teresa Ramírez Nieva: La Griot De Los Ancestros Y Las Ancestras, Catalina Rojas

Vernacular: New Connections in Language, Literature, & Culture

María Teresa Ramírez Nieva: La Griot de los Ancestros y las Ancestras

La poesía de María Teresa Ramírez es una poesía de resistencia y cimarronaje, de reafirmación de la vida y la libertad, de “recuperación y defensa de los territorios ancestrales” que han sido históricamente amenazados y usurpados en un Pacífico colombiano de abandono, guerra territorial, desplazamiento y muerte. Es a través de sus obras La noche de mi piel (1988), Flor de Palenque (2008), Abalenga (2008), Mabungú Triunfo (2013), Mabungú Triunfo: Cosmogonía Africana Tomo II (2016), como se eleva la voz poética de la ancestralidad Pacífica alrededor de la …

La Teoría Del “Generolecto” Observada En La Llamada De Lauren De Paloma Pedrero Y Entre Villa Y Una Mujer Desnuda De Sabina Berman, Thomas Tsai

Student Scholar Symposium Abstracts and Posters

Created and popularized by Deborah Tannen, the Genderlect Theory explains how through social contexts, men and women have different ways of communicating. According to Tannen, men focus more on status, while women focus more on forming connections. On the other hand, there is also machismo, the behavior and attitude men partake to show that they are “manly” or “superior” to women and others they deem as inferior. Through the literary theatrical works, "La llamada de Lauren" by Paloma Pedrero and "Entre Villa y una mujer" desnuda by Sabina Berman, we can see similarities and differences in the Genderlect Theory and …

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 …

Kinetics For Enzymatic Conversion Of Biomass To Glucose, Jordan Broadwater

Undergraduate Honors Theses

Biofuels are a sought-after alternative for fossil fuels in today’s society. More specifically, cellulose-based biofuel is an avenue of research intending to limit waste and provide new renewable energy. Cellulose is a rigid polymer of glucose monomers that is found abundantly across different agriculture crops. However, its stability is a barrier to energy production from this source. Pretreatment followed by hydrolysis of cellulosic materials serves a potential to produce glucose to be used in biofuels in larger quantities compared to other methods. This project studied the effect microwave pretreatment and oxygenation have on hydrolysis of cellulose in Arundo Donax. Arundo …

Service-Learning: A Translation Of Documents Into Spanish On Behalf Of Learning For All, Aidan Posey

Theses/Capstones/Creative Projects

Learning for ALL (LFA) is a 501(c)3 nonprofit based in Omaha, NE. LFA offers resources to adults in the community by offering a variety of classes in literacy, English language, and Adult Basic Education. Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, much of the learning at LFA has transitioned to the online learning portal, Burlington English. However, the fact that Burlington English is presented and written in English poses a large barrier to the accessibility of online learning material. Current LFA management utilizes Google Translate to try and translate the steps to log into this platform and while a valuable tool, Google …

Comparing African Cultural Retention And Its Effect On Racial Attitudes In The Music And National Identities Of Cuba And The United States, Lucie Turkel

Honors Scholar Theses

This project investigates to what extent the African roots of popular music in Cuba and the United States are acknowledged and examines if this level of cultural acknowledgement has any influence on the postcolonial social, cultural, and economic treatment of African Americans and Afro-Cubans. Does a greater and/or more widespread acceptance of African cultural retention and overall African heritage in a country’s national identity help alleviate racism in that country? Using primary sources from Cuban and American music and cultural periodicals, economic statistics, and political and cultural histories, I have determined that Cuba has a higher level of African cultural …

Game[R]Over, Giancarlo Huapaya

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

GAME[R]OVER es un libro de poesía documental, que expone las trayectorias de la supremacía blanca en Phoenix, Arizona a través de la economía de la recreación, de la exposición y del espectáculo.

Island Girl Can't Swim, Laura Vazquez Lopez

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

Island Girl Can't Swim is an exploration of romantic love by and about someone who seemingly does not understand it. Through different frameworks, those of Puerto Rico's colonialism, pop culture and personal experience, understanding is attempted within a society with rigid definitions of love. This rigidity extends beyond those of heteronormativity, nationality, and culture to include, and center, experience and what qualifies as love. Through a narrative constructed through poems with characters, such as Island Girl and her main love interest Border Boy, Island Girl Can't Swim blurs the lines of expectations among a variety of structures that are considered …

A World Of Infinite Possibilities: Recoding Popular Culture In Modern U.S. Ethnic Fiction, Todd Martinez

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

This project examines how the U.S. ethnic authors Ralph Ellison, Maxine Hong Kingston and Junot Díaz reflect the dynamic, reciprocal process of transculturation by decoding popular cultural forms. Using strategies made available by cultural studies, hemispheric theory and neoMarxism, critical attention will be directed to each author’s major literary work: Ellison’s Invisible Man, Kingston’s Tripmaster Monkey, and Díaz’s The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao. This dissertation further analyzes a hitherto overlooked area of U.S. multiethnic literary studies: the ethnic subject’s relationship to encoded popular culture forms and how they impact dentity formation. Recent scholarship has focused on the ethnic …

Lo Afrocubano: Exploring Afro-Cuban Culture In Music, Literature, & Art, Pre- & Post-Revolution, Grace Maffucci

World Languages and Cultures Student Scholarship

Majors: Music and Spanish
Faculty Mentor: Dr. Monica Simal

After the abolition of slavery on the island in 1886, Black Cubans struggled for equality and a place in a White-dominated society. The twentieth century brought about a deeper exploration of Afro-Cuban culture and identity through several forms of art. This project delves into the music, literature, and art of twentieth century Afro-Cuban artists and examines how they used the arts to communicate their identity to a society in political turmoil. It compares the representation of Blacks and Blackness before and during Fidel Castro’s revolution. The project also explores how the …

Central American Rivers As Sites Of Colonial Contestation, Adrian Taylor Kane

World Languages Faculty Publications and Presentations

In the introduction to Troubled Waters: Rivers in Latin American Imagination (2013), Elizabeth Pettinaroli and Ana María Mutis have argued that rivers in Latin American literature constitute a “locus for the literary exploration of questions of power, identity, resistance, and discontent.” Many works of testimonial literature and literature of resistance written during and about the Central American civil wars of the 1970s and 1980s as a means of denouncing and resisting various forms of oppression would support their thesis. In the 2004 film Innocent Voices, directed by Luis Mandoki, Mario Bencastro’s 1997 story “Había una vez un río,” and …

Con La Pluma Entre Dos Mundos - Vintatge Edition - Prologue, Damaris Serrano, Fátima Araúz, Megan Mckarns, Michael Daniel Curtis Stanley, María Astudillo

Con la pluma entre dos mundos

It has been said that writing is knowledge. This second season of the student magazine Con la pluma entre dos mundos [With the Pen Between Two Worlds] is a testament to that.

This project was born in 2005, when I arrived at Wright State. It was the result of my wanting to share the amazement and admiration I felt on reading the written works of my students in very different subjects: from Composition I, II and III to seminars on special topics in Spanish, which included culture and literature. From the elementary language to Conversation courses, in which participants had …

Framing The Border: Liminality In The Network Narratives Of Alejandro González Iñárritu, Muhammad Muzammal

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This thesis explores liminality conveyed as displacement before death in the network narrative films of Alejandro Gonzalez Iñárritu. Due to their depiction of existential crises and possibly fatal scenarios of several characters in different countries and regions, these network narrative films are colloquially referred to as the “Death Trilogy.” Therefore, rearranging the many strands of death-related abstractions and notions in these films around liminality becomes a jumping-off point to explore deeper layers of these works. Through interdisciplinary yet markedly film studies excavations, this thesis projects the liminal spaces of Iñárritu’s films onto border spaces. With borders considered as sites of …

Auto®Ficción Latinx De Nueva York (1999–2020), Jacqueline Herranz Brooks

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This research on the intersection of Literary Criticism, Latino Studies, Persona Studies, and Performance Studies has led me to question the accepted definitions of autoficción (Doubrovsky, Gasparini, Alberca, Casas, Schlikers) and expand that definition into a more multifaceted and operational term. Hence, I created auto®ficción, a new term describing the hybrid creations of a group of underrepresented contemporary Latinx authors living/producing/circulating their work in New York City, during the first two decades of the 21^st Century. For these authors, their life experiences and quotidian uses of this city’s spaces are the subjects of their work. Auto®ficción draws attention …

Análisis De "Efluvios" De Agustina Guffain, Dra. Clara Román-Odio

AGUSTINA GUFFAIN VDA. DE DOITTAU

No abstract provided.

Con La Pluma Entre Dos Mundos - Post Edition - Prologue, Volume 2, Number 4, Damaris Serrano, Fátima Araúz, Megan Mckarns, Michael Daniel Curtis Stanley, Morgan Foister

Con la pluma entre dos mundos

In Volume II, there are 4 issues or journals, three of Latin American literature and one of Advanced Composition (years 2020-2021). This volume has been named “Post” because of its postmodern approach within Hispanic Cultural Studies.

These issues are also of great importance because they respond to the literary, professional, and linguistic work in Spanish produced during the peak of the pandemic, when teaching had to become a synchronous experience through virtual space.

The Survey of Spanish American Literature is part of the core curriculum for the B.A. in Spanish, offered by the Spanish program, at Wright State University. However, …

"There Was Also The Music": A Literary Analysis Of Puerto Rican Identity In The Works Of Sandra Maria Esteves And Judith Ortiz Cofer, Keyla A. Robles

Honors Undergraduate Theses

Puerto Rican culture often includes music as a method of expressing cultural identity. For instance, music has been considered a symbol of resistance, identity, and performative culture for many Puerto Ricans. This thesis will heavily rely on the involvement of Afro-Latin music in literature to determine ways that Puertorriqueñidad can be defined. To do this, I will examine how Puerto Rican writers present their identity in their works to define what it means to be Puerto Rican. These writers include the poet Sandra María Esteves and author Judith Ortiz Cofer. Throughout their literary works, they express several connections to their …

Beyond "Viuda De": Practical Approaches To Promoting Mexican Books Printed At Women-Owned Businesses, Taylor Leigh, Colleen Barrett

Library Presentations

Women print shop owners have existed for much longer than most people realize; the first examples in Mexico date to the seventeenth century. Unfortunately, these texts are not always clearly described in a way that is findable beyond searching “viuda de.” Though many title-pages describe their businesses in terms of being a widow of their husband, these business owners deserve credit for their entrepreneurial efforts and should be findable in their own right. This poster would highlight the strategies and steps taken by a Hispanic Studies Librarian and a Rare Books Librarian to better promote these types of works held …

Redefiniendo La Protesta Indígena En Los Andes: Representaciones En (Y A Través De) La Literatura Y Los Medios Audiovisuales, Adriana Milena Rojas Castro

All Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Other Capstone Projects

The following thesis is a study of the Andean Region and the representation of Indigenous protest movements in novels and audiovisual productions from the twentieth century. Mainly, I focus on Indigenista novels (Raza de Bronce, El Mundo es Ancho y Ajeno, Huasipungo, and José Tombé), Oralitura (Oral literature traditions) from Indigenous authors like Fredy Chikangana and Elvira Espejo, and audiovisual productions from white/mestizos with collaboration and guide of Indigenous communities. This thesis discusses how audiovisual productions from white mestizos reinforce stereotypes about Indigenous protest movements established in Indigenista novels. In contrast, decolonization and redefinition of Indigenous protest movements occur in …

El Cyborg En El Papel : Virtualidad Digital En La Novela Hispanoamericana Contemporánea (2000-2018), Jaime Mundo

Legacy Theses & Dissertations (2009 - 2024)

El propósito de esta disertación es explorar cómo la narrativa contemporánea hispanoamericana representa la virtualidad digital. La noción de virtualidad está influenciada por la teoría de la crítica cultural y literaria Katherine Hayles que argumenta que la virtualidad es la percepción cultural de que los objetos materiales están interpenetrados por patrones de información. La noción de virtualidad digital en esta tesis no apunta a un mundo alternativo, sino que está ligada a lo que sucede en el espacio de interacción entre el individuo y el dispositivo tecnológico. Las novelas analizadas en esta disertación crean una visión de sistemas y dispositivos …

Con La Pluma Entre Dos Mundos - Blogs Of Latin American Culture And Identity - Prologue, Blog 1-2, Damaris Serrano, Fátima Araúz, Megan Mckarns, Michael Daniel Curtis Stanley

Con la pluma entre dos mundos

This volume III contains two blogs on Hispanic/Latin American culture and identity but goes beyond a link in cyberspace: the creative work presented in these blogs represent a journey through the culture of Spanish-speaking countries –including the United States– and dwell on the peculiarities that shape identity.

The works are the product of intense discussion and analysis in class, by groups and in individual and collective presentations, and consider historical aspects from the conquest by the Spaniards to the present time.

A dynamic that contrasts Modernity with Postmodernity, the classic with the innovative prevails. Here you will find texts in …

El Inmigrante En El Cine Del Siglo Xxi: Un Análisis De La Identidad Indocumentada Y Sus Esfuerzos Por Mantener Una Comunidad Unida Dentro Y Fuera De La Pantalla, Guadalupe Valente

CMC Senior Theses

El cine en los Estados Unidos ha sido una parte clave de su cultura por muchos años. La industria del cine en los Estados Unidos es un negocio de miles de millones de dólares y con unas de las influencias más inmensas en el país. En términos del género inmigratorio en el cine, existen varias percepciones negativas de la comunidad Latina – incluyendo entre ellas: el traficante de drogas, el violador, el ladrón de trabajo, el empleado doméstico o el trabajador de “blue collar.” Aunque existen muchos estereotipos para los latinos, unos de los personajes más maltratados es el inmigrante …

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.

Using A Smart Phone To Learn Spanish: Does It Work And Will Students Use It?, Andrew J. Demil, Alysha Assaf, Ryan Cragun

The Coastal Review

Over time, mobile devices have penetrated the classroom, requiring new and beneficial ways to implement classroom instruction. Research suggests that Short Message Service (SMS) based instruction is an effective tool for acquiring second language (L2) vocabulary and idiom knowledge (Hayati, Jalilifar, & Mashhadi; Lu,). Additionally, studies have found that students believe that mobile learning (m-learning) is beneficial to acquiring a second language (Cavus & Ibrahim; Hayati, Jalilifar, & Mashhadi; Lu, 2008). This study examined whether m-learning can lead to Spanish vocabulary familiarity and if sentence comprehension outperforms reading definitions. Participants were 29 native English speakers studying Spanish as a second …

Mas Yo Resto: Entrevista Con Nancy Morejón, Vanessa Pérez-Rosario

Publications and Research

Como afirma este dossier, Morejón ha sido reconocida como una de las escritoras e intelectuales más célebres y veneradas del período revolucionario cubano, y una de las escritoras caribeñas más importantes del siglo XX y XXI. Ha publicado más de quince colecciones de poesía y numerosos ensayos. Lectora y traductora cuidadosa de los escritores e intelectuales del Caribe francófono del siglo XX, Morejón ha traducido del francés al español las obras de Aimé Césaire, Jacques Roumain y Édouard Glissant, entre otros. De 1986 a 1993 y nuevamente de 2000 a 2006, se desempeñó como directora del Centro de Estudios del …