Spanish and Portuguese Language and Literature Commons^™

Las Ciudades Del Deseo: Las Políticas De Género, Sexualidad Y Espacio Urbano En El Caribe Hispano, Elena Valdez

Purdue Studies in Romance Literatures

Las ciudades del deseo explores the representations of gender, sexuality, and urban space in contemporary narratives from Cuba, the Dominican Republic, and Puerto Rico. By examining a corpus of novels published since 2000, this book shows how the changes in urban landscape create a new image of the city that destroys traditional gender roles and produces different discourses on sexuality. At moments of crisis in political agendas that took place between 1990 and 2000, queer subjects became spokespeople outlining new national projects on each island, while claiming space in the national imaginary. The nation is no longer built on blood …

Defining Black Masculinities: Intersectional Analyses Of Gender, Race And Sexuality In Caribbean And Latin American Literature, 1955 To Present, Jerry Eugene Scruggs Jr.

Doctoral Dissertations

The objective of my dissertation is to define and construct parameters for analyzing the Afro-descendant male experience in four specific texts: Mi compadre el General Sol [General Sun, My Brother] (1955), Adire y el tiempo roto [Adire and Broken Time] (1967), Sortilégio II: mistério negro de Zumbi redivivo [Sorcery 2: Black Mystery of Resurrected Zumbí] (1979), and Negro: Este color que me queda bonito [Black: This Color Looks Good on Me] (2013). Black masculinities are distinct and this study sets five parameters: 1) Sexual Prowess, 2) Contentious relationship with the White woman, 3) Violence and Toxic Masculinity, 4) Emotive Numbness, …

Voicing Narrative Through Transatlanticism And Transformation In Historia De La Monja Alférez By Catalina De Erauso, Morgan Schneider

Masters Theses

This thesis analyzes various aspects of Catalina de Erauso’s Historia de la Monja Alférez, escrita por ella misma (1829). The first chapter explores notions of interior and exterior as categories that determine not only the protagonist’s movement in space but also their expression of self-identity over the course of the text, focalized through first-person narration. Additionally, the chapter brings to light how the interior narrative parallels Erauso’s desire to share their transformation from nun in a Spanish convent to a soldier in the Americas with picaresque tendencies. Erauso leverages the power of exterior appearances through the self-fashioning of their public …

Primitivismo Y Poesía Femenina En El Cono Sur: Gabriela Mistral, Alfonsina Storni Y Juana De Ibarbourou, Ramon Muniz

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Primitivism is a philosophical attitude and artistic view based on the search for origins. It is linked to a simpler conception of life and has been used as a strategy to critique modernity through literature and art, as well as a means to subvert traditional and academicist paradigms in cultural production. Although most scholars have considered Primitivism as a problem of Western ideology, Erik Camayd-Freixas, Marianna Torgovnick, and Ben Etherington have shown that Primitivism is present in all cultures and that its strategies have been deployed to deal with racial, ecological, economic, artistic, and gender issues.

My dissertation analyzes the …

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 …

The Imitation Of Ecuadorian Assibilated Rhotics By Naïve Andalusian Speakers From Seville, Maria De La Esperanza Ruiz-Peña

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

The purpose of the present thesis is to establish whether Flege’s “equivalence classification” (Flege, 1995, p. 239) operates in the same way in auditory imitation of an unfamiliar dialect as it does in second language (L2) acquisition of speech. In order to do so, this study investigates how Andalusian Spanish speakers imitate assibilated rhotics produced in Ecuadorian Spanish. Despite substantial growth in interest in D2 phonological acquisition in later years (e.g., Babel, 2009; Nielsen, 2011), little research has been done to determine whether the mechanisms that underlie the production of L2 are also responsible for the auditory imitation of an …

El Argumento Para Una Tercera Opción De Género Neutro En La Lengua Española (The Argument For A Third Gender-Neutral Option In The Spanish Language), Fiona Siobhan Bean

Undergraduate Theses, Professional Papers, and Capstone Artifacts

All nouns, determiners, and many adjectives in the Spanish language are grammatically designated as either masculine or feminine, and the default is always the masculine form. For example, “the tall boy” in Spanish is “el chico alto”, “the tall girl” is “la chica alta”, and if there is a group of tall children the plural form is the masculine “los chicos altos” even if there are females in the group. This binary gender division and masculine default can cause harm, however, when used in reference to women and non-binary people. This paper explores the recent movement to include a third …

Revisiting Juchitán: Witnessing An Indigenous Mexico Within The Latin American Archive, Michelle G. De La Cruz

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Throughout archives of photographic collections, as one discovers the focused, artistic selective process of images that become part of a photographer’s collection, one must venture further and ask: will these choices be decisively remembered by an individual or collective audience or actively be dismissed, misunderstood, and denied presence? For my master’s thesis, I will be analyzing Mexican photographer Graciela Iturbide’s photobook, Juchitán de las Mujeres, a photo-collection of the women-empowered indigenous society in Oaxaca, Mexico which erupted during Latin American photography’s prime in the 20th century, turning away from a deeply exoticized past and towards a celebration of Hispanism as …

La Sensibilidad De La Lente Crítica: Las Dinámicas De Poder Y Los Papeles De Género En El Cine Mexicano Contemporáneo, China Campagnuolo

Honors Theses

This project explores the socio-cultural evolution of gender dynamics through the analysis of four contemporary Mexican films: Amores perros (2000) directed by Alejandro González Iñárritu, Y tu mamá también (2001) directed by Alfonso Cuarón, Las elegidas (2015) directed by David Pablos, and Roma (2018) also directed by Cuarón. These directors are part ofMexico’s cinematic “New Wave,” a modern resurgence of Mexican film that depicts a realistic side of the nation’s political, social, and economic issues. In the opening chapter, I analyzeAmores perros and Y tu mamá también, two earlier films of the “New Wave.” These movies areheavily focused on toxic …

O Sucesso Do Inacabado: Clarice Lispector E Sua “Children’S Corner” Na Revista Senhor, Mariela Méndez

Latin American, Latino and Iberian Studies Faculty Publications

In 1959, when the sophisticated magazine Senhor was launched in Rio de Janeiro, the renowned writer Clarice Lispector was invited to join this new publishing venture targeted at educated upper-class men. As a separated woman in need of an income to support herself and her two children, Lispector accepted the offer, regularly contributing with chronicles/stories, and starting at the end of 1961 a column that she named “Children's Corner” in the section “Sr. & Cía.” These contributions are fragmentary, exploratory, somewhat hinting at failure. This article reads Lispector’s texts for Senhor as interventions that enact a rupture in a narrative …

Propuestas Para (Re)Construir Una Nación : El Teatro De Emilia Pardo Bazán, Margot Versteeg

Purdue University Press Book Previews

Propuestas para (re)construir una nación explores how Emilia Pardo Bazán (1851–1921) imagines and engenders the Spanish nation in her theatrical production staged and/or published between 1898 and 1909. In the aftermath of Spain’s colonial losses, when Spain’s male authors, in a growing mood of collective introspection, directed their attention to the homeland, Pardo Bazán generated a series of theatrical proposals to revitalize the nation. In her plays, she manifests her ideas about Spain’s fin de siècle crisis, reflects on Spain’s place in the international arena (emphasizing the nation’s civilizing mission), critiques the intoxicating power of the so-called golden legend (Spain’s …

Undying (And Undead) Modern National Myths: Cannibalism And Racial Mixture In Contemporary Brazilian Vampire Fiction, Jacob C. Brown

Alambique. Revista académica de ciencia ficción y fantasía / Jornal acadêmico de ficção científica e fantasía

Contemporary cultural media illustrates the vampire as an important symbolic figure in the Brazilian imaginary. For example, in twentieth and twenty-first century Brazilian fiction, television, and political discourse, vampires have risen from their supposedly European origins as expressions of urban decay, comic excess, and government corruption in Brazil. Beyond these representations, I focus on three contemporary novels in which the vampire also plays a starring role. O vampiro que descobriu o Brasil (1999) by Ivan Jaf, Aventuras do vampiro de Palmares (2014) by Gerson Lodi-Ribeiro, and Dom Pedro I Vampiro (2015) by Nazarethe Fonseca stand out from other creative reimaginings …

Seeing (As) The Eroticized And Exoticized Other In Spanish Im/Migration Cinema: A Critical Look At The (De)Criminalization Of Migrants And Impunity Of Hegemonic Perpetrators, Maureen Tobin Stanley

Studies in 20th & 21st Century Literature

This article examines cinematic perspective in six Spanish im/migration films to show that by resituating the identification from an alignment with that of a hegemonic character (who accepts the systematic bias that confers impunity to perpetrators) to identification with a criminalized migrant subject, these films 1) denounce systemic intersectionality that confers impunity to perpetrators and criminalizes the racialized and/or feminized other and 2) aim at fostering empathy in the hegemonically identified viewer. Parameters for the selection of the six films are: immigration to Spain, African (whether geographic or ethnic) origins, eroticization of the migrant, objectification/(ab)use/commodification/victimization of the Other, criminalization of …

Masculinidad Y Nación: Modelos Alternativos De Masculinidad En Las Obras De Juan Goytisolo Y Mario Vargas Llosa, Jose M. Morcillo Gomez

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation focuses on the construction of national discourse from a gender perspective and examines how the concepts of nation and masculinity intersect each other in the works of Spanish writer Juan Goytisolo (1931-2017) and Peruvian Nobel laureate Mario Vargas Llosa (1936). This study sheds light on how fiction and real life events are interconnected in some of the novels and autobiographical works of both authors. The works analysed include: Señas de identidad (1966), Reivindicación del conde don Julián (1970), Juan sin tierra (1975), Coto vedado (1985), and Carajicomedia (2000) by Goytisolo, as well as La ciudad y los perros …

Gendered Identity And Investment In Language Learning: A Case Study Of Heritage Spanish Speakers, Farah Ali

Friday Forum

Much of the existing research in second and heritage language acquisition (S/HLA) takes a traditional approach of focusing on the cognitive processes involved in S/HLA, as well as the resulting outcomes. A relatively recent approach that has emerged in S/HLA scholarship, however, relates the learner to the social world in terms of how sociocultural contexts may shape an individual’s language learning experiences and their personal investment in the process. This emergent approach also challenges traditional categorical conceptions of identity, positing that it is dynamic, fluid, constructed, and negotiated in social contexts. Following this approach, my objective is to demonstrate how …

Addressing Diversity And Difference In Contemporary Spanish Lesbian Literature: Reading Illy Nes’S El Lago Rosa And Cristina Cuesta’S “Zoe Y Haydee”, Megan Sheldon

Studies in 20th & 21st Century Literature

Illy Nes’s novel El lago rosa (The Pink Lake, 2004) and Cristina Cuesta’s short story “Zoe y Haydee” (Zoe and Haydee, 2007) depict travel and cross-cultural queer relationships that call attention to racial and class differences as well as ethnic and cultural divides. Both narratives raise questions concerning the representation of queer women of color in Spanish fiction of the new millennium. This article focuses on the diverse cultural, political and personal struggles that surround the formation and negotiation of sexual identity, emphasizing the fact that LGBTQ identity is not necessarily cross-culturally or universally constructed around identical interests, desires, or …

“La Culpa Es De Los Tlaxcaltecas”: Gender, The Burden Of Blame, And A Re-Examination Of The Myth Of La Malinche, Erin M. Lanza

Student Publications

This paper explores Elena Garro’s short story “La culpa es de los tlaxcaltecas.” Supplementing close readings with analyses drawn from relevant authors and theorists, I highlight the key ideas regarding gender, identity, memory, and history that Garro weaves into her text, and I consider Garro’s emphasis on patriarchal control, the internalization of female culpability for the Spanish Conquest of Mexico, and women’s role in constructing and reconstructing historical discourses. By travelling into her own and Mexico’s past, Laura Aldama, one of the main female protagonists in the story, not only challenges gendered histories but also reveals how patriarchal thought continues …

Jenyffer Nascimento’S Epic Poetry Of Black Female Empowerment Jenyffer Nascimento: A Poesia Épica De Empoderamento Da Mulher Negra, Sarah S. Ohmer

Publications and Research

This article presents results of auto-ethnography, literary analysis, and fieldwork research to answer an underlying, perhaps unresolved, concern, relevant to this dossier: how can we produce an ethical dialogue as transnational Black Feminists, among Black Brazilian women, and North American Black women, in an ethical manner, while realizing that one may (not ever) be a part of the “carnival without you in it.” Fertile Earth/ Terra Fertil tells a long overdue epic story to an audience within the poetry: Black women, family members, other times a Black man, Brazil, white women, or “you,” undefined. Joy to pain to chaos, sensuality, …

“¿Qué Coño Es Esto?”: Exploración De Identidad De Género Y De Orientación Sexual En La Mucama De Omicunlé, Vianny C. Lugo Aracena

Honors Theses

La mucama de Omicunlé (2015) es una novela escrita por la autora dominicana Rita Indiana, que lidia con temas que son considerados tabúes dentro de la sociedad dominicana: sexualidad, identidad de género, y espiritualidad afrodescendiente. Indiana utiliza la espiritualidad afrodescendiente para facilitar la exploración de las respectivas identidades de género y de orientación sexual en los personajes principales, Acilde y Argenis. El utilizar la espiritualidad afrodescendiente también permite ver a la novela como un texto literario que utiliza el patakí, una narración que contiene conocimientos afrodescendientes, como elemento estructural principal. Los temas que normalmente caracterizan a los patakíes son abundantes …

Hillary L. Chute. Disaster Drawn: Visual Witness, Comics, And Documentary Form. Cambridge: Harvard Up, 2016., Julia Watson

Studies in 20th & 21st Century Literature

Review of Hillary L. Chute. Disaster Drawn: Visual Witness, Comics, and Documentary Form. Cambridge: Harvard UP, 2016.

David William Foster. El Eternauta, Daytripper, And Beyond: Graphic Narrative In Argentina And Brazil. Austin: U Of Texas P, 2016., Laura M. Fernandez

Studies in 20th & 21st Century Literature

Review of David William Foster. El Eternauta, Daytripper, and Beyond: Graphic Narrative in Argentina and Brazil. Austin: U of Texas P, 2016.

Mark Heimermann And Brittany Tullis, Eds. Picturing Childhood: Youth In Transnational Comics. Austin: U Of Texas P, 2017., Cristina R. Rivera

Studies in 20th & 21st Century Literature

Review of Mark Heimermann and Brittany Tullis, eds. Picturing Childhood: Youth in Transnational Comics. Austin: U of Texas P, 2017.

The Sin Of Pride In Dressing Bodies In Spanish And Anglo-American Ballads, Ana Belén Martínez García

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In her article "The Sin of Pride in Dressing Bodies in Spanish and Anglo-American Ballads" Ana Belén Martínez García argues that trying to decipher the reasons for characters to dress in a certain way may help discover the underlying sociocultural mechanisms that prevail. The author aims to reveal the gender divide associated to clothing through a comparative approach towards popular literature in Spanish and English. She uses Judith Butler's theory of performative acts in order to conduct the text analysis. Clothes-related acts feature prominently in the case of popular balladry. Spanish "romances" and Anglo-American ballads are poems that were and …

Cars, Space, And The Dynamics Of Power In Cuéntame Cómo Pasó ('Tell Me How It Happened'), Linda B. Bartlett

Studies in 20th & 21st Century Literature

Cuéntame cómo pasó 'Tell Me How It Happened,' Radio Televisión Española’s long-running television series, recreates Spain’s recent past from the late years of the Franco regime through the transition to democracy and beyond through the daily experiences of the fictional yet typical Alcántara family, thus functioning as a form of historical memory project. This critically-acclaimed program, which debuted in fall 2001, has attracted not only record-size audiences in its 18 seasons (to date), but also scholarly interest as well. While other studies have analyzed the use of the television medium to represent history, or critiqued its historical …

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 …

Franco, Pedro Y El Género, Kaleigh E. Hoffman

Honors Theses

El franquismo no dejaba de existir después de la muerte de Franco. Mientras las reglas de censura oficiales desaparecieron con el fin de la dictadura, sus rasgos permanecían, en términos de la vida social, además del cine. La influencia de Franco en el cine determinaba que los conceptos de la masculinidad y la feminidad no tenían espacio para interpretación. De hecho, durante la dictadura, el cine franquista reflejaba la rigidez de género y la falta de expresión. No había aprobación de cine que demostrara la homosexualidad, las personas transgénero ni la fluidez de género. De la represión, sin embargo, emergió …

Matilde Ros Leaves The Jungle, Susana Beatriz Camacho Vivar

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

When Matilde defies her mother and abandons her privileged life in a South American capital to fight for environmental justice in the Amazon jungle, she never imagines her journey will bring her right back to where she started. As she insists on freeing herself, four other women around her do the same, defining their freedom when class, gender and race may still get to tell them who they are.

Confessing Nuns: Gender, Hierarchy, And Institutionalized Power In Early Modern Hispanic Literature, Jason Michael Stinnett

Doctoral Dissertations

My dissertation discusses the inversion of power dynamics between nuns and the Catholic Church during the Early Modern period in Spain and in the New World. I study how Santa Teresa de Ávila, Catalina de Erauso, and Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz use traditional modes of male thought and action regarding feminine weakness in order to realize their own agendas and participate in arenas generally forbidden to women. In analyzing how these women reinforce the weaknesses and strengths of the gender binary through written confession, I am able to trace their appropriation of power and authoritative voice in spaces …

The Ties That Bind: Gender, Race, And Empire In Caribbean Indenture Narratives, Alison Joan Klein

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation traces the ways that oppressive gender roles and racial tensions in the Caribbean today developed out of the British imperial system of indentured labor. Between 1837 and 1920, after slavery was abolished in the British colonies and before most colonies achieved independence, approximately 750,000 laborers, primarily from India and China, traveled to the Caribbean under indenture. This is a critical but under-explored aspect of colonial history, as this immigration dramatically altered the ethnic make up of the Caribbean, the cultural norms and traditions of those who migrated, and the structure of British imperialism. I focus on depictions of …

El Despertar De Las Voces Dormidas: La Memoria En Cuatro Novelas Sobre Mujeres En La Guerra Civil Española Y La Posguerra, Ana Pociello Sampériz

Theses and Dissertations--Hispanic Studies

During the Spanish Civil War and its aftermath, the fear of being denounced and subsequently punished contributed to the social silence that became the norm during Franco´s dictatorship. This was then reinforced during democracy through an implicit pact of oblivion. After the death of Franco, as an attempt to avoid reopening wounds, successive democratic governments decided not to agitate the ghost of the civil war, due to its traumatic nature. The consequence of such a pact of oblivion is the lack of information about the past, continually suffered by subsequent generations. Furthermore, Francoism legally imposed the subordination of women to …