Spanish and Portuguese Language and Literature Commons^™

Humanist Abstractions: Zilia Sánchez’S Forms Of Symbolism And The Reframing Of The Picture Plane, Sydney Srnka

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis examines the culturally specific visual language within the work of Zilia Sánchez through an analysis of her biography and semiotic strategies, arguing that meaning in her work emerges through the materiality of form, rather than through conventional stylistic categorization. It reconsiders how art-historical movements are used to organize artists, proposing a framework better suited to Sánchez’s practice. The issues of reception and legibility have shaped Sánchez’s career as an exile whose experience of displacement informed her shaped canvases. These works articulated a simultaneously unique and universal sense of experience. In researching Sánchez’s history, an alternative story for the …

Érase Una Vez En Tiempos Modernos… Colección De Relatos Reimaginados, Jose Rolando Rivera Jr.

Theses and Dissertations

Esta tesis examina la reimaginación narrativa de cuentos de hadas en diálogo con leyendas urbanas, situados en países hispanohablantes y en contextos históricos específicos, como una metodología crítica capaz de transformar paradigmas culturales, visibilizar voces marginales y cuestionar estructuras hegemónicas. Desde un enfoque interdisciplinario que integra estudios culturales, psicología narrativa y teoría decolonial, se propone entender las historias como sistemas vivos que modelan identidades y configuran memorias colectivas.

La reimaginación se plantea como una forma de intervenir estratégicamente en los relatos heredados mediante operaciones como la deconstrucción, la excavación psicológica y la reubicación cultural. El estudio aborda, además, subgéneros del …

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 …

Geraldo De Barros’S Fotoformas: Towards The Construction Of New Forms Of Legibility, Jay Bravo

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis examines the legibility and reception of Geraldo de Barros’s Fotoformas within Western art institutions, using MoMA’s 2021 Fotoclubismo exhibition as a case study. It argues that the integration of Brazilian modernist photography into canonical narratives often hinges on strategic affinities with Euro-American frameworks. Drawing on institutional critique, postcolonial theory, and the concept of Anthropophagy, the study explores how Fotoformas challenges conventional photographic discourse and reveals broader dynamics of artistic legitimacy and representation.

Lo Que No Borró El Desierto (2020) De Diana López Zuleta Y Cómo Maté A Mi Padre (2020) De Sara Jaramillo Klinkert: Crónica Y Memoir, Las Voces De Las Hijas En El Duelo, Bertha Galvan

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis analyzes the works of two Colombian authors, Diana López Zuleta and Sara Jaramillo Klinkert, who, as indirect victims of their father's murder, address impunity and its psychological effects through two genres: the chronicle and memoir. López Zuleta describes the process of mourning through the search for justice, while Jaramillo Klinkert explores mourning and the symbolic process of "killing the father" in a context of impunity. Both authors use their work to address the violence in Colombia, the memory, and the search for the truth, emphasizing the importance of literature as an aesthetic expression and a therapeutic and ethical …

Recuerdos Efímeros, Karewith A. Casas

Theses and Dissertations

The following 12 poems were written in 2023 leading up to my MFA thesis exhibition at Hunter College. Each relate and were inspired by or inspired the visual works in the exhibition. My writing, the music I make, and the visual works I create are all intertwined and feed off of each other. The relationship between my works of art and poetry are not in the tradition of ekphrasis, but are instead extensions of each other. Each mark, material, color, or image are words, sounds, sentences, movements, and pauses. And vice versa as well. Moments on a picture plane or …

Representaciones De La Violencia En El Cuerpo Femenino En María, Llena Eres De Gracia, El Despertar De Las Hormigas Y Cuando Las Flores Hablan, Catalina Lancheros Villa

Theses and Dissertations

ABSTRACTO Son muchas las mujeres que han aportado a la historia y a las luchas contra la violencia de género. Mujeres que han sido registradas en libros, documentales o películas y marcadas en hechos como heroínas del cambio y la transformación social (ej. Policarpa Salavarrieta Ríos / colombiana, Magdalena Carmen Frida Kahlo Calderón / mexicana, Manuela Sáenz/ ecuatoriana). Son estas mujeres fuertes y empoderadas las que han querido un mundo igualitario para todos desde la antigüedad hasta los tiempos modernos. Desde su capacidad intelectual descubrieron que podían mejorar las condiciones de vida, dejando un legado de transformación en un sistema …

Wandering And Wondering: Mapping The Confines Of The Introspective Spaces Of Julio Cortázar, Sergio Chejfec, And Samanta Schweblin, Tamara Alisa Morgan

Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation explores the juxtaposition of time and space and how they affect the relationships of the protagonists with the people and places around them. I examine works by the Argentine writers Julio Cortázar, Sergio Chejfec, and Samanta Schweblin, to trace a genealogical connection of techniques and universal themes within their texts regarding place and the search for human identity and belonging in the globalized world. Engaging the theoretical notions of space, power, and subjectivity (Henri Lefebvre, Giuliana Bruno, Marc Augé), as well as flânerie and phantasmagoria (Walter Benjamin), I contend that the protagonists of these works are incomplete beings …

La Materialidad De Las Vivencias Femeninas: Cuerpos Discapacitados, Prostituidos Y Violados En Las Narrativas Mexicanas Escritas Por Las Mujeres, Hyanghee Lee

Theses and Dissertations

Esta disertación explora los temas específicamente vinculados a las vivencias de las mujeres mexicanas tales como la anormalidad, la discapacidad, la locura, la prostitución, la violencia de género y la madre mutilada que no pueden abordarse sin tener en cuenta el cuerpo femenino. En este proyecto se discuten estas temáticas aplicando el concepto de la corporeidad o la materialidad de las vivencias que experimentan las mujeres en dicho espacio geopolítico manifestadas en cuatro narrativas mexicanas producidas por las mujeres-escritoras en la época contemporánea del final del siglo XX y al comienzo del siglo XXI: Nadie me verá llorar (1999) de …

Domesticación Y Extranjerización En La Traducción Literaria De Uproot, A Memoir De Josefina Beatriz Longoria, Dania Saucedo

Theses and Dissertations

ABSTRACT

Domesticación y extranjerización en la traducción literaria de Uproot, a Memoir de Josefina Beatriz Longoria (May 2022)

Dania Denin Saucedo, B.A., Texas A&M International University;

Chair of Committee: Dr. Lola Orellano Norris

Throughout history, translation and interpreting have been key in facilitating communication among peoples and in advancing our knowledge and understanding of literature, religion, and the law, among others. Literature is a passport to exotic lands and different moments in time. Without literary translation, our imagination would not be able to wander off to these distant lands, the readers would not be exposed to other cultures nor learn …

El Nuevo Cuento Latinoamericano: El ‘Terror Aparente Y Externo’ Versus El ‘Terror Real E Interno’ En Pelea De Gallos Y Grita De María Fernanda Ampuero, Y Las Voladoras De Mónica Ojeda, Alejandra Anahi Gaeta

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis focusses on the new Latin-American short story; the ‘obvious and external horror’ vs. the ‘real and internal horror’ found in the works of Maria Fernanda Ampuero: Pelea de gallos (2018) and Grita (2020) as well as in Monica Ojeda’s Las voladoras (2020). The analysis encompasses situations that different protagonists experience in each short story to illustrate the message that the Ecuadorian writers intend to address the reader. Ampuero and Ojeda use their platform to expose the injustice that women and minors endure through their Latin American narratives. In the short stories that belong to the horror and the …

Mining For Progress: Copper, Conflict, And Corporate Social Responsibility, Fritz Culp

Theses and Dissertations

My dissertation examines how transnational mega-mines efface non-Western ways of knowing and being from the Andes. A growing branch of research is questioning the socio-environmental impacts of mining and the influence of regulatory institutions. Despite remarkable scholarship on the ongoing environmentalism of modern-mining, little critical attention has been given to the industry’s pivot to ‘sustainable’ development and its objectives that remain epistemologically centered on the West. My project addresses these gaps by examining Las Bambas—a large-scale copper mine located in South-Central Peru—and its contrasting objectives that emphasize both environmental ‘conservation’ and the ‘modernization’ of non-Western spaces. Building upon the critical …

Interrogating Rosa Montero’S Transition To Consensus: The Literary Interview As Lieu De Mémoire, Adrienne D. Banko

Theses and Dissertations

Looking from our 21st century viewpoint, the collection of interviews España para ti…para siempre (1976) and Cinco años de País (1982) can be seen as artifacts of the Spanish Transition to democracy and should be regarded as collections of “places of memory.” Many scholars chronicling the Transition and its impacts have positioned Rosa Montero as a prominent feminist writer of the period. However, her journalistic writing demonstrates her mediatic role as linchpin between the social and political transitions interwoven into the foundation of Spain’s democratic emergence from Francoism. These works were published at a particular moment of consensus in …

Sentir Con La Memoria: Prácticas Espaciales Desde La Cotidianidad Sistemática Del Subalterno En Roma, La Teta Asustada Y La Mujer Sin Cabeza, Perla Jazmin Richerson

Theses and Dissertations

La vida cotidiana es frecuentemente considerada insignificante, pero su análisis puede exponer aspectos fundamentales sobre interacciones sociales. Para que una acción se convierta en cotidiana, esta necesita ser repetida hasta que se convierta automática, indetectable, invisible. Consecuentemente, la persona que realiza dicha acción como parte de la vida cotidiana (como una sirvienta preparando el café, por ejemplo) puede sufrir el mismo efecto y convertirse invisible, indetectable, desechable. ¿Qué significa esto en la vida cotidiana de personas? ¿Qué implicaciones tiene la experiencia diaria en una persona a otra?

Mi estudio se desprende de estas preguntas, y para contestarlas, analizo tres películas …

El Hambre Y La Formación Del Sujeto: Un Estudio Transatlántico De Lazarillo De Tormes Y Naufragios, Nicole Donoghue

Theses and Dissertations

El hambre es un sentimiento que puede controlar de manera considerable el cuerpo humano y cuando se encuentra exacerbada por circunstancias de supervivencia, el hambre se convierte en la motivación principal que circunscribe todas sus acciones. Esta consecuencia causada por el hambre extrema es el foco principal de dos obras canónicas del siglo XVI escritas en lados opuestos del océano atlántico: Lazarillo de Tormes (1554) y Naufragios (1555). Las dos obras requieren especial atención no tan solo en lo que dicen los narradores, sino también en lo que hacen y las razones detrás de sus acciones. De este modo, si …

A Longitudinal Test Of Mexican Teen Mothers’ Cultural Characteristics And Children’S Language Skills Via Mothers’ Language, Arlenis A. Santana

Theses and Dissertations

The current study includes 204 Mexican teen mothers and their children from a larger study who were interviewed when children were 3 years old (Wave 4; W4), 4 years old (W5), and 5 years old (W6). The current study is guided by the integrative model of developmental competencies (García Coll et al., 1996), which suggests that parents’ adaptive cultural characteristics and exchanges with their children inform children’s developmental competencies. Thus, the current study examined whether teen mothers’ adaptive cultural characteristics (i.e., familism values, language competency pressures, and involvement in Mexican culture and U.S. mainstream culture) at W4 informed mothers’ Spanish …

Chupa Chuparosas Y Chupacabras, Ruben U. Rodriguez

Theses and Dissertations

A Rascuache Nahual that uses therianthropy on the border between the US and Mexico border.

The Perception Of Voice Onset Time By English-Speaking L2 Learners Of Spanish With An Extended Partial Immersion Experience, Jeremy Leigh Ingersoll

Theses and Dissertations

For adult learners of a second language, the similarities and differences in acoustic properties between their native language and the language they are learning can affect how they perceive the sounds of the new language. How learners perceive these acoustic properties will directly affect their ability to communicate. According to the Perceptual Assimilation Model (PAM) (Best 1995), learners will perceive the sounds of a language that is new to them based on how similar or different the sounds are from the learner’s native language. Between the English and Spanish language, there are some sounds that share acoustic properties and others …

The Mediation Of The Cross: Spatiality And Syncretism In Pedro Páramo And Grande Sertão: Veredas, Faith Arianna Blackhurst

Theses and Dissertations

Juan Rulfo and João Guimarães Rosa stand at a literary crossroads, the intersection where traditional regionalists and celebrated Boom-era novelists meet. Although Rulfo and Guimarães Rosa chose the Mexican Llano Grande and the Brazilian sertão of Minas Gerais as the settings of their most celebrated novels, they go far beyond the techniques of traditional regionalism by distancing themselves from their national literatures. They universalize their narratives by incorporating universal religious themes, including the symbol of the cross. The symbol of the cross/crossroad has been analyzed and alluded to in a handful of essays on Pedro Páramo and Grande sertão: Veredas …

Effects Of Peer-Tutoring On Language Attitudes, Maintenance, And Motivation Among 31 Native And Heritage Spanish-Speaking Adolescents At A Utah Valley High School, Rachel Marie Eaton

Theses and Dissertations

This 16-week long, observational study examined the effects of Spanish peer-tutoring on first language attitudes, maintenance, and motivation among native and heritage Spanish-speaking adolescents. In this study, 31 high school students from two ‘Spanish for Native and Heritage Speakers" classes peer-tutored second-year Spanish learners for an average of fifty minutes per week. The native/heritage Spanish-speaking students took a pre and post language attitudes, maintenance, and motivation survey and they completed two reflections during the course of the study. The native/heritage Spanish-speaking participants demonstrated a significant positive increase in language attitudes towards their native language, they also reported increased motivation to …

A Experiência Machadiana: Experience Design Theory In Dom Casmurro, Dania Genine Ellingson

Theses and Dissertations

The intricate and complex writing style of Machado de Assis’ novel Dom Casmurro create a unique and powerfully engaging reader experience. While much has been discussed with regard to narratology and reader-response theory in Dom Casmurro, Machado’s writing recalls many principles found in the cross-disciplinary field of experience design. Through an analysis of the novel using flow and co-creation theories, we see that Machado designs an extraordinary reader experience through narrational scaffolding and co-creative invitations. These elements engage readers in challenging and immersive ways, ultimately encouraging readers to develop their reading capacity throughout their contact with the novel. In Dom …

La Adquisición De La Pragmática De Las Disculpas Y Solicitudes En Un Contexto De Inmersión, Raquel Esther Ferreira Duarte

Theses and Dissertations

En la adquisicin de una segunda lengua la competencia pragmtica juega un papel muy importante porque implica la habilidad de usar concretamente la nueva lengua en un contexto comunicativo. El proceso de adquisicin de estas habilidades es complejo pues conlleva el desarrollo de habilidades socioculturales y sociolinguísticas especficas. Estas funciones en la comunicacin oral son conocidas como œactos de hablá. As, los estudios de pragmtica transcultural generalmente comparan y contrastan el comportamiento linguístico de hablantes nativos con estudiantes de L2. Los intentos de los que usan L2 por realizar actos especficos como producir enunciados, hacer preguntas, hacer promesas, expresar gratitud, …

Brazil And Bashō: Negotiating Japanese-Brazilian Hybrid Identity Through Mujōkan In Adriana Lisboa’S Rakushisha, Suzanne Noelle Shibuta

Theses and Dissertations

Hybrid identities occupy a unique space within the field of identity and culture. Due to the instability and transitory nature of hybrid identities, individuals who fall within the category of hybridity often struggle to recognize and accept their identities. Do such individuals identify with one culture, the other, neither, or both? Adriana Lisboa’s novel Rakushisha offers new insight into the realm of hybridity through the exploration of mujōkan, a uniquely Japanese awareness of impermanence that also helps to explain the cycle of suffering, continuity, and regeneration that Lisboa’s characters experience. Although hybrid identities by nature are unstable, constantly in motion …

An Exploratory Survey Of Code-Switching In The Coachella Valley, Ca, Allan K. Escobar

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis surveyed a group of second generation Mexican-American Spanish-English bilingual speakers in the Coachella Valley, California to determine common motives for code-switching in speech. In previous studies, motives or triggers to code-switching have been identified and recorded in major urban cities such as Los Angeles and New York, and this thesis seeks to identify this phenomenon in the rural and agricultural cities of the Coachella Valley, with focus on Indio and Coachella, CA. Furthermore, another goal of this study was to analyze research on code-switching in a sample of older adults ages 45-75 as compared to much of the …

The Second Coming Of Don Quixote: Painting And The Quixote As Eucharistic Art, Scott Hawkley Raines

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis examines a new reading of Cervantes’s immortal Don Quixote: reading the Quixote as eucharistic art. Just as the Catholic Eucharist, when consumed by the believer, is transubstantiated into the literal flesh and blood of Jesus Christ, so too is this proposed reading of the Quixote. Using Michel Foucault’s work in The Order of Things, the author employs Foucault’s statement—that Don Quixote is “the book in flesh and blood” (48)—to explore a eucharistic reading of the novel as the reader’s internalization of Don Quixote’s being. The end of the novel is read not as Don Quixote’s return to sanity, …

A Subversão Dos Estereótipos De Gênero Nos Contos Fantásticos De Lygia Fagundes Telles, Gabriela Oliveira

Theses and Dissertations

Em meio às mudanças políticas e sociais no Brasil da segunda parte do século XX, Lygia Fagundes Telles começa a se destacar literariamente através de seus romances e coletâneas de contos com caráter intimista. Apesar de não se considerar naquela época uma escritora militante, ela era engajada socialmente e realizava sua crítica de maneira sutil utilizando-se de táticas literárias, como a presença do gênero fantástico. Ela escreve durante uma época de extrema censura e repressão, aonde o conservadorismo impera principalmente nos moldes familiares. A sociedade continha um modelo de como cada homem e mulher deveria agir para se encaixar e …

Experiences In Professional Development Through Project-Based Language Learning, Florencia Westenskow

Theses and Dissertations

Project-based Language Learning (PBLL) provides students with opportunities to use the target language purposefully and to interact with culturally authentic materials. Because PBLL holds critical benefits for its students, it is important that teachers learn best practices for implementation and how to overcome the challenges that PBLL brings. This study focuses on the experiences of 15 world language teachers as they participated in a PBLL professional development series developed by the National Foreign Language Resource Center (NFLRC) at the University of Hawai'i at Mānoa. Findings from this study are based on data gathered from surveys and interviews with a diverse …

Fluência Ou Precisão? A Implementação De Uma Abordagem Counterbalanced Em Um Programa De Imersão Em Português, Eliane Berlendis Bueno

Theses and Dissertations

Este projeto de tese analisa como o método do ciclo de counterbalance, articulado por Lyster (2007), pode influenciar no aumento da precisão da língua dos alunos nos programas de imersão. O objetivo do projeto foi descobrir como tal modelo de lições e atividades pode vir a afetar a precisão dos alunos no uso da língua portuguesa, focando principalmente na concordância nominal e verbal. O projeto foi implementado para duas turmas de imersão de português da 4^a série em um programa de imersão no estado de Utah. As descobertas revelam diferenças significativamente relevantes entre a avaliação previa e final …

From Borderlands To Border Islands: Intersections Between Anzaldúa's Chicana Feminist Theory And U.S. Latina Literature From The Hispanic Caribbean, Cristina Gonzalez Martin

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis studies three texts by three U.S. Latina authors from the Hispanic Caribbean through the lens of Chicana feminist border theory. The works analyzed are How the García Girls Lost Their Accents (1991) by Dominican author Julia Alvarez, Dreaming in Cuban (1992) by Cuban-American novelist Cristina García, and the memoir Almost a Woman (1998) by Puerto Rican author Esmeralda Santiago. The theoretical framework used is Gloria Anzaldúa’s Borderlands/La Frontera: The New Mestiza. The objective is to show how these texts manifest the formation of a hybrid, diasporic, in-between identity that corresponds with Anzaldúa’s definition of mestiza consciousness or la …

El Futuro Ya Está Aquí: A Comparative Analysis Of Punk In Spain And Mexico, Rex Richard Wilkins

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis examines the punk genre's evolution into commercial mainstream music in Spain and Mexico. It looks at how this evolution altered both the aesthetic and gesture of the genre. This evolution can be seen by examining four bands that followed similar musical and commercial trajectories. In Spain, Kaka de Luxe and Radio Futura; in Mexico, Size and Ritmo Peligroso. Since punk music's gesture is both visceral and political, various methods of suppressing or containing the punk gesture arise. For both Spain and Mexico, containing the punk gesture was a matter of government censorship in the early years of punk. …