Spanish and Portuguese Language and Literature Commons^™

Poesía Mapuche Y Vasca Como Herramienta De Resistencia Cotidiana, Paula Ruiz Santamaría

Theses and Dissertations--Hispanic Studies

This dissertation examines the work of contemporary Mapuche poets Adriana Pinda, Maribel Mora Curriao and Roxana Miranda Rupailaf, alongside Basque poets Leire Bilbao and Miren Agur Meabe, who write partially or entirely in their native languages— Mapudungun and Basque— as a form of resistance against the historical and ongoing imposition of Spanish. Through their poetry, these poets defend their identities and cultural heritage, invoking their matrilineal lineage to remember and heal. They also subvert traditional Catholic prayers by modifying them into invocations to Goddesses, casting spells of liberation of the female body, denouncing patriarchal violence and recreating alternative worlds. Their …

Hugo Chávez, El Camino Hagiográfico: Religión Y Bolivarianismo En La Construcción Discursiva Del Culto A Un Presidente, Lilia Malavé Conley

Theses and Dissertations--Hispanic Studies

This dissertation examines the discursive construction of the political-religious cult surrounding Hugo Chávez through a theoretical and methodological approach that integrates Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) and Multimodal Discourse Analysis (MDA). Its central objective is to identify and interpret the incorporation of elements from the Venezuelan religious imaginary–particularly from popular Christianity–into the symbolic configuration of Chávez as a sacred figure within official discourse. The corpus analyzed includes official transcripts from the television program Aló Presidente, as well as two animated short films titled Chávez Nuestro que Estás en el Cielo (“Our Chávez Who Art in Heaven”), broadcast on Venezuelan public …

El Doble Discurso Del Simbolismo De La (Pureza De) Sangre En El Diario Espiritual De La Donada Afroperuana Úrsula De Jesús, Yertty M. Vandermolen

Theses and Dissertations--Hispanic Studies

Purity of Blood Symbolism and Double Discourse in The Spiritual Diary of the Afro-Peruvian Donada Úrsula de Jesús

Through a close reading of The Spiritual Diary, this study examines how the Afro-Peruvian donada Úrsula de Jesús—whose experiences and visions were recorded and transcribed by a group of literate nuns in her convent—employs discursive strategies to dismantle the discourse of blood purity and reformulate the meaning of the blood. Drawing on the Christian belief that all humans are created equally in the image of God and redeemed through the blood of Christ as promised for universal salvation, Úrsula constructs an egalitarian …

La Nueva Argumentación De Twitter: El Cambio De Paradigma Retórico Y La Independencia De Catalunya En Tuits, David Cortes Ferrandez

Theses and Dissertations--Hispanic Studies

Technology changed our world and shapes our reality in forms that widely differ from the traditional ones. Discourse and persuasion are not an exception. This study analyzes the tweets and oral discourses of eight politicians and social leaders during three of the most important days in the independence struggle between Catalonia and Spain to argue that the way people in power try to persuade their voters is changing, especially in new social networks such as Twitter.

The main object of study are the argumentative and persuasion processes that take place both in Twitter and oral discourses from the same politicians …

Sexualidad, Afectos Y Sociedad: Las No Monogamias Consensuadas (Nmc) En La Literatura Y El Cine Español, Sandra Nava Nieto

Theses and Dissertations--Hispanic Studies

Cuando pensamos en las relaciones sexo-afectivas que podemos tener en la sociedad occidental, el sistema monógamo es la opción estándar. La amatonormatividad, el patriarcado y la monogamia son un potente trío que se retroalimentan en cuanto a la promoción de la discriminación de la mujer y de los afectos no heteronormativos. El sistema monógamo sigue vigente, no solo mediante legalizaciones, sino mediante refuerzos sociales de las normas de género. Las relaciones no monógamas consensuadas (NMC), un grupo heterogéneo de relaciones sexo-afectivas fura de la monogamia, pueden ser un punto de inflexión para cambiar los roles de género y desestructurar la …

Álvaro Cunqueiro: La Existencia Fabulada, Patricia Maria Gamboa

Theses and Dissertations--Hispanic Studies

My dissertation focuses on the narrative works by Galician writer Álvaro Cunqueiro (1911-1981): Merlín y familia, Las crónicas del sochantre, Cuando el viejo Sinbad vuelva a las islas, Las mocedades de Ulises, Un hombre que se parecía a Orestes, Vida y fugas de Fanto Fantini della Gherardesca and El año del cometa con la batalla de los cuatro reyes. Specifically, I analyze their existential dimension through the study of three concepts—journey, dream and myth—which, in my view, articulate Cunqueiro’s peculiar form of existentialism. Filled with fantastic characters and situations, Cunqueiro’s work has been critiqued …

Forum On “Conquest”: Past-Present Politics Of Coloniality In Cinema On Latin America, Stephen Jakob Turner

Theses and Dissertations--Hispanic Studies

My dissertation analyzes the representation of Spanish “Conquest” in film as a critical commentary on the cultural present. Chapter 1, “Directorial Discord: The Cultural Politics of Representation in Apocalypto (USA/Mexico/UK, 2006) and Retorno a Aztlán (Return to Aztlán, Mexico, 1991)” focuses on the representation of the (im)possibility of Indigenous heroic protagonism and futurity in the origins of “Conquest.” Chapter 2, “‘The World is Thus’: Resistance and the Power of Ambivalent Conversion in Gabriel Retes’s Nuevo Mundo (The New World; Mexico, 1976) and Roland Joffé’s The Mission (USA/Paraguay, 1986)” posits that the “Conquest” problematizes the myth of …

Mujeres En Crisis: Posturas Divergentes Frente Al Neoliberalismo, Silvia Encinas Caballero

Theses and Dissertations--Hispanic Studies

Popular belief has always attributed women an innate capacity to overcome periods of crisis, whether these are provoked by an economic debacle or by a natural disaster. My dissertation explores the representation of women in Spanish narrative and film from the beginning of the global economic crisis in 2008 up to the recession caused by the Covid- 19 pandemic in 2020. I study how specific cultural production can serve to perpetuate models of patriarchal domination or to provide alternative representations of women as independent, resilient individuals in times of economic crisis.

I analyze four novels and three films in which …

Truth In Horror: Cinematic Representations Of Social Violence In Spain, Latin America, And The United States, Kelly Ferguson

Theses and Dissertations--Hispanic Studies

My dissertation, Truth in Horror: Cinematic Representation of Social Violence in Spain, Latin American, and the Latinx United States, investigates the recent explosion of political horror films that straddle the past and present, reflecting both the current political moment and the polemic historical memories of state repression against racialized others and ideological dissidents. Chapter One, “Paranoid Horror and the Return of Franco,” studies four Spanish horror films, Tras el cristal (1986), Pa negre (2010), Mientras duermes (2011), and Musarañas (2014), all of which feature child protagonists that seek out truth about violent family secrets, but ultimately reject it as …

Masculinidades Insubordinadas Y Subversivas. La Construcción De La Figura Del Gaucho Rebelde En La Literatura Rioplatense A Través De La Representación De Tres De Sus Tipos Humanos Más Característicos: El Cantor, El Matrero Y El Caudillo, Miguel Angel Martos Maldonado

Theses and Dissertations--Hispanic Studies

This research work explores the construction of the masculinity of the rebellious gaucho in several literary works written by authors from the River Plate, and how it serves as a vehicle for the transmission of ideas –often of political content– of their creators. The basic concept underlying this study is that some writers of works set in the rural world show a serious social commitment, and often combine their literary activity with politics. For this reason, they choose as a key figure in their writings a gaucho who rebels against authority and, emphasizing in him the traits traditionally considered as …

“Thinking Across Bodies”: Percepción Woolfiana Y Giro Material En La Cuentística De Rodoreda, Roig, Alós Y Riera, Ana Álvarez Guillén

Theses and Dissertations--Hispanic Studies

Conventional understandings of perception have long undergirded traditional readings of Modernist texts in adopting a predominantly subject-centered perspective that separates subject from object in a vertical and hierarchical relationship. I argue that a consideration of Virginia Woolf’s short stories in dialogue with four generations of twentieth-century Catalan women writers who followed her work closely suggests an entirely different epistemological framework of perception in which subject and object are fluidly and horizontally organized. Mercè Rodoreda, Concha Alós, Montserrat Roig and Carme Riera establish a horizontal fictional dialogue that constitutes a return to matter that decenters the subject, resulting in an alternative …

Posthuman Ethics In The Science Fiction Of Rosa Montero And Rita Indiana, Brittany Frodge

Theses and Dissertations--Hispanic Studies

In this dissertation I put Posthumanist theory in tension with the ‘lived’ experiences of the posthuman protagonists of two recent Science Fiction trilogies. My aim in doing so is to uncover the shortcomings of Posthumanist accounts of ethics and discover alternative paths forward.

The first chapter of my dissertation is an overview of Posthumanist theory and Science Fiction, with a particular emphasis on the contributions Hispanic authors and women have made to the genre. In the second chapter, I develop a critique of Posthumanist ethics that place the onus of ethical-political intervention on marginalized subjects through a close reading of …

The Fantastic Debate: Religion, Ideology, And National Identity In The Short Fiction Of Nineteenth-Century Spain, Morgan Keith Stewart

Theses and Dissertations--Hispanic Studies

This dissertation analyzes fantastic short fiction in terms of its relationship to the traditionalist and progressive forces that were vying for hegemonic control over Spanish national identity in the ever-changing period of the nineteenth century, demonstrating how these powers shaped Spain’s past and future national character to suit ideologically driven narratives and revealing how fantastic literature can disrupt these narratives to unlock new patterns of thought. In Chapter 1, entitled “Fantastic Short Fiction and National Identity,” I delineate the historical/political circumstances that led to the rise of Spain’s dominant ideological frameworks. I also establish my own definition of the fantastic …

La Representación De La Masculinidad En El Personaje Del Policía: Cine, Televisión Y Novela Española Del Siglo Xxi, Daniel Fonfría-Perera

Theses and Dissertations--Hispanic Studies

This research focuses on the type of hegemonic masculinity—a term that has traditionally belonged to a purely sociology domain—exhorted in the works of fiction published and released in Spain in the last two decades, searching for patterns that indicate that a normative type is encouraged. After tracing the different types of hegemonic masculinities that have characterized policemen since the late 30’s, the findings show how the modern notion of masculinity depicted in the works analyzed, even though it can no longer be considered monolithic, still shares some patterns with the masculinity predominant in cultural products during Francoism.

First-Person Politics: Strategies Of Latin/X American Women To Change The Neoliberal Requirements For Empowerment And Inclusion One Share, Like, Subscribe At A Time, Marlee Northcutt

Theses and Dissertations--Hispanic Studies

This project investigates the strategies of Latin/x American women who have used their voices and influence in the media to break barriers, enter spaces that have excluded them, and advocate for changes so that young girls like them do not have to face these same limitations. Chapter One investigates politicians who, from their political power positions, interweave personal stories with their accomplishments to provide role models for these careers. Chapter Two identifies actors who combine their personal stories with activist causes to alter representation in TV and film. The YouTubers in Chapter Three bolster a rhetoric of empowerment to encourage …

Mapping Memory: Locational Memory In The First-Person Narrative Of Three Latinx Writers, Stephanie R. Beasley

Theses and Dissertations--Hispanic Studies

Locational memory, which relies upon our natural inclination to store and recall images, adds spatial orientation to a narrative, and provides an accessible framework for the recreation of the past in first-person narrative. The power of locational imagery as a device of memory is both historically and scientifically supported. It is essential to the system of artificial memory that the ancient Greeks called a memory palace, described by both Mary Carruthers and Paul Ricouer. Scientifically, studies show that the strongest autobiographical memories are based on visual imagery and that recall of specific locations provides a cognitive basis for the recreation …

Propuestas De Autoría Y Datación En El Teatro De Lope De Vega A La Luz De La Inteligencia Artificial, Álvaro Cuéllar

Theses and Dissertations--Hispanic Studies

The purpose of this thesis is to shed light on the numerous authorship and dating problems presented by the Spanish Golden Age theatre. Specifically, it focuses on Lope de Vega (1562-1635), a notable and highly successful playwright of this period. Through the compilation of a wide set of texts and the application of Artificial Intelligence techniques (machine learning), a control corpus is evaluated to find the best systems and parameters. Once this evaluation has been undertaken, a large group of plays is analyzed to try to obtain results that can illuminate some real problems of authorship and dating in relation …

Híbridos, Monstruos, Cíborgs Y Posthumanos: La Hibridez Como Herramienta Ciberpunk Para Retomar El Control De Los Cuerpos, Naiara Porras Rentero

Theses and Dissertations--Hispanic Studies

Rosi Braidotti warns us in her book Lo posthumano (2013) that “when the word difference implies inferiority, the connotation can be both dangerous and harmful for those marked as the other” (12). Since Michel Foucault first began his analysis of biopolitics, there have been many thinkers who have theorized how heteropatriarchal roles demand conformity at the risk of self-alienation and loss of identity. The theatrics demanded by an externally imposed social order can tax personal autonomy and diminish the resources required for individual growth and development. Judith Butler’s performance theory uses biopolitics to underscore how gender identity and sexual orientation …

Vidas Precarias: Crisis Económica De 2008 En El Cine Y La Literatura Españolas, Abraham Prades-Mengibar

Theses and Dissertations--Hispanic Studies

The collapse of the real estate bubble in 2008 brought an economic crisis that began to spread throughout the world, and Spain was one of the countries most negatively impacted. During the Great Recession, the governments of PSOE (Partido Socialista Obrero Español) and PP (Partido Popular) didn’t present viable solutions to end the crisis. Instead, they enforced drastic economic cutbacks. Meanwhile, the governments subsidized the banks to rescue them; in theory, to save the Spanish economy. However, the Spanish population continued to suffer the effects of economic crisis. Writers and filmmakers used their work to call attention to the negative …

Estrategias Populistas: Un Acercamiento Al Discurso Político Español Desde La Lingüística De Corpus, Alicia Juncos Zori

Theses and Dissertations--Hispanic Studies

This dissertation explores populist discourse in the June 2016 Spanish election campaign through the construction and analysis of a corpus of political speeches. As a result of the economic, social, and institutional crisis that began in 2008, Spain underwent a governmental restructuring with two new parties PODEMOS (Unidas Podemos) and CIUDADANOS (C’s). This transformation breaks with the classic political model, which alternated power between PARTIDO POPULAR (Popular Party) and PSOE (The Spanish Socialist Party). In my research, I analyze discursive strategies employed by the leading Spanish political parties to discover how PODEMOS differs linguistically and discursively from other groups. …

Complex Ecologies And Unruly Bodies In Rosa Montero’S Speculative Fiction, Kiersty Lemon-Rogers

Theses and Dissertations--Hispanic Studies

Rosa Montero’s work stands out for its compassionate and rich view of humanity. My study is a comparative analysis of Montero’s six Speculative Fiction (SF) novels and four volumes of her collected columns, selected for the proximity of their publication to the SF novels. Montero expresses her ethos directly through her weekly columns in El País and through her novels, which have the potential to attract a different readership than her journalism. Her SF novels, in particular, allow Montero to address contemporary problems in settings that allow readers to suspend their disbelief and connect with her narrative, rather than rejecting …

El Bildungsroman Femenino Mexicano: Nuevas Perspectivas De La Novela De Formación Femenina Fronteriza, Yorki Junior Encalada Egúsquiza

Theses and Dissertations--Hispanic Studies

The late 20^th and early 21^st centuries have not only favored a steady growth in Chicana literary production but have also revealed an alternative identity of the Mexican American border woman, the meXicana. Rosa Linda Fregoso, in MeXicana Encounters (2003), coins and defines this term as “the interface between Mexicana and Chicana,” and employs it to examine the experiences and representations of Mexicanas and Chicanas without eliminating the differences between them. This study borrows this term but uses it specifically to describe North American women of Mexican origin whose identities and border-crossing experiences make it difficult to solely …

Terminal Youth: The Failure Narrative Of The Dysfunctional Family As The Non-Viability Of Capitalist Economic Liberalism In Contemporary Latin American Film, Sharrah Lane

Theses and Dissertations--Hispanic Studies

This project examines the desire for national and international belonging and citizenship in the figure of the child intersectionally marked by race, class, and gender in contemporary Latin American film, a desire that is ultimately met only with precarity and violence. Chapter One analyzes the figure of the orphaned street child in terms of the desire for connection with a mother figure as a stand-in for the lack of affective community in Pixote: a lei do mais fraco (Brazil, 1981), La vendedora de rosas (Colombia, 1998), and Huelepega: ley de la calle (Venezuela, 1999) in which the protagonists either die, …

Encuentro Con La Precariedad: La Reaparición Del Gitano En El Cine Documental Español De La Crisis De 2008, María Julia De León Hernández

Theses and Dissertations--Hispanic Studies

In 2008, Spain’s financial crisis had a great impact on the primary sector on which the nation’s ‘economic miracle’ was founded: housing.Land speculation, the increase in housing construction, and easy loans had become one of the hallmarks of twenty-first-century Spanish identity. The crisis del ladrillo (“brick crisis”) plunged the national economy into chaos and condemned many Spanish citizens to job insecurity, loss of earning power, threat of eviction, and put them at high risk of social marginalization. This dissertation studies the unusual proliferation of documentary films during the years surrounding this economic downturn about the ghettoization of the Spanish Gypsy …

Las Islas En La Literatura Castellana De La Baja Edad Media, Martha Elena Granados Sáenz

Theses and Dissertations--Hispanic Studies

This dissertation explores references to islands in 13^th and 14^th century Iberian literature in a corpus of encyclopedias, travel books and chivalry novels from 1223 through 1396. I explore how island geography became part of the Medieval imago mundi. Many Medieval readers were interested in these faraway lands where, they believed, monstrous races flourished, sea monsters lurked, and Paradise awaited to be rediscovered. The physical and human geography featured in these narratives, gave birth to an imaginary, utopian, exotic, extravagant, and mysterious concept of “islandness” located in idyllic places to be interpreted as cognitive maps of the …

El Enclave Bananero En Las Novelas Centroamericanas De Miguel Angel Asturias, Ramon Amaya Amador Y Carlos Luis Fallas, Johana Pérez Weisenberger

Theses and Dissertations--Hispanic Studies

The Central American literary community and historiographical critics maintain a constant dialogue in regards to banana literature. Authors such as Asturias, Fallas, and Amador capture the pervasive nature of the banana enclave in their works. My research reveals the ways in which capitalist power controls and redefines spaces in the banner enclave. By taking a closer look these novels reveal the monopolistic power of the United Fruit Company exploits and destroys the natural space, this manuscript becomes a geographical map of the fictionalized banana enclaves, exposing the capitalist oppressing forces, which dominate nature and control the company workers.

Chapter one …

Poéticas Minimalistas De La Ciudad Contemporánea: Iribarren, Mínguez Y Del Val, David Delgado López

Theses and Dissertations--Hispanic Studies

Throughout the Spanish poetic production of the 20^th century, cities have developed a relevant role as a recurring space at the same time as society urbanized and an exodus took place from agricultural areas to the work centers offered by the cities. Since the second half of the 19^th century the city has been the meeting place for people from different backgrounds where the poet found, from his exclusive point of view, a new universe to develop in his work. However, the evolution of capitalist society sponsored the poet's transition from an artist to a worker in the …

La Ciudad De Las Letradas: Reescribiendo Santo Domingo En La Narrativa Femenina Urbana Dominicana Del Nuevo Milenio, Lucía M. Montás

Theses and Dissertations--Hispanic Studies

In the last few decades, Dominican female writers have contributed significantly to the literary representation of the city of Santo Domingo and urban life. This dissertation studies how these female writers produce a cultural paradigm for criticizing the urban crisis in the Dominican Republic that at times is at odds with much narrative written by men and with key concepts in Urban Theory that are taken for granted. The authors I study, Ángela Hernández, Emilia Pereyra, Emelda Ramos, Aurora Arias and Rita Indiana Hernández, understand the city and redefine the urban model by expressing their dissatisfaction in the civilizing and …

La Representación De Los Ecuatorianos En España: El Discurso Como Expresión De Poder, Racismo E Ideologías, Francesco Masala

Theses and Dissertations--Hispanic Studies

This dissertation focuses on the representation of Ecuadorians in Spain between 2000 and 2015 in literature, film and the press. After enduring a decade of economic, climatic, and political problems, more than 175,000 Ecuadorians emigrated to Spain in 2001 alone (Herrera 2005). This process marked the beginning of a major migratory movement which has caused Spain to become a premier destination. The response to such migration has been disparate, yet both Ecuadorian and Spanish artists as well as the Spanish press have shown the different perspectives related to a discriminatory ideology. This dissertation focuses on three cultural products and three …

Itexts: Techxtual Poetics, Authorship And Re-Wreaders In 21St-Century Spanish Literature, Joshua M. Hoekstra

Theses and Dissertations--Hispanic Studies

In 2007, Nuria Azancot published an article in the magazine El Cultural in which she identified a burgeoning group of Spanish writers that she referred to as the “Nocilla Generation.” The catalyst behind the article was a literary reunion that took place weeks before in Seville and brought together authors from all parts of Spain to talk about the status and future of writing. She described them as “transgressors” and “bloggers” who hybridized literary genres and held a revolutionary approach to the literary that was clearly marked by the Internet. Numerous articles and dissertations have since highlighted the impact that …