Spanish and Portuguese Language and Literature Commons^™

A Case For Empathy: Immigration In Spanish Contemporary Media, Music, Film, And Novels, Constantin C. Icleanu

Theses and Dissertations--Hispanic Studies

This dissertation analyzes the representations of immigrants from North Africa, Latin America, and Eastern Europe in Spain. As engaged scholarship, it seeks to better the portrayal of immigrants in the mass media through the study of literature, film, and music about immigration spanning from the year 2000 to 2016. Because misconceptions continue to propagate in the media, this dissertation works to counteract anti-immigrant, xenophobic representations as well as balance out overly positive and orientalized portrayal of immigrants with a call to recognize immigrants as human beings who deserve the same respect, dignity, and rights as any other citizen.

Chapter 1 …

Letras De Uma Resistência: Fantasmas Transgeneracionais E Ditadura. Brasil, Argentina E Cuba 1964-2002, Fabrício Silva

Theses and Dissertations--Hispanic Studies

During the period of military government in Argentina, Brazil (1964 –1982) and the present day communist Cuban regime, a machinery of cultural repression was established in these countries, these states had a systematic plan of cultural repression of any kind of opposition, dictatorships had an organized and sophisticated operating control over the press and all publications. The dissident writers examined in this dissertation developed strategies of resistance that depended largely on allegory to carry their messages against their respective oppressive regimes. By means of a detailed rhetorical analysis, our study examines the lookings of allegory and cultural resistance under the …

Modernidades Contra-Natura: Crítica Ilustrada, Prensa Periódica Y Cultura Manuscrita En El Siglo Xviii Americano, Kevin R. Sedeño-Guillén

Theses and Dissertations--Hispanic Studies

This dissertation studies the emergence of literary history and criticism in the Americas during the eighteenth century. It focuses upon the study of 1.) Natural history as a matrix of literary history and criticism; 2.) The geopolitical functions of literary history and criticism in the periodical press; and 3.) The recovery of manuscripts as a residual product of modernity. Texts associated with a hegemonic Enlightenment, such as “Disertación sobre el derecho público universal” by Francisco Javier de Uriortúa, are analyzed. Next, we study modern historical-critical thought as emphasized in the periodical press of Bogotá and Quito. Finally, the circulation of …

Indigenista Heroes And Femmes Fatales: Myth-Making In Latin American Literature And Film, Megan O'Neil

Theses and Dissertations--Hispanic Studies

This dissertation explores myth-making in Latin America by focusing specifically upon four Amerindian and mestizo figures: Doña Bárbara, mestiza protagonist of Rómulo Gallegos’ 1929 novel; Anacaona and Hatuey, Taíno caciques who first appeared in Bartolomé de las Casas’ Brevísima relación de la destrucción de las Indias (1552); and Andrés Chiliquinga, indigenous protagonist of Jorge Icaza’s Huasipungo (1934). The present analysis examines the evolution of these myths from their original appearance to literary and film versions throughout the 19th, 20th, and 21st centuries in the Caribbean and Andean regions. The project focuses upon the ways in which artists have interpreted these …

The Burden Of The Past: Spectral History In The Works Of Carlos Fuentes, 1962-80, Lee Elizabeth Kirven

Theses and Dissertations--Hispanic Studies

The works of Carlos Fuentes are well known for their thematics of History, how the past continues to influence the present despite mechanisms of historical omission, oblivion, or repression. This dissertation offers a spectral reading of a selection of Fuentes’ works—La muerte de Artemio Cruz (1962), Aura (1962), Cambio de piel (1967), Terra nostra (1975), and Una familia lejana (1980)—that represents his vision of Mexican, Latin American, and Transatlantic history. A spectral reading refers to the hidden or indirect ways that the past continues to manifest in the present as specters, ghosts—unconscious and unwitting remembrances of repressed or unknown …

¿Pero Tú Qué Te Has Creído, Que La Guerra Es Una Broma? La Seriedad Del Humor En Diferentes Representaciones Culturales De La Guerra Civil Española, Maria Jesus Lopez Soriano

Theses and Dissertations--Hispanic Studies

This dissertation analyzes selected pieces of work related to the Spanish Civil War (1936-39) produced during the twenty-first-century as cultural artifacts to be considered in their historical and socio-political context. Specifically, my dissertation focuses on the relationship between the way the conflict is depicted and the message it conveys. Parting from the premise that there has been an overproduction of lieu de mémoire that has transformed the Spanish war into a cultural trend, the civil war-esque, I study a number of humor works. Precisely, these humorous works deconstruct such trend by considering its most common characteristics: the use of metafiction …

Blancura Situacional E Imperio Español En Su Historia, Cine Y Literatura (S.Xix-Xx), Jose Maria Perez Sanchez

Theses and Dissertations--Hispanic Studies

This dissertation studies identity formation and race informed by the discipline Whiteness Studies. As such this dissertation conceptualizes Spanish Whiteness historically and analyzes its representation in Spanish narrative in prose and film. This research responds to two questions: 1) How has Spanish culture historically instrumentalized Blackness thus contributing to the creation of the Western’s conceptualization of Whiteness? 2) What does Spanish representation of Empire say about its Whiteness? In an effort to answer these questions, this study is divided into two parts that correspond to the conceptualization and representation of what are termed ‘Situational Whiteness’ and ‘Imperial Spanish Orientalism.’ I …

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 …

La Trinidad Vallejiana: Política, Religión Y Lenguaje En Fernando Vallejo, 1994-2010, Oswaldo Ortegon

Theses and Dissertations--Hispanic Studies

This dissertation engages a reading of three important themes in the narrative of Fernando Vallejo (1942- ) between 1994 and 2010: religion, politics and language. The dissertation concentrates on five novels: La virgen de los sicarios (1994), El desbarrancadero (2001), La Rambla paralela (2002), Mi hermano el alcalde (2004) y El don de la vida (2010). All three of the themes we explore are thematic trademarks of the former Spanish Empire that soured Vallejo’s arcadian dream of Santa Anita, a Paradise Lost or ideal nation that triggers the grammarian narrator´s desire of Vallejo’s works. Vallejo´s elusive satisfaction of that desire …

For The Love Of Robots: Posthumanism In Latin American Science Fiction Between 1960-1999, Grace A. Martin

Theses and Dissertations--Hispanic Studies

Posthumanism—understood as a symbiotic relationship between humans and technology—is quickly and surely becoming an inextricable part of daily life. In an era where technology can be worn as an extension of—and an enhancement to—our bodies, traditional science fiction tropes such as robots and cyborgs resurface and reformulate questions on critical aspects of human experience: who are we and what do our (imagined) technologies say about our world? Such questions are far more complex than they appear. Their answers should not come from one source alone, as humanness is experienced differently across time and cultural systems. In this sense, it is …

Ekphrasis And Avant-Garde Prose Of 1920s Spain, Brian M. Cole

Theses and Dissertations--Hispanic Studies

This dissertation analyzes the prose works of the “Nova Novorum,” a fiction series created and published by José Ortega y Gasset between 1926 and 1929. This collection included six works by four authors, five of which will be discussed in this dissertation. Pedro Salinas’ Víspera del gozo (1926) inaugurated the series. Benjamín Jarnés published two works: El profesor inútil (1926) and Paula y Paulita (1929). Antonio Espina is also responsible for two works: Pájaro pinto (1927) and Luna de copas (1929).

The dissertation is divided into five sections. The first chapter introduces the topic of avant-garde prose during the 1920s …

Largo Viaje En Breve. La Minificción De Max Aub, María Luisa Elío Y José De La Colina En El Exilio, Gonzalo Hernández-Baptista

Theses and Dissertations--Hispanic Studies

A pesar del interés que suscita, la minificción del exilio republicano español en México ha sido mayormente ignorada por la crítica y, cuando se ha reparado en ella, su acercamiento descontextualizado ha provocado inexactitudes que se reflejan en el canon minificcional propuesto para la Península. Por ello, examino algunas vías de contacto entre el exterior y el interior de España y propongo una primera aproximación a un corpus de autores en exilio, entre los que destacan Max Aub, María Luisa Elío y José de la Colina.

Además, el estudio de estos tres autores revela una minificción que no está ubicada …

Eating Spain: National Cuisine Since 1900, Matthew J. Wild

Theses and Dissertations--Hispanic Studies

Analyzing cookbooks, gastronomic guides, literature and film, this dissertationoutlines the creation of a Spanish national cuisine. Studying the works of Carmen de Burgos, Emilia Pardo Bazán, Dionisio Pérez, Ana María Herrera, Juan Mari Arzak and Ferrán Adrià among others, the project examines the evolution of this nationalist discourse by identifying common and recurring themes in an effort to extrapolate and describe the historical and cultural evolution of food from 1900 to the present day.

Within the framework of Food and Cultural Studies, this project treats cookbooks, culinary manifestos and guidebooks as texts. Influenced by a variety of culinary and gastronomic …

Acoustic Epistemologies And Aurality In Sor Juana Inés De La Cruz, Sarah E. Finley

Theses and Dissertations--Hispanic Studies

This dissertation considers the intersection of aurality and visuality in seventeenth-century New Spanish poet Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz’s (1648/1651-95) acoustico-poetic discourse. Prior scholarship has focused either on the author’s engagement with Western music theory and compositional practices or else the role of musical references in her works. This has resulted in the marginalization of Sor Juana’s engagement with sound through disciplines that are not strictly musical or poetic, including: acoustics, cognitive theory and visual art. I address these lacunae by considering such concepts as echo, reflection, Ear, Voice, musica poetica (links between music and rhetoric) and musical pathos …

Crítica Contextural: El Corazón Del Instante De Alberto Blanco: Ensayo De Un Método, Carlos Zamora-Zapata

Theses and Dissertations--Hispanic Studies

The most common approaches to arranged Poetic Collection are the chronological and the bibliographical orders, that is, the ones that privileges a book that normally would be called an anthology: the arrangements of poems following the order of the compositions of the poems (chronological), or the order of previous publications (bibliographical). "El corazón del instante" (The Heart of the Instant, 1998) by the Mexican poet Alberto Blanco (Mexico City, 1951) is a collection of twelve books of poems in one volume. The books in the collection --or the “chapters”, as Alberto Blanco call them in his “Introductory Note” of the …

Staging Theseus: The Mythological Image Of The Prince In The Comedia Of The Spanish Golden Age, Whitaker R. Jordan

Theses and Dissertations--Hispanic Studies

This dissertation uses the seventeenth-century Spanish plays which employ an array of mythological stories of Theseus to analyze the Early Modern ideology of the Prince. The consideration of the different rulers in these plays highlights different aspects of these sovereigns such as their honor, prudence, valor, and self-control. Many of these princes fall well short of the ideal explained in the comedia and in the writings of the arbitristas. By employing the hylomorphic theory in which everything can exist in either its matter or its form, it is shown that in order to have the form of a prince, …

Telling The Story Of Mexican Migration: Chronicle, Literature, And Film From The Post-Gatekeeper Period, Ruth Brown

Theses and Dissertations--Hispanic Studies

This study examines how the social process of undocumented Mexican migration is interpreted in the chronicle, literature, and film of the post-Gatekeeper period, which is defined here at 1994-2008. Bounded on one side by the Mexican economic crisis of 1994, and increased border security measures begun in that same year, and on the other by the advent of the global economic crisis of 2008, the post-Gatkeeper period represents a time in which undocumented migration through the southern U.S. border reached unprecedented levels. The dramatic, tragic, and compelling stories that emerged from this period have been retold and interpreted from a …

Aurora Bertrana: Una Trayectoria Literaria Marcada Por La Perspectiva De Género, Sílvia Roig

Theses and Dissertations--Hispanic Studies

My dissertation explores the narrative of Aurora Bertrana (1892-1974), an unknown writer today, but a successful and recognized female author in Catalonia and Spain during the mid 20^th century. The written work of Aurora Bertrana is almost never mentioned in manuals of literature. Relegated almost to absolute oblivion, her rich, intellectual writting has not received the attention it deserves. I have studied seventeen of Bertrana’s novels –practically her entire oeuvre– written in Catalan and Spanish, including the following excellent books that have escaped critical attention: Ariatea (1960), “El pomell de les violes” (mn.), L’inefable Philip (mn.), La aldea sin …

Simulacro, Hiperrealidad Y Pos-Humanismo: La Ciencia Ficción En Argentina Y España En Torno Al 2000, Mirta Rímolo De Rienzi

Theses and Dissertations--Hispanic Studies

This project focuses on science fiction literature of Spain and Argentina produced in the last twenty years (1990-2010). It hypothesizes that in this period a change of perspective substantially modified science fiction productions in both countries and converges into a new model of narrative. As a consequence of this reformulated vision, a new narrative perspective immerses readers in an era of simulation, hyperreality, and post-humanism. When advanced technology is able to modify the basic human anatomy, and persons are trapped between virtual and real universes, simulacra facilitate control of people in an effective and impersonal manner. Simultaneously, fictional scenarios show …

Faustian Figures: Modernity And Male (Homo)Sexualities In Spanish Commercial Literature, 1900-1936, Jeffrey Zamostny

Theses and Dissertations--Hispanic Studies

I contend in this study that commercial novels and theater from early twentiethcentury Spain often present male (homo)sexual characters as a point of constellation for anxieties regarding modernization in Madrid and Barcelona. In works by Jacinto Benavente, Josep Maria de Sagarra, El Caballero Audaz (José María Carretero), Antonio de Hoyos y Vinent, Carmen de Burgos, Álvaro Retana, Eduardo Zamacois, and Alfonso Hernández-Catá, concerns about technological and socioeconomic change converge upon hustlers and blackmailers, queer seducers, and chaste inverts. I examine these figures alongside an allegorical interpretation of Goethe’s Faust in Marshall Berman’s book All That is Solid Melts into Air: …

Literary Africa: Spanish Reflections Of Morocco, Western Sahara, And Equatorial Guinea In The Contemporary Novel, 1990-2010, Mahan L. Ellison

Theses and Dissertations--Hispanic Studies

This dissertation analyzes the strategies that Spanish and Hispano-African authors employ when writing about Africa in the contemporary novel (1990-2010). Focusing on the former Spanish colonial territories of Morocco, Western Sahara, and Equatorial Guinea, I analyze the post-colonial literary discourse about these regions. This study examines the new ways of conceptualizing Africa that depart from an Orientalist framework as advanced by the novelists Lorenzo Silva, Concha López Sarasúa, Ramón Mayrata, María Dueñas, Fernando Gamboa, Montserrat Abumalham, Javier Reverte, Alberto Vázquez-Figueroa, and Donato Ndongo. Their works are representative of a recent trend in Spanish letters that signals a literary focus on …

Specters Of The Unspeakable: The Rhetoric Of Torture In Guatemalan Literature, 1975-1985, William Jarrod Brown

Theses and Dissertations--Hispanic Studies

This dissertation examines the ways in which torture was imagined and narrated in Guatemalan literature during the Internal Armed Conflict. For nearly four decades, Guatemala suffered one of the longest and most violent wars in Latin America. During that time, it is estimated that more than 100,000 people were tortured at the hands of the Guatemalan military. Torture, as suggested by Ariel Dorman, is most fundamentally “a crime committed against the imagination” (8), disrupting and often dissolving the boundaries between fact and fiction, the real and the unreal. The Introduction and Chapter One of this study explore the destabilization of …

Deconstructing An Icon: Fidel Castro And Revolutionary Masculinity, Krissie Butler

Theses and Dissertations--Hispanic Studies

The goal of this project is to investigate the way in which various representations of Fidel Castro, between the years 1957-1965, have left an indelible mark on Cuba, transforming its landscape, I argue, through gendered means and conscious strategies. Thus it is less concerned with Fidel as an historical person than with examining with a gendered lens the ways in which he has been represented in foundational photographs, interviews, songs, and texts (both narrative and poetry as well as blogs). Drawing from theories of masculinity, which conceive masculinity as both a social construction and material body, my dissertation explores the …

Rhetorics Of Empire: The Falangist Discourse Of War (1939-1943), M. Elena Aldea Agudo

Theses and Dissertations--Hispanic Studies

During the Spanish Civil War (1936-1939) a mix of right-wing ideologies existed among the Francoist forces. In sharp contrast with the Republican forces, the Francoist insurgents were successful in banding together despite their ideological differences. However, in the postwar era, this relative unity gave way to a struggle among the different ideological positions, each striving to impose its agenda for the new State. The party Falange Española Tradicionalista y de las Juntas de Ofensiva Nacional Sindicalista (FET y de las JONS) assumed power, but was not entirely successful in advancing its totalitarian project, which it had inherited from the prewar …

Poetics Of Enchantment: Language, Sacramentality, And Meaning In Twentieth-Century Argentine Poetry, Adam Gregory Glover

Theses and Dissertations--Hispanic Studies

This dissertation explores the relationship between language, sacramentality, and enchantment in three twentieth-century Argentine poets: Francisco Luis Bernárdez (1900-1976), Jorge Luis Borges (1899-1986), and Alejandra Pizarnik (1936-1972). It seeks to ask and answer two fundamental questions. First, to what extent might it be possible to understand the conception of poetic language characteristic of modern poetry as an articulation, however muffled and secularized, of a sacramental apprehension of language and world? Second, how might such a conception be related to what Max Weber famously called “the disenchantment of the world”? The dissertation begins with a broad overview of the development of …

Cultural Production And Ephemeral Art: Feminicide And The Geography Of Memory In Ciudad Juárez, 1998-2008, Alice Laurel Driver

Theses and Dissertations--Hispanic Studies

This dissertation examines representations of feminicide victims in documentary film, novels, non-fiction, art, and graffiti and argues that these images express anxiety about they way women traverse and inhabit the geography of Ciudad Juárez, often giving precedence to the idea of the public female body as hypersexualized. In order to reclaim memory of the victims some cultural producers focus on the testimonial form in which victims’ families and other activists share their stories or construct informal memorials in the city; these remembrances later appear in works of non-fiction, film, and art, as markers of the process of creating and preserving …

Image, Expression, And Meaning Of The Mulato In Four Moments Of Cuban Literature (1968-1948), Luciano E. Cruz-Morgado

Theses and Dissertations--Hispanic Studies

My thesis grows out of a reflection on Cuban literature, race, and national identity within the broader framework of the canon and its marginal literature. It explores the dynamics of the Cuban canon and specific visions of race and nation, and studies one play, two novels, a book of poems and a radio script from four different moments in Cuban history.

Fernández Vilarós´s play Los negros catedráticos (1868) sets for the first time the topic of race at the center of the national debate, immediately before the first and longest Cuban independence war.

The play contrasts with Cecilia Valdés (1882), …