Spanish and Portuguese Language and Literature Commons^™

A Nest For The Soul: The Trope Of Solitude In Three Early Modern Discalced Carmelite Nun-Poets, Stacey Schlau

Languages & Cultures Faculty Publications

For early modern Discalced Carmelite nun-poets, solitude remains tied to the paradoxical equation of life to death and death to life so famously parsed by St. Teresa. This essay examines poems by María de San Alberto (1568-1640), Ana de la Trinidad (1577-1613), and Gregoria Francisca de Santa Teresa (1653-1736) exploring the possibilities of creating and maintaining solitude while embarked on a quest for mystical union. Outstanding practitioners of the Teresian poetic tradition, the Founding Mother’s religious and literary example allowed them the freedom to communicate with their religious sisters and subsequent readers, and thereby establish religious community through writing.

Panorama Novelístico De Escritoras Ecuatorianas En El Siglo Xxi, Karina Ortiz-Pacheco

Dissertations

During the last three decades the literary production of women writers in Ecuador has been increasing considerably. Even with this growing number of novels, the academic community has taken a minimal interest in this new fiction. Existing research has only briefly mentioned the works of female Ecuadorian writers. In response to this lack of academic research, my dissertation examines the novels written by female Ecuadorian writers in the twenty-first century. My analysis focuses on the overlapping themes found in these novels, as well as the differences that exist among them and that distinguish each of the individual novels. This dissertation …

La Visión De Don Quijote Por La Intelectualidad Parisina Entre 1914 Y 1916: Un Análisis Social De La Encuesta De Ventura García Calderón, Emilio Orihuela

Teatro: Revista de Estudios Escénicos / A Journal of Theater Studies

El literato peruano Ventura García Calderón quiso recordar los 300 años de la muerte de Cervantes y de la publicación de la segunda parte de Don Quijote congregando a los intelectuales franceses alrededor de esta obra cuando estalla la primera Guerra Mundial y Alemania invade Francia. 59 intelectuales, entre ellos autores consagrados y también jóvenes, algunos de ellos desde las trincheras, respondieron a sus preguntas (¿cuándo leyeron esta obra? ¿Cuál es su simbolismo? ¿Cómo Don Quijote se asemeja a un caballero francés?). El examen de las respuestas revela que todos conocen esta obra, exaltan el ideal que encarna Don Quijote, …

The Pilgrimage To Meaning Along The Camino De Santiago, Matthew Carey Greenhalgh

Theses and Dissertations

As Christianity spread throughout the Iberian Peninsula during the Middle Ages, many believers attributed miraculous tales to the Virgin Mary and saints. In Camino de Santiago folklore, the Virgin Mary and Saint James intercede on behalf of pilgrims who cannot resolve a crisis without divine assistance. The Codex Calixtinus, a twelfth-century manuscript, contains such a story that occurs in Toulouse called "The Hanged Pilgrim." In this miracle, an innkeeper frames a pilgrim for theft and the local magistrate sentences the accused to hang as a consequence. However, the Virgin Mary and Saint James spare the pilgrim's life because of his …

Binding Freedom: Cuba's Black Public Sphere, 1868-1912, Alexander Sotelo Eastman

Arts & Sciences Graduate Student Theses and Dissertations

My dissertation studies the cultural, social, and political associations linked to the civil rights movement in Cuba during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, which witnessed the abolition of slavery, the crumbling of colonialism and the entrance of black intellectuals into formal politics. I trace the emergence of a black public sphere and analyze the networks of communication among people of color in Cuba and the wider Black Atlantic through sources that include antislavery narratives, the black press, court cases and secret police records. I argue that people of color in Cuba, enslaved and freed alike, engaged in political …

The Beauty Within Us, Areli C. Hernandez

First-Gen Voices: Creative and Critical Narratives on the First-Generation College Experience

This piece of prose, inspired by Chapter 23 of John Steinbeck's The Grapes of Wrath, tells the story of a simple, yet vivacious get-together of migrant Latino workers, exploring the beauty within us--members of the migrant farm worker community.

Subjective Identity Takes Flight: Magical Realism In Birdman, Kelly Kramer

Montview Journal of Research & Scholarship

Analysis of magical realism in the film Birdman.

Found In Translation: An Analysis Of Popular American Film In Spain, Emily Dushek

Honors Projects

This research examines American popular film in Spain with the aim of understanding if and how removing a popular text (such as a film) from its original language and socio-cultural context and translating it for consumption in a different language and culture affects the interpretation of the film. The study delves into the very successful 2012 films The Avengers (Joss Whedon) and Django Unchained (Quentin Tarantino) and uses textual analyses and comparisons of the original English and the translated Castellano Spanish versions of the films, specifically focusing on the translations, as well as analyses of film reviews and critiques written …

A Linguistic Comparison: Stress-Timed And Syllable-Timed Languages And Their Impact On Second Language Acquisition, Madeline M. Conlen

Honors College Theses

Acquisition of a second language can be a challenging task because no two languages are alike in their structure, syllabification, pronunciation, rhythm, etc. Also, after speaking one language for any amount of time, the speaker becomes accustomed to the specific qualities of that language; therefore, learning to speak another language takes extra effort because it is essentially rewiring the brain to think differently in many ways. One important element of language is prosody, or the patterns of stress and intonation in language (Dilley et al 237). The subsector of prosody that is to be studied is rhythm, explicitly isochrony and …

Connecting Communities And Building World Language Proficiency, Tyler Anthony

Honors Projects

There are a variety of ways for students to learn a second language such as, learning in the typical classroom setting, studying abroad, and participating in an immersion program. However, often times the benefits of technology are overlooked in the world language classroom. Technology can be used to establish a global community and provide students with new opportunities to practice their language outside of the classroom. Utilizing the language as much as possible is essential to evolving high levels of proficiency and developing communicative competence; however, world language students often do not get the chance to speak the second language …

Antología De La Clase: Creative Writing In Spanish, Britton W. Newman

Student Scholarship

Creative Writing produced for Spanish 441 in the Spring semester of 2016.

Traditions And Proficiency Abroad - Spain (Tapas) Program: A High School Study Abroad Program For District 128, Michaela Kendzior

Capstone Collection

As colleges begin to internationalize campuses and global competencies continue to become a demand in the workforce, secondary schools should also aim to internationalize the curriculum and offer international education opportunities to their students. In an effort to do this, I have created the Traditions And Proficiency Abroad - Spain (TAPAS) Program for Community High School District 128 in Illinois. The TAPAS program is a 20-day summer intensive cultural and language immersion program created to maximize learning potential in D128 students. While the program’s focus is on Spanish language and culture education, the orientation and instructional activities have been designed …

Póliza: A Bilingual Anthology Of Postmodern Peninsular Spanish Women Poets, Jacqueline Osborn

Honors Projects

Within this project I endeavor to translate a series of poems from seven postmodern female Spanish poets, exploring the challenges and idiosyncrasies of not only the migration between languages, but those specifically between Spanish and English as well as those particular to poetry translation. Of course, there are inherent limits to this process. Regarding the differences between English and Spanish, such difficulties as the presence of naturally reflexive verbs, neutral pronouns, more efficient nominalization of adjectives, and the greater presence of the subjunctive tense in Spanish arise. Respecting the problem of poetry, the structure, rhythm, and even the tone of …

Applying Linguistics: Analyzing The Differences Between Human And Machine Translation Of Selected Texts, Nicole Howell

Renée Crown University Honors Thesis Projects - All

Machine translation systems experience a trade-off between efficiency and efficacy: while quicker and easier than human translation, machine translations are less accurate and comprehensible.

This study analyzes two sets of English to Spanish translations to compare the differences between human and machine translation and evaluate the performance of machine translation. Google Translate—the best-performing machine translator—represents machine translation as a whole in producing English to Spanish translations of the given text. The primary investigator—a non-native speaker and graduating student of Spanish Language, Literature & Culture at Syracuse University—serves as the benchmark for the average non-native speaker of Spanish at the advanced-mid …

Virtual Communities Of Practice For Non-Native K-12 Spanish Educators As Professional Development, Javier Gerardo Gómez

Dissertations

Many world language and culture educators are non-native speakers of the language they teach. Although the current face-to-face professional development sessions do a good job in helping educators acquire technology tools to implement in their world language classrooms, professional development lacks in target language enrichment and providing ongoing collaboration among world language educators who are geographically dispersed. Additionally, the cost of attending state-wide, regional, and national world language professional development is very expensive and thus many world language educators cannot take part in these trainings. Consequently, many world language educators do not have the professional training they need to improve …

Spanish For Heritage Speakers: Instructional Module #2, Gabriela C. Zapata

Activities and Assignments Collection

This is the second instructional module for the teaching of Spanish to heritage speakers at the intermediate level. The outcomes for this module are as follows:

1. Students will be able to understand the way in which a persuasive essay is organized and written;

2. Students will be able to continue applying the rules for the accentuation of palabras esdrújulas and agudas to improve their spelling;

3. Students will be able to understand the rules that govern the present tense in Spanish and why it is the most appropriate tense when writing a persuasive essay.

4. Students will learn the …

Borges Y El “Criollismo”: Alegoría, Sátira Y Parodias, Jeffrey D. Tamucci

Honors Scholar Theses

Jorge Luis Borges famously quipped, “Not granting me the Nobel prize has become a Scandinavian tradition; since I was born, they have not been granting it to me.” While made tongue-in-cheek, this quote serves as a nice introduction to Borges's sly (often petty) wit, and also to the genuine lack of recognition he received during his productive years. He was snubbed out of awards repeatedly, even from his own country. In 1942, Borges lost the Argentinian National Literature Competition to Eduardo Diaz, a Uruguayan author of gauchesque literature. Critics praised the work of Diaz as indisputably Argentinian, yet considered the …

The Stories Of Junot Díaz: Genre And Narrative In Drown And This Is How You Lose Her, Luis Fernando Marin

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This thesis examines how Junot Díaz creates and constructs his literary alter-ego and narrator, Yunior de las Casas, and examines the Social and cultural aspects, such as race, ethnicity, and gender, that condition or influence Yunior’s construction. I argue that Díaz uses the short story as a subversive genre and modernist narrative techniques, such as shifts in space-time and focalization, to reflect Yunior’s diasporic, fragmented subjectivity. My analysis includes narratological and generic readings of Drown and This Is How You Lose Her, with a brief look at The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, paying particular attention to Yunior as …

“Between The Yes And The No”: Alternative Ontologies And Literary Depictions Of Mysticism In Borges And Mahfouz, David Shane Elder

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Since the advent of the modern era and the subsequent age of Enlightenment, the rational tradition has enabled the West to assert command of a large area of the globe and its population. While advancing the conditions of living for many, rational structures have also been used to control and repress others. The theosophy of the medieval Islamic mystic Ibn al-ᶜArabī, with its basis in irrational thought, offers a counterpoint to the rational and empirical traditions, the Social orthodoxies to which these epistemologies contribute, and the ontologies with which these epistemologies and orthodoxies are correlated. Yet mystical expression is very …

Los Cuentos Que "No Son Cuento": Subjetividad, Corrupción Y "Pornografía" En ¡Oh Gloria Inmarcesible!, Ana María Johnson

Departmental Honors & Graduate Capstone Projects

On the 25th of April 2015 in an interview conducted by Dr. Alejandra Jaramillo for the newspaper EL ESPECTADOR, Colombian writer Albalucía Ángel mentioned that in a warehouse in Colombia one would be able to find a hundred thousand copies of a little "secret" book published using the title of the first verse of the Colombian national anthem --Oh Gloria Inmarcesible! The book had been deem pornographic by the national Colombian press. This particular interview elicited an infinite number of questions in my mind, some of which inspired this research project. Through various research sources I have been able …

Las Jefas De Sudamérica: Coalition Party Discipline In Brazil, Chile, And Argentina, Adán S. Martínez

Latin American Studies Honors Projects

Political coalitions play an essential role in governance in Latin America. Scholars have analyzed policy changes as a way of measuring condition under which political actors govern. What factors contribute to coalitional stability? Based on analysis of three presidential administrations- Dilma Rousseff of Brazil (2010-2014), Michelle Bachelet of Chile (2006-2010), and Cristina Fernández of Argentina (2007-2015)- I argue that fiscal constraints, power centralization, institutional incentives, and social movement strength shape coalitional stability between the executive and legislative branches. This project concludes that while economic conditions affect coalitional stability, other factors including the distribution of power and grassroots movements play an …

The Auxiliary Verb Constructions (Avc) In Spanish, Claudia Quevedo-García, Christina Isabelli, Faculty Advisor

John Wesley Powell Student Research Conference

Oral presentation abstract.

¿Vera O Verra? Using Principles Of Task-Based Language Teaching To Practice Spanish Rhotics, Avizia Long

Faculty Publications

Research on task-based language teaching and learning has demonstrated that tasks may encourage second/foreign language development, specifically by facilitating conditions believed to engage processes that are important for second language acquisition to occur (Robinson, 2011; Skehan, 2014). Recent studies conducted by Solon, Long, and Gurzynski-Weiss (2014, 2015) have demonstrated that tasks designed to make pronunciation task essential do encourage learner attention to pronunciation, and increasing task complexity leads to greater accuracy in the production of the Spanish vowels [o] and [u]. This micro-teaching lesson, inspired by Solon et al., will showcase a task designed to make the pronunciation of the …

Aproximaciones Al Léxico Gay Y Sus Asociaciones Con Estereotipos En El Discurso Heteronormativo De La Comunidad Universitaria En Madrid, Lorena García-Barroso

Vernacular: New Connections in Language, Literature, & Culture

Este trabajo es un análisis sobre el nivel de conocimiento de las expresiones léxicas utilizadas en las interacciones sociales por el colectivo homosexual de Madrid. Analizaré los datos de un corpus de cuarenta hablantes heterosexuales llevado a cabo en un estudio sobre la existencia de estereotipos en el lenguaje vinculados a la homosexualidad en el contexto universitario en Madrid y veré si esta jerga léxica es compartida y aceptada en el discurso por los heterosexuales. Los resultados ponen en evidencia el inminente auge de una jerga gay que revela datos novedosos acerca del uso y conocimiento de sus términos y …

Autonomous Learning Through Task-Based Instruction In Fully Online Language Courses, Lina Lee

Languages, Literatures & Cultures

This study investigated the affordances for autonomous learning in a fully online learning environment involving the implementation of task-based instruction in conjunction with Web 2.0 technologies. To that end, four-skill-integrated tasks and digital tools were incorporated into the coursework. Data were collected using midterm reflections, post-surveys and final interviews from two online elementary language courses. The results indicate that the types of tasks and digital tools utilized fostered learner autonomy in different ways. Structured tasks enabled students to work independently to create content, whereas open-ended tasks allowed them more freedom in exploring the understanding of a particular topic through social …

Imagining Spanish And Latin American Poets In Their Neoliberal And Post-Dictatorial Contexts, Scott Weintraub

Languages, Literatures & Cultures

Review of: Reseña de John Burns, Contemporary Hispanic Poets: Cultural Production in the Global Digital Age (Amherst, NY: Cambria Press, 2015).

La Comunidad De Lawrence, Adrianna Decicco

Honors Program Contracts

During the semester, the class is learning about communities, the meaning and boundaries of communities and what makes a community. For my project, I am going to study the community and city of Lawrence, Massachusetts. Throughout the semester, I will be attending at least 3 different events in Lawrence. This will allow me to learn about the important aspects of the Lawrence community, such as the children, food and home life. The event reports will be the basis of the presentation and the presentation will also include information about the community as a whole.

Perception And Production Of Phonetic Stress In Spanish: An Investigation Of Native Speakers And Non-Native Learners, Benjamin Stoltenberg, Elizabeth Enkin

UCARE: Research Products

In recent years, foreign language studies have become an area of great interest, given that students must be prepared to take on a career in a globalized world. Consequently, there is a growing incentive to learn a second language, and especially Spanish given that it is the most-studied foreign language in the United States. Language courses designed for majors and minors generally center on the analysis and discussion of sounds, morphological processes and grammatical constructions. However, little is known about the nature of specific difficulties that may arise for native speakers of English when they interpret spoken speech in Spanish. …

Una Entrada En La Vida De Las Mujeres Inmigrantes: Una Exposición Visual Para Representar Las Experiencias De Mujeres Inmigrantes De México A Través De Retratos Y Entrevistas, Ashley Ables

World Languages and Cultures

Una entrada en la vida de las mujeres inmigrantes:

Una exposición visual para representar las experiencias de mujeres inmigrantes de México a través de retratos y entrevistas

Ashley Ables

California Polytechnic State University

Intent:

The intent of my project is to research the lives of migrant, farm-working women who have migrated from Mexico and now live and work in California. The other purpose is to present the findings to the Cal Poly and San Luis Obispo communities through interviews and artistic expression.

Methodology:

In order to research and present the lives of these women, I plan to do the following: …

Conexiones Transatlanticas: Expandiendo Limites En El Mundo Hispano (1890-1910), Argelia Garcia Saldivar

Open Access Dissertations

Este trabajo examina las transformaciones a patrones socio-culturales en el mundo hispano, que permiten a la mujer incorporarse a la fuerza productiva; como producto de la presión ejercida por comunidades de escritoras en foros internacionales sobre el atraso educativo y cultural que sufre la mujer. En esta disertación se estudia una economía que gira alrededor de las necesidades de la mujer promovida por la prensa periódica, que además de fortalecer la industria cultural y de entretenimiento, también auto-educa a la sociedad sobre la necesidad de educación profesional, mejora de condiciones laborales y apertura a espacios comerciales y profesionales para la …