Latin American Literature Commons^™

Desde El Fuego Que En Mí Arde: Performance, Literatura Y Cine Afro-Latinoamericano Producidos Por Mujeres Afrodescendientes En Perú, Cuba Y Brasil (1960–2000), Elena Ekatherina Chavez Goycochea

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation examines different films, literary, and performance art pieces created by contemporary afro-descendant women from Peru, Cuba, and Brazil after the sixties with emphasis on the most relevant works of Conceição Evaristo, Sara Gómez, Victoria Santa Cruz, and Lucía Charún-Illescas. I focus my research on the crucial role these artists played in the cultural identity formation of Latin America when inserting ‘race’ as a category of socio-political analysis and cultural production. How did their films, performances, and texts challenge national narratives and imaginaries after 1960? Although in the sixties, women improved their civil rights in different countries, the ‘mujer …

María Teresa Ramírez Nieva: La Griot De Los Ancestros Y Las Ancestras, Catalina Rojas

Vernacular: New Connections in Language, Literature, & Culture

María Teresa Ramírez Nieva: La Griot de los Ancestros y las Ancestras

La poesía de María Teresa Ramírez es una poesía de resistencia y cimarronaje, de reafirmación de la vida y la libertad, de “recuperación y defensa de los territorios ancestrales” que han sido históricamente amenazados y usurpados en un Pacífico colombiano de abandono, guerra territorial, desplazamiento y muerte. Es a través de sus obras La noche de mi piel (1988), Flor de Palenque (2008), Abalenga (2008), Mabungú Triunfo (2013), Mabungú Triunfo: Cosmogonía Africana Tomo II (2016), como se eleva la voz poética de la ancestralidad Pacífica alrededor de la …

Seeking Asylum In A Modern Society: Global Responses To Latin American Migration, Rebecca Dickinson

Senior Honors Projects

The United States is no stranger to asylum seekers and refugees. The most famous seaport in the country houses a 305-foot-tall statue of a woman bearing a torch with words from the poem The New Colossus by Emma Lazarus etched at her feet: “‘Give me your tired, your poor, /Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free.’”^[1] The Statue of Liberty is a symbolic representation of open arms to immigrants from all walks of life. But if everyone is welcome, why do so few actually gain entrance?

US interventionism policies in the 20th century have defined the lives of millions …

Comparing African Cultural Retention And Its Effect On Racial Attitudes In The Music And National Identities Of Cuba And The United States, Lucie Turkel

Honors Scholar Theses

This project investigates to what extent the African roots of popular music in Cuba and the United States are acknowledged and examines if this level of cultural acknowledgement has any influence on the postcolonial social, cultural, and economic treatment of African Americans and Afro-Cubans. Does a greater and/or more widespread acceptance of African cultural retention and overall African heritage in a country’s national identity help alleviate racism in that country? Using primary sources from Cuban and American music and cultural periodicals, economic statistics, and political and cultural histories, I have determined that Cuba has a higher level of African cultural …

Framing The Border: Liminality In The Network Narratives Of Alejandro González Iñárritu, Muhammad Muzammal

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This thesis explores liminality conveyed as displacement before death in the network narrative films of Alejandro Gonzalez Iñárritu. Due to their depiction of existential crises and possibly fatal scenarios of several characters in different countries and regions, these network narrative films are colloquially referred to as the “Death Trilogy.” Therefore, rearranging the many strands of death-related abstractions and notions in these films around liminality becomes a jumping-off point to explore deeper layers of these works. Through interdisciplinary yet markedly film studies excavations, this thesis projects the liminal spaces of Iñárritu’s films onto border spaces. With borders considered as sites of …

Auto®Ficción Latinx De Nueva York (1999–2020), Jacqueline Herranz Brooks

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This research on the intersection of Literary Criticism, Latino Studies, Persona Studies, and Performance Studies has led me to question the accepted definitions of autoficción (Doubrovsky, Gasparini, Alberca, Casas, Schlikers) and expand that definition into a more multifaceted and operational term. Hence, I created auto®ficción, a new term describing the hybrid creations of a group of underrepresented contemporary Latinx authors living/producing/circulating their work in New York City, during the first two decades of the 21^st Century. For these authors, their life experiences and quotidian uses of this city’s spaces are the subjects of their work. Auto®ficción draws attention …

"There Was Also The Music": A Literary Analysis Of Puerto Rican Identity In The Works Of Sandra Maria Esteves And Judith Ortiz Cofer, Keyla A. Robles

Honors Undergraduate Theses

Puerto Rican culture often includes music as a method of expressing cultural identity. For instance, music has been considered a symbol of resistance, identity, and performative culture for many Puerto Ricans. This thesis will heavily rely on the involvement of Afro-Latin music in literature to determine ways that Puertorriqueñidad can be defined. To do this, I will examine how Puerto Rican writers present their identity in their works to define what it means to be Puerto Rican. These writers include the poet Sandra María Esteves and author Judith Ortiz Cofer. Throughout their literary works, they express several connections to their …

Anger, Genre Bending, And Space In Kincaid, Ferré, And Vilar, Suzanne M. Uzzilia

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation examines how women’s anger sparks the bending of genre, which ultimately leads to the development of space in the work of three Caribbean-American authors: Jamaica Kincaid, Rosario Ferré, and Irene Vilar. Women often occupy subject positions that restrict them, and women writers harness the anger provoked by such limitations to test the traditional borders of genre and create new forms that better reflect their realities.

These three writers represent Anglophone and Hispanophone Caribbean literary traditions and are united by their interest in addressing feminist issues in their work. Accordingly, my research is guided by the feminist theoretical frameworks …

Una Isla, Dos Literaturas: Contrapunteo De La Literatura De La Isla Y La Diáspora Dominicanas (1965–2018), Jose L. Peralta

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Una isla, dos literaturas.

Contrapunteo de la literatura de la isla y la diáspora dominicanas (1965-2018)

by

Jose Luis Peralta Genao

Advisor: Carlos Riobó

The literary works written by Dominican Diaspora as well as the ones written in the island have been dealing with a very complicated phenomena grown as the result of Dominican massive emigration of twenty century, namely the definition of dominicaness (dominicanidad). In the search of a broader notion of this concept the idea of being Dominican gets build and transforms in different Dominican literary spaces. By searching national discursive elements that construct that Dominican identities in …

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

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

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

Las Verdades De La Muerte: Discurso Oficial Y Literatura Peruana Durante La Guerra Interna (1980–2000), Alberto Valdivia Baselli

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation analyzes the productions of official truth in the positivist paradigm of the social sciences and those of literary truth in the context of the most recent Peruvian internal war (1980-2000), between the state and the subversive groups of the Communist Party of Peru-Shining Path (SL) and the Túpac Amaru Revolutionary Movement (MRTA).

It has been essential to analyze these truths, its hegemony of power and its cultural phenomena, to study the discursive forms produced in the literary archive. Hence, this research has examined multiple ways in which literary discourse has materialized during and after the war period. Thus, …

Centering Community Voices Through Children's Literature: Co-Authoring An #Ownvoices Picture Book For The Maine Migrant Education Program, Melanie Shelton

Master's Theses

Since its inception, the field of migrant education has been characterized by a tension between honoring the subjectivity of migrant families and positioning them as victims. This same tension exists in the analysis of children’s picture books that depict the daily lives of migrant farmworkers. In response to Eve Tuck’s (2009) call for a moratorium on damage-centered research in the field of education, this report describes the collaboration process between a representative of the Maine Migrant Education Program and a migrant

farmworker and her family to write, illustrate, and present an autobiographical picture book. Las aventuras, travesuras, y peligros del …

El Cuerpo En La Poesía De Mujeres Ecuatorianas, Chloe Hood

Independent Study Project (ISP) Collection

Este proyecto examina la presencia del cuerpo humano en la poesía de tres mujeres ecuatorianas: Aleyda Quevedo Rojas, Aurora Estrada y Ayala, y Sophia Yánez. Enfoco en como las imágenes del cuerpo en su poesía están relatados con algunos temas del poder y el genero. Específicamente, exploro los temas del patriarcado, el colonialismo, y la creación. En relación con el patriarcado, encontré que la poesía de Aleyda Quevedo Rojas aborda mucho con la expectativa social para la perfección del cuerpo femenino. Ella rechaza esta expectativa y abraza las imperfecciones de su cuerpo, incluyendo la fracasa del cuerpo a través de …

José Martí: The World's Most Popular Poetry, And A Vision For The Americas, Anne O. Fountain

Faculty Publications

This chapter begins with a capsule biographical sketch that situates José Martí as an agent of decolonization. It discusses Martí's place in literature, especially Spanish American letters, his transcultural importance, his work in translation, his role in the history of Cuban–US relations, and his vision for US relations with Latin America. It demonstrates the extraordinary international reach of his most popular writing by giving close attention to how two works, a book of poetry, Simple Verses (Versos Sencillos) and an essay, “Our America” (“Nuestra América”) have come to represent him to an increasingly broad audience.

The Making And Silencing Of “Axé-Ocracy” In Brazil: Black Women Writers’ Spiritual, Political And Literary Movement In São Paulo, Sarah S. Ohmer

Publications and Research

In this article, I will focus on two influential writers from the south of Brazil, Cristiane Sobral who currently lives in Brasília, from Rio de Janeiro, and Conceição Evaristo who currently lives in Rio de Janeiro state, from Minas Gerais. I got to know them in São Paulo in 2015 at a public event: the “Afroétnica Flink! Sampa Festival of Black Thought, Literature and Culture.” I will include references to some of their younger contemporaries such as Raquel Almeida, Jenyffer Nascimento, and Elizandra Souza, all of whom reside in São Paulo, in order to illustrate the Black Brazilian women writers’ …

Female Experience Of Trauma And Mourning In Two Postconflict Novels Of El Salvador And Peru: Roza, Tumba, Quema By Claudia Hernández, And La Sangre De La Aurora By Claudia Salazar, Raquel Castro Salas

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation focuses on how literature approaches the Salvadoran and Peruvian armed conflicts and contributes with perspectives of the female experience while offering illustrations of mourning processes. It is based on a close analysis of two postconflict novels that emerged after the publication of the corresponding truth commissions final reports. These novels are Roza, tumba, quema (2017) by Claudia Hernández from El Salvador, and La sangre de la aurora (2013) by Claudia Salazar from Peru. The contributions studied in this analysis focus on two areas: (1) a problematization of the female experience of the armed conflicts, and (2) a focus …

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

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

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

"La Llorona": Evolución, Ideología Y Uso En El Mundo Hispano, Raquel Sáenz-Llano

LSU Master's Theses

This thesis studies the evolution, ideology and use of the myth of La Llorona through time in the Hispanic World. Considering this myth as one of the most known traditional narratives of the American continent, I begin by providing visual, ethnohistorical and ethnographical insights of weeping in Mesoamerica and South America and the specific mention of a weeping woman in some Spanish chronicles to say how western values were stablished in “the new continent” through this legend. I suggest that during the postcolonialism the legend did not tell anymore about a mother that cries and search a place for their …

Resenhando Autoras Negras: Feministas, Plurais E Diásporicas/ Reviewing Black Authors: Feminists, Plurals, And Diasporic, Sarah S. Ohmer, Alexandra Lima Da Silva

Publications and Research

Este texto realiza um mapeamento de edições de autoras do pensamento feminista negro dos Estados Unidos e a circulação de tais livros no mercado editorial brasileiro. Procura compreender os significados do movimento de publicação de autoras negras no Brasil. O texto conclui que a emergência da autoria de mulheres negras no Brasil é um processo permeado pelas relações desiguais e pela necessidade de enfrentar lógicas heteronormativas, masculinas e eurocentradas. Resenhar obras de mulheres negras evidência um campo fértil, com repertórios plurais e diaspóricos.

This article maps out the various U.S. Black Feminist Thought publications translated into Portuguese and their circulation …

Two Cultures, One Identity: Biculturalism Of Young Mexican Americans, Janela Aida Salazar

Theses and Dissertations--Community & Leadership Development

The purpose of this study was to explore the daily life of the younger generation of Mexican Americans through a phenomenology design. Specifically, in regard to how the culture-sharing pattern of biculturalism is reflected in their lives and the way they construct their bicultural identity. The study utilized rich qualitative data to paint a clear and descriptive picture of the internal process of biculturalism within eight Mexican American college students. Ultimately, the data analysis aimed to collect and reflect their voices and the stories. This was done through three distinct data methods that complemented each other: interviews (oral), photo elicitation …

El Negro Y El Haitiano En La Literatura Dominicana De La Diáspora, Juan Nicolás Tineo

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This thesis analyzes the diverse representations of blackness and Haitian culture in the literary works of the Dominican diaspora. First, the texts of the Dominican diaspora that highlight Africa are analyzed in order to determine to what extent these works represent real historical and social phenomena accurately, and in what ways these texts question or present other realities that have not been studied by the critics. It may be said that the writers of the diaspora allude to their African heritage because it was in the United States that they discovered their true racial identities. It is because of this …

The Other At War: Performing The Spanish-Cuban-American War On U.S. And Cuban Stages, Juan R. Recondo

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

The Spanish-Cuban-American War, declared by the United States on April 25, 1898, marks a colonial shift in the history of the Caribbean and solidified the expansionist thrust of the United States outside national borders. Theatres in turn-of-the-century New York, which at this point was one of the theatrical centers of the nation, debated for audiences the imperialist character of the U.S. The Cuban struggle and the resulting Spanish-Cuban-American War permeated U.S. drama, thereby portraying a Caribbean in need of salvation by the military intervention of the United States. New York stages of the time became locations where various cultural representations …

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

Student Publications

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

Los Códices: An Exhibit Of Illustrated Books From Indigenous Mesoamerica, Jacob S. Neely

Hispanic Studies Student Research

This is an exhibit of facsimile codices housed in the University of Kentucky Libraries Special Collections Research Center.

The exhibit is on display in the Great Hall on the second floor of the Margaret I. King Library at the University of Kentucky from September 17, 2018 to November 9, 2018.

The exhibit is also available online.

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

Publications and Research

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

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 …

Neo-Stoicism And Skepticism In Part One Of “Don Quijote”: Removing The Authority Of A Genre. Daniel Lorca. Lanham: Lexington Books, 2016. Ix 1 158 Pp. $80., Damian Bacich

Faculty Publications

It is no surprise that a work of the stature of Don Quixote continues to engender debate among scholars more than four centuries after its publication. Neo-Stoicism and Skepticism in Part One of “Don Quijote” by Daniel Lorca enters the fray by addressing Cervantes’s intention in writing the novel and the strategy he used to achieve his goal. As Cervantes himself tells us in the prologue to Don Quixote, his aim in writing the novel is to do away with the popularity of chivalric romances. But did Cervantes intend to discredit an entire literary genre simply through ridicule? Or was …

Monstrous Dolls: The Abject Body In Rosario Ferré’S Works, Mackenzie Fraser

Senior Theses

In this Honors Thesis project, I examine two literary texts, “The Youngest Doll” (1991) and The House on the Lagoon (1995), by Puerto Rican author Rosario Ferré (1938-2016) with attention to her depiction of the abject female body as a figure analyzed by both theories of gender and the subaltern. Using these critical frameworks as well as my own textual analysis, I argue that Ferré offers a postcolonial feminist critique of the double oppression—patriarchal and colonial— operating upon her female Puerto Rican characters. Yet these women also turn this abjection into transgression, allowing Ferré to expose the paradoxes of female …

Diversas De Sí, Entre El Hoy Y El Ayer: Rememoria De Tres Íconos Femeninos Espirituales, La Condesa De Malibrán, Sor Juana Inés De La Cruz Y La Falsa Teresa De Jesús, Ana Gabriela Hernandez Gonzalez 5059749397

Spanish and Portuguese ETDs

This dissertation traces the cultural memory of three magical/religious women of the colonial period: Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz, La Condesa de Malibrán and La Falsa Teresa de Jesús. It studies these icons specifically in three different discourses that construct cultural identities in Mexico: colonial discourse (XVI-XVII Centuries), the discourse of national consolidation (XIX-XX centuries) and postcolonial discourse (XX-XIX Centuries). First I describe how the narratives of the colonial period and of national consolidation employ an official lens to place magical/religious women within traditional gender roles. Then I delineate how historical novels in the 21st century employ a postcolonial …

“Tú Hablas Ahora:” Viequense Female Archetype And Agency In The Works Of Carmelo Rodríguez Torres, Emma T. Comery

Kentucky Journal of Undergraduate Scholarship

Author Carmelo Rodríguez Torres incorporates many of his experiences with the U.S. naval occupation of Vieques, Puerto Rico into his novels and short stories. Few scholars have written on Torres, and even fewer have discussed him in terms of womanhood and feminism. Yet central to many of his works are figures of womanhood that are at once archetypal and progressive. In my paper I investigate Torres' treatment of his female characters in all his novels and two of his short stories. I place his presentation of women within the context of the U.S. occupation of Puerto Rico and its feminist …