Theses, Dissertations, Student Research: Modern Languages and Literatures

Contextos y prácticas en las humanidades digitales

Joseba Moreno — Mon, 03 Dec 2012 12:34:21 PST

La aplicación de la tecnología a los trabajos enmarcados en el campo de las humanidades y la creación de un nuevo conjunto de prácticas denominado humanidades digitales, es el tema principal de este trabajo, que pretende servir de introducción a algunas de las prácticas y metodologías más recientes en el ámbito académico.

Modelización social en dos novelas novohispanas: Vida y hechos del famoso caballero don Catrín de la Fachenda y el Periquillo Sarniento

Wilfrido M. Suárez — Mon, 30 Apr 2012 06:29:06 PDT

En este trabajo analizo el modelo de sociedad —es decir, cómo las personas quedan agrupadas y qué tipo de relaciones las caracterizan— propuesto en las primeras novelas que aparecen en la América hispana a principios del siglo XIX. Mi investigación parte de los conocimientos aportados por la investigación socio-histórica en cuanto a la naturaleza de la sociedad establecida por el imperio español en el continente americano y, más en particular, en la Nueva España. Destaco la situación de los criollos dentro del estamento colonial, cuyos representantes son los protagonistas de Vida y hechos del famoso caballero don Catrín de la Fachenda (1820) y el Periquillo Sarniento (1816), mismos que hacen del passing o simulación el recurso para integrarse como aparentes miembros de la clase dominante. Dentro de este marco, exploro las continuidades y contrastes entre el modelo de sociedad propuesto en las anteriores novelas y los esquemas sociales heredados de la época colonial.

In this work I analyze the model of society -that is, how people are grouped together as consequences of social hierarchy-proposed in early novels that appeared in Spanish America in the early nineteenth century. My research is founded/based on the insights offered by socio-historical works addressing the nature of the society established by the Spanish empire in the Americas and, more specifically, in the Viceroyalty of New Spain. I highlight the situation of the Creoles within the colonial establishment. These members of society are represented by the protagonists in the novels Vida y hechos del famoso caballero Don Catrín de la Fachenda (1820) and el Periquillo Sarniento (1816) who openly challenges the status quo of colonial society. They are born into a world where hierarchy prevents social mobility, as a result they devise a way to circumvent this obstacle, “passing” or pretending to be somebody with illustrious ancestry whose rightful place is among the dominant class. Within this framework, I explore the continuities and contrasts between the model of society proposed in the previous novels and social patterns inherited from the colonial era.

Reseña de la película Smoking room (2002)

Ana M. López-Aguilera — Wed, 28 Mar 2012 06:23:31 PDT

Una empresa española es comprada por otra estadounidense. Una de las consecuencias derivadas de esta compra es una nueva política con respecto a fumar en el lugar de trabajo. Nuevas directivas prohiben hacerlo en el área de trabajo. Si los empleados quieren fumar durante su jornada tienen que salir a la calle. Uno de ellos inicia una recogida de firmas entre los trabajadores para pedir que una habitación desocupada en el edificio de oficinas se destine a sala de fumadores o, como la definen sus desconocidos superiores estadounidenses, smoking room. A partir de esta anécdota en apariencia irrelevante y sin que grandes acontecimientos ocurran en la película, los directores exponen en su largometraje las problemáticas relaciones en este espacio laboral. Problemas laborales y familiares se entremezclan en un ambiente de desconfianza e individualismo ofreciendo una imagen pesimista del mundo del trabajo en la época actual.

POETA PORTUGUÉS Y CLÁSICO CASTELLANO, LUÍS VAZ DE CAMÕES (c.1524-1580): EDICIÓN CON INTRODUCCIÓN Y NOTAS DE SUS SONETOS CASTELLANOS

Rose M. Sevillano — Thu, 08 Dec 2011 14:53:07 PST

This dissertation concerns the Castilian sonnets of Luís de Camões, a sixteenth century Portuguese poet known for his epic work Os Lusíadas (1572). Camões’ sonnets comprise the greater part of his minor works. I present those written in Castilian, which have not been fully explored. The study commences by focusing on its historical-literary context, revealing the background for the tradition of the lyric in the Iberian Peninsula, and incorporates a section dedicated to the history of the sonnet. In later chapters, I analyze the sonnets, and include endnotes that explicate the poetic language. Camões follows Petrarch, although stylistic factors betray him simultaneously as a Mannerist.

The first edition of the Rimas (1595) appeared in Lisbon fifteen years after Camões’ death. Because this book was published posthumously, its sonnets have presented a challenge in ascertaining their authenticity. I detail how in 1595, Rimas features sixty sonnets; by the eighteenth century they number 400, and by the end of the nineteenth century, they are reduced to half. Most of this corpus was authenticated at end of the nineteenth century by the German critics: Wilhelm Storck and Carolina Michaëlis de Vasconcellos. Out of the 30 sonnets in Castilian that I present, four are judged to be genuinely Camões. Since these four Castilian sonnets are incorporated into a number of Camões’ complete works and are classified as being authentic by the nineteenth and twentieth century critics, I have also classified them the same way, stating who has authenticated them into the Camões’ canon. The source is María de Lurdes Saraiva’s complete collection of Camões’ lyrics, in which she indicates the critics who label them as camoneanos, as well as the CD-ROM of his Vida e Obra, which both classify and separate them as authentic or apocryphal. The remaining 26 sonnets are apocryphal. I highlight that the poet’s authentic sonnets employ mythology, an element not so prevalent in the apocryphal ones.

Mass Culture as Domination or Resistance in Latin American Narratives

Tim Robbins — Fri, 18 Nov 2011 12:01:09 PST

Since the introduction of radio to Latin America in the 1930’s and later television in the 1950’s, mass culture has become an important and even contentious part of Latin American identity, and as such has also become an important part of Latin American narratives. In looking at the issue of mass culture, two basic approaches emerge: one can see mass culture as a force of domination or one can see it as a force of resistance. It is possible to trace these approaches through different time periods and geopolitical situations. The Mexican Onda writers, for instance, utilize the rock and roll of North American mass culture for the creation of a generational ethos which pushes the boundaries of the authoritarian idea of Mexican identity. This can be seen as a positive force, as is the case with José Agustín, Gustavo Sainz and Parménides García Saldaña, or as a manifestation of cultural imperialism as Hector Manjarrez proposes. Carlos Monsiváis bridges the spectrum between the two ideologies, gradually envisioning mass culture to be an instrument of cultural imperialism at the same time that it offers a means of resisting social hierarchies and assumptions. At the same time that the Onda authors are exploring Mexican identity, Manuel Puig incorporates mass culture through film and radio in his novels with a different focus. In his novels, Boquitas pintadas and The Buenos Aires Affair, Puig explores the construction of power structures based on gender and ultimately proposes that mass culture can be used to resist these structures if one takes an active, critical approach. The Onda and Puig form a strong basis for comparison and contrast for postmodern writers Alberto Fuguet and Rodrigo Fresán. These authors see mass culture as a part of the fabric of postmodern life, but in this they also see it as a means of domination. Mass culture becomes a fetish that allows the individual to maintain the status quo.

Advisor: José Eduardo González

EL MACHO SARNIENTO: LA HIPERMASCULINIDAD EN YONQUIS Y YANQUIS DE ALONSO DE SANTOS Y ENTRE VILLA Y UNA MUJER DESNUDA DE SABINA BERMAN

Joaquín M. Muñoz — Fri, 22 Apr 2011 13:03:42 PDT

Dos obras de teatro de los años noventa del siglo XX, representativas de dos países, España y México, proporcionan espacios privilegiados para un estudio comparativo de la masculinidad. Esta tesis explora el género y la identidad masculina, y específicamente, la hipermasculinidad en las obras de teatro Yonquis y yanquis (1996), del español José Luis Alonso de Santos y Entre Villa y una mujer desnuda (1993), de la mexicana Sabina Berman. Para llevar a cabo este análisis se aborda primeramente lo polisémico que significa ser hombre en varios contextos socio-culturales, la hipermasculinidad, y también los términos que se conocen popularmente como “macho mexicano” y “macho ibérico”. El análisis se realiza sobre un marco teórico de estudios de género y explora la manifestaciones de los dos protagonistas en sus ámbitos sociales, delineando las características que desmitifican al macho hispánico y lo convierten en el “macho sarniento”.

Cine e inmigración: espacios de inclusión y exclusión

Ana M. López-Aguilera — Fri, 30 Jul 2010 09:57:57 PDT

El tema de la inmigración representa una novedad para la sociedad española. Aunque habituada a las visitas de turistas extranjeros, la llegada de personas cuya estancia responde a motivos económicos y laborales (no ociosos) y que se prevé más prolongada, ha creado una nueva situación social. El cine ha respondido a este cambio incluyendo personajes inmigrantes en las obras y planteando en las mismas cuestiones relacionadas con el tema. Este tipo de cine se denomina “de inmigración” o “de inmigrantes” y muestra una preocupación de los directores por tratar contenidos sociales en sus obras. No obstante, existe una tendencia a explicar éstos mediante un discurso cultural del que se excluyen factores decisivos para el tema migratorio como son los económicos. Esto conlleva una simplificación del tratamiento de este fenómeno social. Otra consecuencia es que el discurso económico que explica de forma más profunda la inmigración se silencia, desaparece. El análisis de tres películas de inmigración nos revela esta aproximación culturalista a obras que tratan cuestiones sociales. Estas tres películas son: Poniente (2002) dirigida por Chus Gutiérrez, Flores de otro mundo (1999) de Icíar Bollaín y En construcción (2000) de José Luis Guerin. El análisis parte de la dimensión espacial de las películas: aquélla en que se sitúa la historia narrada. El contraste entre la explicación culturalista con respecto a las obras cinematográficas y el enfoque más amplio de los estudios geográficos nos permitirá percibir esa tendencia en el cine de inmigración.

La voz y la violencia invisible en el cuento caribeño contemporáneo

Carmen Bourbon — Mon, 29 Jun 2009 09:51:05 PDT

Some short stories by Caribbean women writers feature a female protagonist speaking in her own voice, telling her own story and coming to understand herself and her circumstances. In other texts, the protagonist's voice is challenged, overwhelmed or replaced by other voices, and she continues suffering psychologically. We examine the relationship between changes in the narrative voice and the female protagonist’s fate in twelve texts, demonstrating the consequences of her ability or inability to tell her story.

Each text displays a distinct correspondence between the protagonist’s life and how it is narrated. In "Masticar una rosa", "El lado frío de la almohada" and "Rondeles" a first-person narrator reflects on her mistreatment and begins to understand her situation. In "Una semana de siete días" and "De tal astilla, tal palo" a first-person narrator recounts being abandoned or betrayed by her mother but never overcomes her feeling of abandonment or resentment. In "Un poema para Alicia" a first-person narrator tells of sexual abuse by her father, framed by other voices. In "Remordimiento" and "El cuento envenenado", others tell a woman's story. In "Remordimiento", a white woman tells the life of a former slave who barely speaks in the text. In "El cuento envenenado" the stepmother comments on a fictional version of her stepdaughter's life. In "Bumerang", first-person and third-person narrators tell the story of the protagonist's mistreatment, but she barely recognizes her abuse. Although the protagonist's voice predominates in "Así fue mamá", her abuser has the final word. In "Los mundos de Teresa", a third-person narrator reveals Teresa's fate after her teacher raped her. We hear the neighbors' comments but not Teresa's voice. A third-person narrator reveals Elba's preference for imaginary worlds in "Más allá" but Elba never expresses herself in tangible ways.

These texts demonstrate a relationship between unheard voices and unseen violence in selected literary works from Cuba, Puerto Rico and the Dominican Republic, illustrating the complex interactions of gender, violence and voice in the Caribbean region today.

[The text of this dissertation is in Spanish.]

Inscriptive Masculinity in Balzac’s Comédie Humaine

Alana K. Eldrige — Thu, 23 Apr 2009 07:39:50 PDT

This reading of La Comédie humaine traces the narrative paradigm of the young hero within Balzac’s literary universe. A dynamic literary signifier in nineteenth-century literature, the young hero epitomizes the problematic existence encountered by the individual in post-revolutionary France. At the same time, he serves as a mouth-piece for an entire youthful generation burdened by historical memory. Left to assert his position in a society devoid of legitimate authority, the young hero seeks avenues for historical self-creation. And, at every turn, he is reminded of the illegitimacy of his own position. The historical dead-end experienced by the young hero serves therefore as a springboard upon which Balzac launches his own aesthetic enterprise. In the author’s repeated denial of the possibility for restoration, underscoring the division between past and present in the nineteenth-century historical consciousness, Balzac wishes to simulate its reconciliation through a writing of continuity. In exploring the fatal legacy of Napoleon’s self-generative imperative, Balzac reveals a lopsided vision of the young hero. Dictated by a politics of gender or the ideological softening of the masculine portrait portrayed in art and in literature, Balzac establishes a critical framework for an aesthetic reading of his disempowered or feminized young hero. His assertion of the textual model’s corrective – to posit an absolute – is revealed in the poetic enterprise of re-Creation; that is, the “creative pact,” or a poetical contract (a poésie du mal) designed to rewrite origins, and reinstate masculine authority. In pushing the dialectic for creation to its extreme, Balzac attaches a performative value to the young hero, scripting him thus as a literary signifier ordained to rival natural creation. However, the discourse of youth and the hero, emphasizing an important development in the Balzacian novel, reveals a young hero that is finally impotent. While Balzac does not give up on the potential for self-realization, the locus for recreation in post-revolutionary society is posited as exterior to France and, by extension, exterior to the French novel.

HIDDEN IDENTITY IN THE CONTEMPORARY LATIN AMERICAN HISTORICAL NOVEL: THE CONQUEST SEEN THROUGH THE EYES OF DOUBLE AGENT CHARACTERS

James W. Gustafson Jr. — Thu, 02 Aug 2007 07:12:50 PDT

Many contemporary Latin American authors explore identity and re-write the past through narrative fiction, often looking to the violent beginnings of the Conquest and Colonization as a logical point of departure. This dissertation examines identity formation through fictional characters living with two identities in the following historical novels: El naranjo by Carlos Fuentes, Gonzalo Guerrero by Eugenio Aguirre, Duerme by Carmen Boullosa, Invasores del paraíso by Herminio Martínez, Memorias del Nuevo Mundo by Homero Aridjis, and Los perros del paraíso by Abel Posse.

Chapter One situates this study among the substantial critical corpus dedicated to Latin American novels of the Conquest and introduces a theoretical framework for analyzing double agent characters and identity formation in Latin American literature. Chapter Two contrasts the characterizations of Gonzalo Guerrero and Jerónimo de Aguilar in novels by Carlos Fuentes and Eugenio Aguirre with previous representations and analzyes the significance of the more complex, dual identity view of these two historical personages. Chapter Three examines dual identity as it relates to gender and sexuality. In Duerme a French woman cross-dresses as a Spanish soldier while in Invasores del paraíso, a young man with repressed homoerotic desires negotiates an identity between the typical machismo found among most members of his expedition and a group of openly practicing homosexuals. Chapter Four explores the complex identity of the Crypto-Jews, or secret Jews, and their persecution by the Inquistion in fifteenth century Spain and in the New World. Two characterizations of Christopher Columbus as a converso and possible Crypto-Jew in Los perros del paraíso and Memorias del Nuevo Mundo inform the examination of this phenomenon. Chapter Five looks at the broader issues related to identity formation in contemporary Latin America such as globalization and the creation of new types of readers.

Essentialist views of identity are challenged through the double agent characters in these texts who are forced to alternate between a public persona and a socially marginalized identity.

Advisor: Catherine Nickel

EN BUSCA DE UNA TIPOLOGÍA MATERNAL: (RE)CONSIDERANDO LA MUJER-MADRE EN LA ESPAÑA DE LOS SIGLOS XIX Y XX

Guiomar C. Fages — Fri, 20 Apr 2007 11:30:12 PDT

This dissertation examines different models of motherhood as represented in major modern novels, taking the late Nineteenth century as a point of departure and concluding with the period known as the “Transición” that followed the dictatorial regime of Francisco Franco (1939-75). This study emphasizes the novels published during and after the Francoist regime.

The current study examines how the role of the mother evolved as various historical, political, and societal changes occurred in Spain. Although, as a general rule, novels often reflect the dominant ideologies of the patriarchal society in which they are written, each of these novels subverts the idealized image of the traditional Spanish mother.

This subversion is less obvious in Los pazos de Ulloa (1886) by Emilia Pardo Bazán and in La tía Tula (1921) by Miguel de Unamuno. Each of these novels depicts variations of the stereotypical maternal image. Consequently, both novels constitute a transition between the two centuries. Delibe’s Cinco horas con Mario (1966) subtly undermines the concepts of the proper role of women as promulgated by the Sección Femenina, thus communicating a subversive vision of the mother. Women in La plaza del Diamante (1962) by Mercé Rodoreda also display great variety in the way they behave as mothers. This novel, as well as Si te dicen que caí (1977) by Juan Marsé and La hora violeta (1980) by Montserrat Roig, focus on a negative depiction of motherhood and introduce the mother-daughter conflict.

This study demonstrates how the genre of the novel depicted an evolving role assigned to women who became mothers. In each case, this role represented a subversion of traditional stereotypes and expectations. These subversions reflected the particular vision of each author as well as those changes in society and cultural climate that took place at the time each novel was written.

Advisers: Harriet Turner and Catherine Nickel

La presencia del dolor en la obra poética de Garcilaso de la Vega, Diego Hurtado de Mendoza, Gutierre de Cetina, Lope de Vega y la Madre Josefa del Castillo

Dilia Hernández Delgado — Tue, 17 Apr 2007 12:29:38 PDT

The present study explores works by Gracilaso de la Vega, Gutierre de Cetina, Diego Hurtado the Mendoza, Lope de Vega and Josefa del Castillo, a group of Spanish language writers whose lives span the sixteenth, seventeenth and eighteenth-centuries. The thematic focus is upon sorrow or pain, both as subjective experience in the respective biographies and as a force spurring these authors toward the production of their verse. To this end, several poetic compositions have been examined, applying methodological techniques derived from Dámaso Alonso, José María Díez Borque, Tomás Navarro and Elizabeth Wilhelmsen. The exploration has brought to light that it is not uncommon for men and women undergoing suffering to forge an articulation thereof in the domain of art. In fact, the link between pathos and creativity surfaces throughout the history of art, not only in literary works such as novels, essays, plays and poetry, but as well in productions such as music, painting, sculpture and architecture.

Advisor: Elizabeth Wilhelmsen

POÉTICA DE LO SOEZ: Luis Rafael Sánchez: IDENTIDAD Y CULTURA EN AMÉRICA LATINA Y EN EL CARIBE

Julio César Sánchez Rondón — Tue, 09 May 2006 14:40:04 PDT

La obra del escritor puertorriqueño Luis Rafael Sánchez ha sido estudiada desde diferentes ángulos críticos y perspectivas metodológicas. Ensayistas y académicos se han abocado al estudio de su obra, con el objeto de indagar sobre la visión que él tiene no sólo del arte narrativo, sino también acerca de su concepción política y social, su visión de la vida y del mundo que le rodea.

Una parte de esta crítica ha tratado de indagar sobre la situación histórica de Puerto Rico; país que ha soportado 400 años de colonialismo español, y que desde 1898, con la presencia norteamericana en la isla, se ha visto forzada a asumir patrones de conducta y formas de vida que muy poco benefician el desarrollo de una auténtica nacionalidad; creando en los hombres y mujeres del país conflictos de identidad que no tienen parangón en el resto del Caribe, ni en Latinoamérica.

De ahí, de esas condiciones políticas y sociales, de esa incertidumbre que empaña y pone en cuestionamiento la idiosincrasia del nativo, surge la gran preocupación política y estética de Luis Rafael Sánchez. Y ese va a ser precisamente el aspecto que se convierte en un punto de honor, ideológico, en toda su obra. Se propone el escritor reivindicar a su país, y sensibilizar a sus conciudadanos sobre esa grave situación. Para ello, con el fin de rescatar la identidad, recurre a los bajos fondos, a la cultura de los marginales y las clases desposeídas y plebeyas, en lo que luego llamará Hacia una poética de lo soez.

En esta investigación nosotros partimos de esa tesis poética para demostrar cuáles son sus aspectos determinantes, y cómo se aplica en el corpus creativo del escritor. La muestra abarca los cuatro géneros: ensayo, drama, cuento y novela.

Adviser: Harriet Turner.