Browsing by Department "Spanish and Portuguese"

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19th century plantation counter-discourses in Juan Francisco Manzano, Gabriel de la Concepción Valdés (Plácido), and Eleuterio Derkes
(2010-12) Oleen, Garrett Alan; Arroyo, Jossianna; Salgado, César Augusto; Nicolopolus, James R.; Harney, Michael P.; Sidbury, James; Bernucci, Leopoldo
My purpose in writing this dissertation is to re-evaluate the works of three influential Spanish-Caribbean authors who seem to be remembered more as exceptional historical characters rather than for their literature itself. Although often considered to be important contributors to the Spanish-Caribbean literary canon, these writers have also suffered a measure of marginalization as scholars have relegated them to the status of discursive subjects rather than evaluate them as authorial agents. As a consequence, the majority of their works have not been fully recognized as important factors in nineteenth, twentieth, and twenty first century literary production. I show how in their writings – many of which have been misunderstood, under-evaluated, and/or forgotten altogether – these writers narrated their own precarious situations and lifted their voice in protest against slavery, racism and economic oppression at a time when the dominant discourses and heavy-handed controls of the Spanish colonial government strictly forbid them to do so. These authors are Juan Francisco Manzano, Gabriel de la Concepción Valdés (Plácido) and Eleuterio Derkes. Because these authors lived in Cuba (Manzano and Plácido) and Puerto Rico (Derkes) as colonial subjects underneath the oppressive structures of their respective plantation and hacienda economies based on sugar production and slave labor, they experienced difficult colonial conditions and as such are able to narrate this life through a unique perspective that other writers associated with the dominant discourses of the time could not. While these brands of hegemony were indeed forced upon them as writers and artists, it did not stop them from narrating and communicating their unique Spanish Caribbean perspective. I show how these authors, as marginalized figures of nineteenth century plantation society, engineered their own discourses around these hegemonic institutions – writing between the lines of hegemony and concurrent with it at the same time – in order to create an alternative image of nineteenth century Spanish Caribbean society that requires further critical consideration and perspective.
A sociolinguistic study of social stratification and language practices in the south Texas border town of Laredo, Texas
(2022-08-30) Rangel-Kahanek, Natalie; Romero, Sergio; Toribio, Almeida; Moyna, María I; Koike, Dale; Martínez, Glenn
This dissertation focuses on the intonational variation and social stratification of high rising terminals (HRTs) in the local Spanish of Laredo. HRTs are characteristic to fresas, a Mexican cultural group that refers to individuals (usually female) who belong to privileged social classes, live expensive lifestyles, behave “pretentiously,” and speak Spanish distinctively (Chaparro, 2016; Cordova Abundis & Corona Zenil, 2002; Martínez Gómez, 2018; Urteaga & Ortega, 2004). The goals of this project were to: i) investigate the correlations between geography and sociolinguistic variation in Laredo in relation to HRTs; ii) determine whether HRTs are used as social markers; iii) investigate the role of the fresa speech style in the construction of social class identity; iv) identify the effects of Mexican migration on Laredo’s current patterns of sociolinguistic variation. Three main socially and economically defined areas were identified in Laredo: north, south, and west. Laredoans associate the north with social prestige, high social class status, and the fresa cultural group. Through the analysis of 45 sociolinguistic interviews, I found that north area Laredoans produce significantly more HRTs than the west and south. Participants’ area of residence was the most significant predictor, followed by self-identification as a fresa, reported financial difficulties, and the interviewers’ area of residence. My results show that there is variation in HRT production between self-identified fresas in the north and the south/west areas. Interviewed individuals who self-identified as fresas reported the existence of different sub-types of fresas in Laredo based on differences in behavior. Despite these intragroup variations, self-identified fresas agree that HRTs play a major role in the construction of their identities. The present study contributes to sociolinguistic studies on intonational variation, Spanish HRTs/uptalk, and the fresa identity on the U.S.-Mexico border.
A sociophonetic analysis of contact Spanish in the United States : labiodentalization and labial consonant variation
(2017-12) Trovato, Adriano Mario; Toribio, Almeida Jacqueline, 1963-; Bullock, Barbara E.; Chappell, Whitney; Sessarego, Sandro
The term labiodentalization is used in this dissertation to describe the linguistic phenomenon consisting in the realization of /b/, which generally corresponds to the voiced bilabial segments [b] and [beta] in Standard varieties of Spanish, as the labiodental fricative consonant [v]. The main goal of this dissertation is to analyze the effects of language contact on labiodentalization of the phoneme /b/ and labial consonant variation in Texas Spanish, with special emphasis on orthography and its influence on bilingual phonology. This project analyzes labial consonant variation in the Spanish of El Paso, Texas, from the perspectives of contact and variationist sociolinguistics. Specifically, it examines (i) if Spanish speakers from El Paso produce an auditorily perceptible distinction between [v] and [beta] or [b] as discrete categories; (ii) if they make an acoustically measurable distinction between these categories; and (iii) which sociolinguistic factors condition the use of and the distribution of [v] in the speech community. In pursuing these questions, a hybrid experimental approach that includes auditory and acoustic analyses for a production study is employed. Results reveal that bilingual speakers from El Paso, Texas make an auditorily perceptible distinction between the voiced bilabial and labiodental segments. Moreover, this distinction is correlated with the linguistic variables of consonant orthography and within-word position, while the most relevant social factors in relation to labiodentalization are English writing proficiency level, Spanish writing competence, and gender. Lastly, the best acoustic predictors for labial variation in the dialect examined are relative intensity and duration.
An acoustic analysis of contrastive focus marking in Spanish-K'ichee' (Mayan) bilingual intonation
(2014-08) Baird, Brandon Orrin; Toribio, Almeida Jacqueline, 1963-
Natural language enables speakers to organize and highlight the information they want to convey. The linguistic analysis of this organization, known as Information Structure (Lambrecht, 1994), investigates the different strategies used in various languages to mark important information, such as focus constituents, within larger utterances. Research on K'ichee' has predominantly documented the syntactic strategies used to mark constituents for focus and has yet to analyze the role of intonation (Can Pixabaj & England, 2011). While the use of intonation in focus marking in different varieties of Spanish has received more attention than in K'ichee', the consideration of its role within bilingual contexts is under documented (O'Rourke, 2005; Simonet, 2008). This dissertation addresses these gaps in the literature by analyzing the intonational contours associated with contrastive focus constituents in both languages of Spanish-K'ichee' bilinguals and comparing these contours cross-linguistically. These analyses investigate different suprasegmental features of contrastive focus within different syntactic structures and their correlation with the individual level of language dominance of each bilingual. This study provides evidence that these bilinguals prosodically mark contrastive focus in both languages in similar ways. The first significant finding is that an earlier alignment of the intonational events, and not a greater pitch span, is the most consistently used strategy in both languages. Additionally, while a greater pitch span is not consistently used to mark contrastive focus, it is the only suprasegmental feature that is correlated with bilingual language dominance in both Spanish and K'ichee'. Finally, while some dialect-specific phonological features provide evidence of transfer between the two languages, the features that are the most similar in both languages and possibly the most prone to convergence are the same that are consistently used to mark contrastive focus, i.e., the alignment of intonational events. The present study contributes to the ongoing analyses of Information Structure, intonation, and bilingualism, and it is proposed that frameworks such as the Autosegmental-Metrical model of intonation (Pierrehumbert, 1980), Accomodation Theory (Giles & Powesland, 1975), and the Effort Code (Gussenhoven, 2004) can be extended to these findings on the role of the location of intonational events in both prosodic contrastive focus marking and convergence of intonational systems of bilinguals.
Acoustic correlates of [voice] in two dialects of Venezuelan Spanish
(2009-08) Lain, Stephanie; Birdsong, David; Kelm, Orlando R., 1957-
The present study is an investigation of acoustic correlates corresponding to the category [voice] in two dialects of Venezuelan Spanish. The Andean mountain dialect Mérida (MER) and Caribbean coastal dialect Margarita (MAR) are thought to differ systematically in the phonetic implementation of the Spanish phonological stop series along the lines of lowland and highland divides commonly reported for Latin American Spanish. Specifically, MER has been characterized by a greater percentage of occlusive pronunciations, MAR by more fricative and/or approximant realizations of phonological stops. To test what repercussions these differences in consonant articulation have on the acoustic correlates that encode [voice], a production experiment was run. Informants were 25 adult monolingual speakers of Venezuelan Spanish from the areas of El Tirano (Margarita Island) and San Rafael de Mucuchíes (Mérida state). The materials were 44 CV syllable prompts. Target syllables were analyzed with respect to the following: consonant closure duration, VOT, %VF, RMS, preceding vowel duration, CV ratio, F1 onset frequency, F0 contour, and burst. Statistical analysis using a linear mixed model ANOVA tested for fixed effects of voicing category, dialect and condition (speeded/unspeeded) and interactions of voicing category * dialect and dialect * condition. Results showed that the dialects MER and MAR vary significantly in RMS. In addition, the following correlates were significant for the interaction of voicing category * dialect: consonant duration, VOT, %VF, RMS, CV ratio and burst. Generally, the nature of the differences indicates a greater separation between [± voice] values in MER than in MAR (notably divergent are VOT and RMS). These results imply that while the same acoustic correlates of [voice] are operative in both fortis and lenis dialects of Spanish, [± voice] categories relate differently. Furthermore, with regard to prosody and rate of speech, most significant differences in condition occurred in initial position while most significant differences in the interaction of voicing category * dialect were linked to medial position. The results of this study are relevant to current research on the specifics of dialectal variation in consonant systems. They also have wider implications for the general mapping of phonetics to phonology in speech.
The Aeneid of Brazil : Caramuru (1781)
(2012-05) Mora García, Belinda; Arias, Arturo, 1950-; Lindstrom, Naomi; Roncador, Sonia; Arroyo, Jossianna; Canizares-Esguerra, Jorge
This dissertation concerns the epic poem Caramuru (1781) by José de Santa Rita Durão. I propose both a post-nationalist or postcolonial reading of Caramuru, as well as a pre-nationalist or historical analysis. The first part of this dissertation focuses on the form itself, particularly the genre of epic poetry to which Caramuru belongs. The title of this dissertation references Virgil’s Aeneid, while the comparisons between this and other epics focus on the conventions of epic poetry, placing Caramuru within the context of other epic poems. Traditionally, and even recently, Caramuru has consistently been compared to Luis de Camões’ Os Lusíadas. I have tried to establish a closer connection with Virgil’s Aeneid, rather than Os Lusíadas, as the model epic for Caramuru. Chapter One focuses on the topic of imitation, specifically the many similarities with the plot of Virgil’s Aeneid. Chapter Two offers a historiographical approach to how the readings of colonial texts changed over time, including a historical background of Caramuru, which was written soon after the fall of the so-called enlightened despotism of Portugal under the Marques de Pombal. The second part of this dissertation is a close reading of the text itself, and focuses on the colonial discourse present in the poem. Chapter Three is an analysis of the religious discourse in Caramuru, which reflects the preoccupations of an Augustinian monk living in the Age of Enlightenment. Chapter Four concerns the representations of Amerindian resistance in the poem, particularly of two characters who belong to the insubordinate Caeté tribe. The last chapter focuses on the issue of gender and how women are represented in Caramuru. The main woman protagonist is a Tupinambá woman who becomes a prototype for Iracema, a well-known fictional character from nineteenth-century Brazil. Santa Rita Durão was born in Brazil but lived most of his adult life in Portugal, plus 15 years in Italy. He wrote that the motivation to write this poem was his ‘love of homeland’ or nationalist sentiment, even though the nation of Brazil was yet to exist at the time he wrote Caramuru.
Affecting violence : narratives of Los feminicidios and their ethical and political reception
(2012-12) Huerta Moreno, Lydia Cristina; Robbins, Jill, 1962-; Domínguez Ruvalcaba, Héctor, 1962-; Arroyo, Jossianna; Chapelle-Wojciehowski, Hannah; Ravelo-Blancas, Patricia; Pia Lara, Maria
In Mexico there is an increasing lack of engagement of the Mexican government and its citizens towards resolving violence. In the 20th century alone events such as the Revolution of 1910, La Guerra Cristera, La Guerra Sucia, and most recently Los Feminicidios and Calderon’s War on Drugs are representative of an ethos of violence withstood and inflicted by Mexicans towards women, men, youth, and marginalized groups. This dissertation examines Los Feminicidios in Ciudad Juarez and the cultural production surrounding them: chronicles, novels, documentaries and films. In it I draw on Aristotle’s influential Nicomachean Ethics, Victoria Camps’ El gobierno de las emociones (2011), María Pía Lara’s Narrating Evil (2007), Vittorio Gallese’s and other scientists’ research on neuroscience empathy and neurohumanism, and socio-political essays in order to theorize how a pathos-infused understanding of ethos might engage a reading and viewing public in what has become a discourse about violence determined by a sense of fatalism. Specifically, I argue that narrative and its interpretations play a significant role in people’s emotional engagement and subsequent cognitive processes. I stress the importance of creating an approach that considers both pathos and logos as a way of understanding this ethos of violence. I argue that by combining pathos and logos in the analysis of a cultural text, we can break through the theoretical impasse, which thus far has resulted in exceptionalisms and has been limited to categorizing as evil the social and political mechanisms that may cause this violence.
American Coverage of The Crisis In Catalonia
(2018-05) Kofos, Michael
Americans accumulate much of their knowledge of current world events through a variety of national news outlets. International news topics command variable attention in American headlines and are dependent on a number of factors including the domestic crisis of the day, perceived importance to the economy, public familiarity with the region, political impact on American interests, direct effect on American citizens or companies abroad and perceived interest of the American public. Given these reasons, American knowledge of foreign affairs is limited. Only when a constitutional crisis in a major European Union nation peaks with violence during a secessionist referendum does the issue make American headlines. On October 1, 2017, the regional government of Catalonia, one of Spain’s most influential autonomous communities, held an independence referendum. It was reported that around ninety percent of Catalans who voted said “yes” to independence, but these activists were confronted in the streets by a militarized police force sent by the Spanish national government, which declared the proceedings illegal. While this episode rightfully appeared in the headlines of many major American newspapers, these were some of the first events that exposed many Americans to the idea of Catalan secessionism – a deep-rooted narrative. Cognizant that there are more urgent issues to Americans that certainly deserve their share of media attention, my thesis poses the question “has the American media done a sufficient job covering the movement unfolding in Catalonia?” I examine patterns of news coverage pertaining to the Catalan ordeal and similar cases, and investigate the extent to which Americans are aware of the region of Catalonia itself. Following that, I assess the significance of the Catalan independence movement to American society to determine if its coverage has been sufficient.
An experimental approach to recomplementation : evidence from monolingual and bilingual Spanish
(2020-09-11) Frank, Joshua, Ph. D.; Toribio, Almeida Jacqueline, 1963-; Cuza, Alejandro; Bullock, Barbara; Sessarego, Sandro
This dissertation advances the study of recomplementation in Spanish (e.g., Villa-García, 2015), with three experimental studies that probe the representation and processing of the left periphery while addressing shortcomings in the field of syntax more generally. Recomplementation is the phenomenon whereby one or more left-dislocated phrases or circumstantial adjuncts intervene between a primary (C1) and secondary (C2) complementizer, e.g., He said that₁ later in the afternoon that₂ he would clean his room. Study 1 investigates the grammatical status of recomplementation in US heritage speakers of Spanish via acceptability judgment and preference tasks. Results demonstrate that heritage speakers prefer the overt C2 variety at a higher rate than the baseline group. These findings are interpreted within the Model of Divergent Attainment (Polinsky & Scontras, 2020), where complexities associated with “silent” phenomena and dependency distance, along with processing burden, lead to reanalysis and eventual divergent attainment. Study 2 explores recomplementation as a locus of dialectal variation in Colombian and Cuban Spanish via elicited imitation and sentence completion tasks. Results provide evidence that overt C2 is neither licensed by the grammar nor a facilitator of complement integration. Importantly, the possibility of task effect cannot be ruled out. Lastly, study 3 analyzes the incremental processing of recomplementation via self-paced reading. Results demonstrate that a psycholinguistic model informed by syntactic theory is favorable to one that is not. This conclusion is further supported by an analysis of individual differences in working memory span. While advancing recomplementation research, this dissertation offers experimental evidence in support of three broader claims. First, speakers with diverse profiles (e.g., heritage speakers) inform general theory and contribute to such disparate topics as processing complexity, the role of input and experience in language development and variation among the Spanishes of the world. Second, researcher selection bias and the effects of task must not be overlooked in the literature, as they threaten the ultimate pursuit of knowledge. Finally, when experimental findings, psycholinguistic models and syntactic-theoretical accounts inform one another, the outcome is superior.
Analysis of presupposition and relevance as mood choice predictors in Spanish Temer(se) clauses
(2013-08) Cigarroa-Cooke, Noelia; Kelm, Orlando R., 1957-
This report examines the dynamic mood alternation attested in fear emotive clauses, i.e. (Me) temo que mi hija sea/es anoréxica, 'I fear/am afraid my daughter (SUBJ/IND) is anorexic'. It does so by using data gathered in electronic sources, implementing two model analyses from the vast literature on the topic and presenting and analyzing the results. It then concludes which of the two chosen models better predicts and clarifies the mood alternation usage for this phrase. The two models come from Terrel and Hooper (1974; Model A) and Lunn (1989 and 1995; Model B). It is expected that one of the two analyses will better explain mood choice patterns for temer(se) expressions and, in future research, it may become a validated tool to explain mood variation in other comment clauses as well.
Applying corpus and computational methods to loanword research : new approaches to Anglicisms in Spanish
(2017-08) Serigos, Jacqueline Rae Larsen; Toribio, Almeida Jacqueline, 1963-; Bullock, Barbara E.; Koike, Dale; Erk, Katrin; Gries, Stefan
Understanding both the linguistic and social roles of loanwords is becoming more relevant as globalization has brought loanwords into new settings, often previously viewed as monolingual. Their occurrence has the potential to impact speech communities, in that they have the capacity to alter the semantic relationships and social values ascribed to individual elements within the existing lexicon. In order to identify broad patterns, we must turn towards large and varied sources of data, specifically corpora. This dissertation aims to tackle some of the practical issues involved in the use of corpora, while addressing two conceptual issues in the field of loanword research – the social distribution and semantic nature of loanwords. In this dissertation, I propose two methods, adapted from advances in computational linguistics, which will contribute to two different stages of loanword research: processing corpora to find tokens of interest and semantically analyzing tokens of interest. These methods will be employed in two case studies. The first seeks to explore the social stratification of loanwords in Argentine Spanish. The second measures the semantic specificity of loanwords relative to their native equivalents.
The aquisition of pragmatic competence in an L2 classroom: giving advice in Spanish
(2005) Mwinyelle, Jerome Banaya; Koike, Dale April
This dissertation investigates the effect of instructional video, metapragmatic discussion and explicit pragmatic instruction on the acquisition of the advice speech act (SA) by second language (L2) learners in fourth-semester Spanish courses at the university level. Though universals of pragmatics may facilitate the development of interlanguage pragmatics (ILP) (Kasper and Schmidt, 1996), L2 learners display a noticeably different L2 pragmatic system in both production and comprehension than native speakers (Bardovi-Harlig, 2001; Kasper, 1997). ILP research has shown that even among advanced L2 learners, L2 pragmatic competence is lacking (Kasper & Schmidt, 1996; Kasper & Rose, 1999). In response to this problem, the investigation proposes an appropriate and effective way to facilitate the acquisition of L2 pragmatic knowledge. The study adopted a design including pretest, posttest, and delayed posttest with three groups, incorporating video, metapragmatic discussion, and pragmatic instruction into its treatments in order to teach sociopragmatic and pragmalinguistic components of the Spanish advice SA. The data used for the study were collected from the learners by means of role-play and were transcribed and quantitatively analyzed. The learners’ advice realizations were analyzed for the following: (a) advice head act; (b) typical linguistic items; (c) amount of speech; (d) level of formality; (e) level of directness; and (f) politeness. Also, assessments from instructors and learners about the treatments and the teaching of Spanish pragmatics were collected and analyzed. The findings of the investigation indicate that the instructional approach that included the use of video, metapragmatic discussion and pragmatic instruction, enabled the learners in this particular group to perform better than the other two groups in acquiring L2 pragmatic competence of the Spanish advice SA. These results imply that the L2 instructional techniques and opportunities for meaningful language practice in the classroom used here may result in gains of L2 pragmatic development.
Archival dissonance in the Cuban post-exile historical novel
(2009-12) Helmick, Gregory Gierhart; Salgado, Cesar Augusto; Arroyo-Martinez, Jossianna; Lindstrom, Naomi E.; Shumway, Nicolas; Wylie, Harold A.
This dissertation investigates a common methodology of staging Cuban and Cuban exile historiography in three novels by Roberto G. Fernández (b. 1950), Antonio Benítez Rojo (1931-2005), and Ana Menéndez (b. 1970). This methodology develops a counterpoint between, first, the diagetic (strictly fictional) stories of characters who attempt to research or write Cuban history from exile and, second, the extradiagetic (extra or non-fictional) use of actual sources and tendencies of Cuban, Caribbean, and U.S. historiography structuring the narrative fiction. Reinforcing the density of the discursive field, the authors additionally incorporate works of Spanish, Latin-American, Caribbean, and/or Cuban literatures as constitutive elements of their fictions’ extradiagetic “noise.” I make the case that Fernández’s, Benítez Rojo’s, and Menéndez’s U.S.-produced historical novels develop a critical and investigative approach to the politics of Cuban exile and diaspora historiography. As such, they participate in the emergence of a post-exile Cuban literature, in dialogue with broader Caribbean and Latin American literatures. I analyze what I call archival dissonance in (1) the first, paradigm-setting novel in the body of historical fiction narrated from the frame of a dystopian future by Roberto G. Fernández, La vida es un special; (2) in Ana Menéndez’s use of reader response and archival research methods to critically recast a history of family division under the Cuban Revolution as popular romance fiction in Loving Che and (3) in the only novel Antonio Benítez Rojo lived to write in the United States, Mujer en traje de batalla (about the accidental arrival to New York City of the “first female Cuban physician” Enriqueta Faber, 1791-1827). Departing from the methodology presented with the narrative structure of each of the novels, in which a diagetic process of a character’s reading and/or writing Cuban history from a site of exile is countered by extradiagetic documentary and metaliterary information, I examine each novel’s metacritical approach to the politics of exile and diaspora historiography, as well as toward Cuban, Caribbean, Latin American, and/or U.S. literary textual economies.
Archiving the revolution : claiming history in Cuban literature and film
(2014-08) Gonzalez-Conty, Enrique Jose; Salgado, César Augusto; Arroyo-Martinez, Jossianna; Borge, Jason; Ramirez-Berg, Charles; Fierro, Enrique; West-Duran, Alan
This dissertation examines how both literature and film were responsible for the construction of the Cuban Revolutionary Archive. On one hand, the immediate foundation of the Cuban Film Institute (ICAIC) three months after the triumph of Fidel Castro's 26 of July guerrilla movement in 1959, showed the urgency to establish a cinematic apparatus that would support the Cuban Revolution itself, that is, the need to project what had just happened to the outside world. On the other, literature also emerged as an important artifact of the Cuban Revolutionary Archive with the support of the literary prizes granted by Casa de las Américas-- another key cultural institution founded in those first years. Most of the first films-- such as Historias de la Revolución (1960)-- and novels-- such as Maestra voluntaria (1962)-- produced then were either about the Cuban struggle or served to record the main events and accomplishments of the post-1959 revolutionary process. That is why I considered them as historical records instituted and manipulated by the Cuban government. I also analyze the films and novels published outside the island as a "counter-archive" that contests the official version. My goal in writing this dissertation, then, was not only to trace how this Cuban Revolutionary Filmic and Literary Archive was constructed but also how it has evolved throughout the years. To do so I analyze primary works from the sixties-- such as the film P.M. (1960) and Memories of Underdevelopment (1968) and the novel Bertillón 166 (1960)-- to contrast them with works produced thirty to fifty years later that revisit those first years-- such as the films 8-A (1992), City in Red (2009) and Memories of Overdevelopment (2010). The aim is to decipher why these two mediums were used as artifacts of the archive, what was hidden or erased, how did the archive of the sixties differ from the one that emerged after the dissolution of the Soviet Union and during the "Special Period," and what challenges arose with the passage of time and the decadence of the revolutionary process. By looking for answers to these questions, this dissertation aims to contribute to the recent revision by cultural scholars of Latin American Revolutions in their anniversaries.
Art and Mass Communication as Political Activism during The Spanish Civil War
(2015) Palombo, Megan; Sutherland-Meier, Madeline
This research explores paintings, documentaries, and journalism as political activism during the Spanish Civil War. This research focuses on George Steer, Ernest Hemingway, and Pablo Picasso's reactions to the bombing of Guernica, and the impact of their respective media to spread news and influence public opinion. The bombing of Guernica was the first time that civilians were the intended and sole target of an air raid. Francisco Franco denied the responsibility for the bombing and used censorship as a means to cover up the truth. Steer, Hemingway, and Picasso used art to inform people around the world about Guernica and the Spanish Civil War. Finally, this research compares Picasso's painting to modern day art as the ultimate manifestation of thought during turbulent times. Steer’s article “The Tragedy of Guernica,” Picasso’s Guernica, and Hemingway’s documentary The Spanish Earth, were all political activism in the moment during the Spanish Civil War, but these works also transcend time and speak to the human capacity to empathize with suffering.
Art and Mass Communication as Political Activism during The Spanish Civil War
(2015) Palombo, Megan
The artist among ruins: connecting catastrophes in Brazilian and Cuban cinema, painting, sculpture and literature
(2013-12) Lopes De Barros Oliveira, Rodrigo; Arroyo, Jossianna; Litvak, Lily, 1938-; Afolabi, Niyi; Davis, Diane; Fierro, Enrique; Salgado, César
This work is an attempt to create a constellation. In a constellation, some stars are greatly apart from each other. However, they appear on the same plane to our eyes. This method is derived from Walter Benjamin. Here I have, as my objet petit a, the pictorial, sculptural, cinematic and literary production of Brazil and Cuba from 1959 and beyond. As a barrier for creating meaning of such a vast content, I chose the theme of ruins, expanding when possible to its relatives: decay, catastrophe, debris, death, war, the lost paradise, the garden, intellectual thinking, utopia, dystopia, dreamworlds, rot, hope, human destruction, homelessness, and more. I work with figures of those two geographic regions, in which I think ruins—being inorganic, organic or abstract ones—have a major role in the work of: Tomás Gutiérrez Alea, Glauber Rocha, Orlando Jiménez Leal, Sabá Cabrera, Nicolás Guillén Landrián, Rogério Sganzerla, Néstor Almendros, Antonio José Ponte, Ramón Alejandro, and Francisco Brennand. This effort led me to reevaluate the classical concept of ruins in Western thought, which I think was relatively in force until World War I and which underwent a radical transformation after the advent of twentieth-century concentration camps, the domination by humans of atomic power, and the establishment of extremely high speeds for travels. I also propose that modern ruins acquire their full significance especially in the Third World. For, to the contrary of the central nations of capitalism, the Third World cannot be turned into ruins. It has already been born as such a thing. The aforementioned events just made this state of existence clearer.
Aspect and the categorization of states: the case of ser and estar in Spanish
(2007-05) Roby, David Brian, 1972-; Luján, Marta
In this work, the primary goal will be to construct the most descriptively and explanatorily adequate analysis possible to account for the complementary distribution of the Spanish copula verbs ser and estar. Over the past several decades, numerous theoretical accounts have been put forth in an attempt to accomplish this goal. Though such accounts accurately predict most types of stative sentences with the two copulas, they often fall short of predicting a significant number of them that are used in everyday speech. The first chapters of this dissertation will be devoted to reviewing a number of existing approaches that have been taken to account for the uses of ser and estar by testing their theoretical viability and descriptive adequacy. Among these are traditional conventions such as the inherent qualities vs. current condition distinction and the analysis of estar as an indicator of change. Those of a more recent theoretical framework, which will receive the most attention, include the application of Kratzer's (1995) individual-level vs. stage-level distinction to stative predicates and Maienborn's (2005) discourse-based interpretation of Spanish copulative predication. Schmitt's (2005) compositionally-based analysis of Portuguese ser and estar, which treats only estar as an aspectual copula, will be of special interest. After testing each of these analyses, it will be shown that the least costly and most accurate course to take for analyzing ser and estar is to treat both verbs as aspectual morphemes along the lines of Luján (1981). As aspectual copulas, ser and estar denote the aspectual distinction [±Perfective]. In my proposed analysis, I will argue that aspect applies to both events and states, but does so internally and externally respectively. By adapting Verkuyl's (2004) feature algebra to states, I will posit that aspect for stative predication is compositionally calculated, and the individual aspectual values for ser and estar remain constant in co-composition. In light of its descriptive adequacy for Spanish stative sentences and universality in natural language, it will also be shown that the [±Perfective] aspectual distinction is very strong in terms of explanatory adequacy as well.
Assembling place : Buenos Aires in cultural production (1920-1935)
(2009-12) Poppe, Nicolas Matthew; Shumway, Nicolas; Bernucci, Leopoldo; Domínguez Ruvalcaba, Héctor; Pereiro Otero, José Manuel; Zonn, Leo
In works of cultural production, interpretations of the built, natural, and social environment engage a hierarchy of readings of place. Formed by a totality of interpretations—accepted/unaccepted, dominant/subordinate, normal/abnormal, and everything in between—this hierarchy of readings frames place as a social understanding. Interpretations of place, therefore, are social positionings: kinds of individual delineations of the meaning of place as a social understanding. Collectively, these social positionings compose and comprise our understanding of the meaning of a place. In this study, I examine the different ways in which the understanding of Buenos Aires as a place shapes and is shaped by the avant-garde urban criollismo of Jorge Luis Borges’ poetry of the 1920s, the five plays of Armando Discépolo’s dramatic genre of the grotesco criollo, Robert Arlt’s dark and portentous binary novel Los siete locos/ Los lanzallamas (1929/1931), and three early Argentine sound films [Tango! (Mogila Barth 1933), Los tres berretines (Equipo Lumiton 1933), and Riachuelo (Moglia Barth 1934)]. To get at the mechanisms that drive the interaction between these works of cultural production, which are social positionings, and the social understanding of Buenos Aires as a place, I draw from Manuel De Landa’s notions of assemblage theory and non-linear history. Wholes such as porteño society of the 1920s and 1930s are assemblages of an almost limitless number of parts whose functions within the greater entity are not always clear. Place, therefore, is an assemblage whose meaning is made up of indeterminable interpretations of space. It is also a non-linear social understanding in that its meaning is irreducible to its components (i.e. social positionings). The mutual interactions and feedback within assemblages such as Buenos Aires are indicative of how meaning is ever changing through processes of destratification, restratification, and stratification in its components, including Borges’ early poetry, Discépolo’s grotesco criollo, Arlt’s Los siete locos/ Los lanzallamas, and the films Tango!, Los tres berretines, and Riachuelo.
At the end of a millenium : the Argentinean novel written by women
(2001-12) Gardarsdóttir, Hólmfrídur; Fierro, Enrique
The novel in twentieth century Latin-America has played a crucial role in the cultural exposure of the region, in individual and collective identity formation and socio-political commentary, as well as serving as the platform of classical romance writing. For the last thirty to forty years, women's increased participation has left a significant mark on literary developments in Latin America. They have provided a more pluralistic, representative and alternative picture of life and society in Latin America. Argentina has been no exception in this regard. I propose to investigate the continuing legacy of women’s literature in Argentina by focusing on the literary production of a group of Argentinean female novelists of the 1990s. This dissertation will examine the following novels of three Argentinean contemporary writers: Susana Silvestre’s No te olvides de mí (1995), Gloria Pampillo’s Costanera Sur (1995) and Liliana Díaz Mindurry’s Pequeña música nocturna (1998). I will examine each text individually, textually and contextually, both as a literary construction and as a vehicle for the authors’ ideas and opinions about women's role and place in society. I will examine the Argentinean texts within a postmodern and specifically feminist critical framework. viii Feminism will be understood as a political instrument that aims at achieving rights and conquering new terrain for women, both socially and personally. I will organize my dissertation as follows. First, I will situate the contemporary Argentinean novel within a historical perspective; second, I will focus on the theoretical concerns of postmodernism and feminism in particular to show how the novels reveal women’s changing identity and their place in society. Then, I analyze each text by focusing on thematic issues and exploring women’s personal, political and sexual identity formation. I also study the use of fragmented narrative structures and mixed literary genres. Finally, I demonstrate how these novels take part in the contemporary international critical debates on feminism and postmodernism through their denounciation of women’s position in modern Argentinean society. I will argue that in their novels the Argentinean women writers of the 1990s portray a society in which gender-based power struggles constantly occur. I will demonstrate how the texts share a uniform message about women’s subordination in society. Further, I will argue that each of these writers, in her own voice, makes a feminist statement on the subaltern status of women. These Argentinean novelists also present alternative role models for the new millennium, through their creation of independent protagonists and through their own example as writers. They enact the deconstruction of the masternarrative, invite future women writers to continue in this revisionist project, and urge them to join a newly created sphere from whence contemporary women writers can speak openly and rewardingly.