Matching Items (17)
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- All Subjects: Latin American literature
- All Subjects: Gender Studies
- Creators: Foster, David W
- Status: Published
Description
ABSTRACT This thesis aims to demonstrate the validity of political violence in contemporary Chicano and Peruvian American narratives as a reflection of the sociopolitical situation of immigrants and their descendants in the United States (U.S.). The thesis explores the various ways in which contemporary Chicano and Peruvian American narratives present the political violence in the U.S. towards Mexican and Peruvian immigrants and Chicanos and Peruvian Americans examining the intersections that exist between the resistance and violence discourses and its sociopolitical consequences. Although the topic of political violence has been previously studied in U.S. and Latin American narratives throughout its history, its analysis has been insufficiently explored as far as contemporary narratives of the XXI century are concerned. With this in mind, two texts will be used to study this discourse of violence in Chicano and Peruvian American literature: Alejandro Morales' "Pequeña nación" (2005) and Daniel Alarcón's "Guerra en la penumbra" (2005). The thesis examines the immigrant as a center of discourse exploring the conflict between them and the institutions or groups in power that instigate this political violence. The first chapter covers the socio historical background regarding Mexican and Peruvian migration flows to the United States in the nineteenth, twentieth and twenty-first centuries. The second chapter introduces "The Triangle of Violence" proposed by Norwegian mathematician and sociologist Johan Galtung as the basis for the theoretical framework and approach of this analysis. Chapter three analyzes the Chicano short story "Pequeña nación" by Alejandro Morales. The analysis of the Peruvian American short story "Guerra en la penumbra" by Daniel Alarcón follows in chapter four. The conclusion emphasizes the problem of political violence experienced by immigrants in the U.S. in contemporary Chicano and Peruvian American narratives and possible solutions contained therein, protesting a problem that can hinder immigration policy reforms and the defense of human rights.
ContributorsSifuentes, Ana (Author) / Rosales, Jesus (Thesis advisor) / García-Fernández, Carlos J. (Thesis advisor) / Alarcon, Justo (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2013
Description
This work aims to deepen the construction of identity of the Korean-argentinian through the "koreanity" and "koreanism". Therefore, we will analyze the short story collection La peonia y su sombra (2002) in search of evidence that discover the difficult definition of the "koreanism", or the practice of Korean culture, in which the language is included. The "koreanity" is a feature based on physical traits, while the "koreanism" is defined by the use of the language and the culture. While the "koreanity" is an exogenous factor, and it is well defined, the "koreanism" is defined through cultural impressions that are more difficult to distinguish. To do this we will use the Argentine native vision to find the "koreanism" and, if necessary, will exhibit different forms of subsistence of the "koreanism" in Argentina.
ContributorsLee, Jaekeun (Author) / Foster, David W (Thesis advisor) / De Jesús Hernández-G., Manuel (Committee member) / Tompkins, Cynthia (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2013
Description
This dissertation analyzes three films from Mexico, Spain, and Argentina--Kilómetro 31, El orfanato, and Aparecidos (2007)--and their interplay with the historicism that has traditionally served as the default referent for "reality" in Western narrative. While grounding my approach in temporal critique, I borrow from deconstruction, psychoanalysis, and queer theory to explore ways in which ghosts and the rhetorical figure of the family are manipulated in each national imaginary as a strategy for negotiating volatility within symbolic order: a tactic that can either naturalize or challenge normative discourses. As a literary and cinematic trope, ghosts are particularly useful vehicles for the exploration of national imaginaries and the dominant or competing cultural attitudes towards a country's history, and thus, the articulation of a present political reality. The rhetorical figure of the family is also pivotal in this process as a mechanism for expressing national allegories, for articulating generational anxieties about a nation's relationship with its history, and for organizing societies and social subjects as such, interpellating them into or excluding them from national imaginaries according to its grammar/logic. The proposed trajectory through these films will help facilitate a study of the potential of these rhetorical figures to either reinscribe or question two of the most fundamental processes that go into the cartography of ideology: the imposition of (a) time and the negotiation of social subjectivity within it. Competing political narratives may use any number of rhetorical strategies to position themselves in time to promote their agendas while continuing to reinforce the overall framework that determines the parameters of what is visible, and thus debatable. As temporal anomalies who are defined by their (in)visibility, ghosts can be used to either reinforce this framework or they can be used to articulate alternative relationships to time, and consequently, other political possibilities. Ghosts, families, and children are especially volatile rhetorical figures because of their potential to expose the mechanisms of societal organization--the construction of social subjects through their relationship to the time and the families of which they are presumably products--as negotiable processes rather than self-evident truths.
ContributorsSt-Georges, Charles (Author) / Foster, David W (Thesis advisor) / Urioste, Carmen (Committee member) / Tompkins, Cynthia (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2013
Description
The indigenous communities of Chiapas, Mexico, have long manifested resistance to oppression and discrimination. This study centers on the analysis of Chiapas: el fin del silencio (1998) by Alberto Turok, connecting the work of the photographer to the problems faced by indigenous people in the region, such as inequality and marginalization. Race, class, gender, and globalization, in addition to the emergence of the Ejército Zapatista de Liberación Nacional (EZLN), are essential factors to the discourse of resistance. EZLN, an armed indigenous group in Chiapas, led by its famed leader, Subcomandante Marcos, clearly opposed the implementation of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA). In examining resistance, ritual, and performance, the photography of Turok serves as testimony of the struggles of indigenous people and the relevance it has for a diverse Mexican society.
ContributorsArizmendi, Aaron (Author) / Foster, David W (Thesis advisor) / Tompkins, Cynthia (Committee member) / Rosales, Jesus (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2012
Description
El presente estudio examina cuatro ensayistas periodistas latinoamericanas, Patricia Verdugo de Chile, Viviana Gorbato de la Argentina, Alma Guillermoprieto de México y Zoé Valdés de Cuba, para entender cómo cada autora transcribe sus investigaciones en el campo en forma narrativa. A través de un examen del uso del procedimiento de la entrevista, analizamos cómo todas estas periodistas de investigación utilizan el testimonio de sus personajes para crear historias que intentan, por un lado, reportar sobre temas culturales de manera objetiva, y por otra parte, captar las emociones de los que viven y que son testigos a los eventos de sus ensayos. Implementamos, por consiguiente, las estrategias discursivas del nuevo periodismo, las cuales proporcionan una manera de diseccionar la estructura de los textos. Al entender la forma de los ensayos en vinculación con probar la importancia del testimonio respecto al elemento emocional, se provoca una búsqueda de lo que significa cada obra. Debido al gran empleo del testimonio, se encuentra con una pluralidad de voces que en su conjunto tienen un mayor propósito: representar una comunidad con una causa pertinente. En el proceso de presentar su causa, se evidencia una posible conexión entre los textos y el género híbrido de la novela testimonial. Finalmente, al considerar el peligro de ser periodista en América Latina, hacemos hincapié en la importancia de esta labor literaria y la gran cantidad de mujeres de esta región mundial que corren tanto riesgo para facilitar a sus lectores esta diversidad de temas culturales.
ContributorsLouie, Kimberly (Author) / Foster, David W (Thesis advisor) / Volek, Emil (Committee member) / Acereda, Alberto (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2012
Description
The nature of the link between a literary text and its film adaptation has been a point of contention within academic thought since the inception of cinema due to the fact that film adaptation forms part of film history since the early 20th century. For most of the past century, the main concern of critics has been the level of fidelity that adaptations exhibit in terms of their relationship with the text, which was viewed as "the original" that directors needed to use as a model. In the last 25 years, however, the discourse of fidelity has been challenged by a number of intellectuals as a result of poststructuralist thought, which rejects the notion of an "original" text and proclaims the existence of infinite meanings within each text that are constructed by the reader, not the writer. The present investigation will take into account this type of epistemology as its starting point in order to review and defy a number of theoretical approximations from the last several decades that deal with the relationship between literature and cinema towards its main goal of overcoming the limitations of fidelity discourse. This will be carried out through an in-depth analysis of Latin American texts that have been adapted to film. Thematically both the literary texts and the films contain elements that portray the reality of marginalized groups that build their existence in opposition to the model of patriarchal heteronormativity. In current epistemological thought such a modus vivendi falls within the realm of queer theory. Another common thread that unites all the cultural productions is the presence of violence that showcases the high level of intolerance towards any subject who somehow seems to be different, hence threatening the dominant configuration of patriarchy. Furthermore, the different texts and films expose a general fragmentation within Latin American society, a result of the constant struggles among its diverse social groups, between the ones who occupy the position of socioeconomic power and those who are left outside of it; such a fragmentation also stems from the multiple clashes that occur within the marginalized groups themselves.
ContributorsKokalov, Assen (Author) / Foster, David W (Thesis advisor) / Mcelroy, Isis (Committee member) / Urioste-Azcorra, Carmen (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2011
Description
Globalization has brought a renewed interest in the discourses of the past and national/ethnic identities that has been reflected in the cultural production and the social sciences around the globe. Historical novel (and their sequel telenovelas), a literary field closely linked to historiography, reflects, and has contributed to (re)shape the discourses of the past and identity in Latin America. Since the first decades of the 19th century until nowadays, Colombian novelists have explored Colombian identity through historical novels. Their plots and characters are highly influenced by new historiographical trends. During the19th and the first half of the 20th century, Romantic and Realist novels were generally constructed over historicist assumption of the past: the belief that it is possible to acquire a completely “objective” knowledge of the past. However, some outstanding Colombian historical novels, such as La Marquesa de Yolombó (1928), challenged this notion of the past. Since the last decades of the 20th century, Colombian historical novels share an attitude toward the past that Linda Hutcheon has defined as Historiographical Metafiction. This approach to history challenges the idea of an objective total history, and emphasizes the importance of the personal experiences, the subjectivity, of their characters and of the narrative voices. Donde no te Conozcan (2007), Trí¬ptico de la Infamia (2016), and Mancha de la Tierra (2014) are three Colombian historical novels written in the 21st century that share this attitude towards history. They question the nineteenth-century interpretations of Colombian history, especially those related to the role of Jews, Moors, Indigenous, Africans, and mestizos in the colonial social dynamics, and, therefore, in Colombian culture.
ContributorsRuiz-Olaya, Andrés F (Author) / Foster, David W (Thesis advisor) / Tompkins, Cynthia (Committee member) / Sarreal, Jualia (Committee member) / Fredrick, Sharonah (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2018
Description
This doctoral dissertation proposes an analysis of a selection of photographic series by a diverse group of Latin American photographers such as Argentinian Gustavo Di Mario, Brazilians Claudio Edinger and Alair Gomes, and Mexican Dorian Ulises López Macías. The analyzed material focuses on a revision of characteristics of masculinity and imperative heteronormativity in the discourses on their respective national identities. The projects put-fourth by these four artists represent a political proposal that unveals the homoaffective possibilities of their photographic referents. Susan Sontag postulates in her On Photography (1979) that “the powers of photography have in effect de-Platonized our understanding of reality, making it less and less plausible to reflect upon our experience according to the distinction between images and things, between copies and originals” (179). These artists understand the power of the image and, through its meticulous composition, they propose to not only photograph, but to also narrate the reality of dissident identities and their belonging to a collective national identity.
ContributorsShalloe, Thomas J (Author) / Foster, David W (Thesis advisor) / Tompkins, Cynthia M (Committee member) / Urioste-Azcorra, Carmen (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2019
Description
As a result of social media platforms such as Facebook, Twitter and blogs, works can be distributed and viewed at a global scale with the simple click of the mouse. One can even visit entire museums and virtually walk through their collections without having to leave one’s own seat. Furthermore, new software, programs, and digital tools facilitate and make possible the ability to experiment and create one’s art in ways that were previously unimaginable or even unheard of. This is also true with the dissemination of one’s art and the visibility of contemporary artists who create works pertaining to the digital realm. However, the availability, usage, and training associated with such technologies do not come without its own implications and drawbacks. Unfortunately, there exists a great disparity not only with access and availability of the Internet at a global level, but also a digital divide, which indicates that the technologies and sciences are “gendered”—for instance, the male majority in STEM professions and fields of study. When considering the Humanities, specifically the genre of contemporary art and literature, women’s marginalization is witnessed there too, as distinguished canonical works belong to predominantly Caucasian, Anglo-Saxon men. In the digital age then, Iberian and Latin American women writers and artists face the challenge of visibility and recognition in two territories—technology and contemporary artistic creation—dominated by men. This study gathers contemporary female artists of digital works originating from North America, the Caribbean, South America, and Spain who utilize a wide variety of tools to conduct and create their artwork. The artists and authors analyzed in this project include: Teresa Serrano (México, D.F. 1936-), Adriana Calatayud (México, D.F. 1967-), Ana Mendieta (Havana, 1948-1985), Maritza Molina (Havana), Yasmín S. Portales Machado (Havana, 1980-), María María Acha-Kutscher (Lima, 1968-), Praba Pilar (Colombia), María Cañas (Seville, 1972-), and Pilar Albarracín (Arcena, Huelva 1968-), with the objective of investigating the manner in which digital tools are being used by these women artists and writers for the purpose visibility, identity (de)construction, as spaces of resistance, and to explore how those messages are transmitted and transformed through digital mediums.
ContributorsByron, Jennifer Elaine (Author) / Urioste-Azcorra, Carmen (Thesis advisor) / Tompkins, Cynthia (Committee member) / Foster, David W (Committee member) / Gilfillan, Daniel (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2019
Description
Due to its interdisciplinary nature, the history of emotions has engaged much scholarly interest. This project draws from the historical, sociological and philosophical research on emotions to analyze the representation of emotions in narratives from Argentina and Chile. This historical investigation posits that socio-political, cultural and economic forces, which are represented in literature and film, shape emotions and emotional standards. The analysis of Rayuela (1963) by Julio Cortázar and Raúl Ruiz’s Tres Tristes Tigres (1968) is centered on the impact of Existentialism, capitalism and modernity on the construction of emotional standards in urban societies. The impact of militant groups in the shaping of collective emotions in Latin America during the 1960s and 70s is examined in Reina Roffé’s novel Monte de Venus (1973) and Aldo Francia’s film Ya no basta con rezar (1972). The analysis of Alberto Fuguet’s Las películas de mi vida (2002) and Pablo Larraín’s No (2012) sheds light on the paradigmatic shift in the construction of emotional standards resulting from the implementation of neoliberalism through dictatorships as well as the insertion into the globalized consumerist culture by way of technology and media. Finally, this project encourages future research of the emotions in literary and cultural studies of Latin America.
ContributorsBondi, Erika (Author) / Tompkins, Cynthia (Thesis advisor) / Foster, David W (Committee member) / Gil-Osle, Juan Pablo (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2016