Matching Items (3)
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- All Subjects: Latin America
- Genre: Doctoral Dissertation
- Creators: Tompkins, Cynthia
- Resource Type: Text
Description
Coming out from under the shadow of sight, blindness has a story to tell. From Tiresias to The Miracle Worker, literary and visual representations of blindness are cornerstones of compelling tales of loss and overcoming. In support of the inherent value of sight, these conventional narratives overshadow the stories and lived experiences of blind people themselves. In light of this misrepresentation, I explore what it means to read, write, and see blindness, as well as consider the implications of being blind in present-day Latin America. I achieve this through a transnational and interdisciplinary analysis of novels, short stories, film, and photography by blind and sighted artists and writers whose work has been published or exhibited after the year 2000. In this context, I will demonstrate how blindness can serve as a lens through which the production and reception of narrative and visual culture can be critically evaluated from a blind person’s perspective. Most importantly, this dissertation showcases the critical and creative work of blind people in order to demystify stereotypes and contextualize anxieties surrounding blindness, perception, and identity.
ContributorsNewland, Rachel Renee (Author) / Tompkins, Cynthia (Thesis advisor) / Foster, David W. (Committee member) / Urioste-Azcorra, Carmen (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2018
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
Description
This dissertation focuses on the study of Western esotericism in European culture and forms a method of discovering esoteric topics in cultural artifacts. Using the definition as a corpus of knowledge historically divided between esoteric, reserved for the intellectual and power elite, and exoteric, available for everybody, I argue that esotericism represents the knowledge that always accompanied the cultural production of the Mediterranean zone, adding a spiritual meaning to any visual or written work of art. The contemporary novels of the past decade by the Spanish author Javier Sierra are fully based on a historical investigation, in which esotericism appears as a nuclear topic, revealing the great interest of the public in the mysteries of the past. Through the postmodern cultural theories, together with sociological and historical methods, the dissertation explores the cultural processes that lead to the shift of esoteric knowledge in the 20th century from secretive to publically available. The study defines the purpose of recreating the European past and investigates the secrets of European cultural formation. Through an insider-outsider perspective, it analyzes the cultural artifacts, that appear in the novels in the form of reference or as a nuclear part of the plot. It presents the scope of esoteric currents, that are divided between the discipline of religion, science, and philosophy, which form the tetrahedron of knowledge as a theoretic model for this study. The constructed model reveals the interaction of the three disciplines throughout the history and examines the reasons for the religious disenchantment of the 20th century, proven through Digital Humanities’ research as the predominance of science over the Catholic Church, which allowed the esoteric knowledge to reappear. The study explores the affiliation of esotericism with science through the scientific-cultural inquiries between the ancient myths and reality, by showing that man’s consciousness had always been dependent on the scientific perception of the world. It explores the pagan symbolism that is mixed with Christian traditions and reveals the stories, hidden behind the representation of the greatest works of art, by combining and analyzing the wisdom of the past and the contemporary spiritual inquiries in their philosophical meaning.
ContributorsCordan, Elena (Author) / Urioste Azcorra, Carmen (Thesis advisor) / Tompkins, Cynthia (Committee member) / Gil-Osle, Juan Pablo (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2017