Matching Items (11)
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- All Subjects: Hispanic American Studies
- Language: Spanish
- Creators: Arizona State University
- Creators: Garcia, Lucero
- Member of: ASU Electronic Theses and Dissertations
- Status: Published
Description
Race is a complex system founded on social ideologies that categorize and evaluate human beings into different groups based on their visible characteristics (e.g., skin color) that, according to this notion of race, indicate a person's personal traits (e.g., intelligence). The concept of race has been an integral part of American society since the ratification of the United States Constitution in the late 18th century. Early on, the practice of race within American society established one particular group as the norm: the White Anglo-Saxon Protestant. By the late 19th and early 20th centuries, the distinctions among racial groups essentially came down to "white" and "nonwhite." Consequently, certain social inequalities were bestowed upon those groups that did not fit the model of the dominant "white" group. Autobiographies, especially those from marginalized groups, can serve as an important source of these social disparities since the author is able to recount their own social experiences vis-à-vis racial practices within society. With this in mind, this thesis analyses the concept of race in relation to the personal experiences of two authors through their respective autobiographies: Hunger of Memory: The Education of Richard Rodriguez (1982) by Richard Rodriguez and How Did You Get to Be Mexican?: A White/Brown Man's Search for Identity (1999) by Kevin R. Johnson. The critical work of Paula M. L. Moya, Linda Martín Alcoff, Hazel Rose Markus, George M. Fredrickson, Genaro M. Padilla and others are used as the theoretical framework in the literary analysis of these authors' texts. In summary, the results of this study demonstrate the concept of race as a salient aspect in regards to the ideological formation of each respective author.
ContributorsMancillas, Jorge E (Author) / Rosales, Jesus (Thesis advisor) / Hernández-Gutierrez, Manuel J (Thesis advisor) / Garcia-Fernandez, Carlos J (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2014
Description
In this work we review certain biographical and historical data concerning Sor Juana and María Luisa, Condesa de Paredes. In addition, we have chosen Ovillejos 214, Romance 61, Redondillas 90 and 91 as poems that provides important insight into their relationship of patronage and friendship. In order to delineate theoretically both aspects of this relationship --the public and the personal-- we make use of the concept of ekphrasis proposed by Frederick de Armas. This concept is applied to the analysis of Romance 61, which is in the tradition of the lyrical Petrarchan portrait. Redondillas 90 and 91 are examined from the theoretical perspective of Cicero's amicitia, which serves to define an alternative model of feminine amicitia. In constructing this model, we review the written criticism surrounding María de Zayas' comedy, La traición en la amistad (1635). This criticism insists on a certain configuration of feminine friendship necessary for understanding the relationship between the two women. As is demonstrated in the analysis of the poems, the two women developed a mutual and permanent affection for one another until the death of Sor Juana in 1695. The Condesa de Paredes also provided practical support to Sor Juana for the publication of her first book, Inundación castálida (1689), which launched her to literary fame. To date there have been no critical studies that apply the concepts of ekphrasis and feminine friendship to the study of anecdotal clues found in the poems of Sor Juana for analyzing the nature of her relationship with the Condesa. This is the contribution of the present work.
ContributorsZaragoza-Huerta, Susana (Author) / Volek, Emil (Thesis advisor) / Gil-Osle, Juan Pablo (Committee member) / Urioste-Azcorra, Carmen (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2014
Description
This dissertation is a comparative study of three contemporary women filmmakers: Puerto Rican Frances Negrón-Muntaner, Chicana director Lourdes Portillo, and Brazilian director Helena Solberg. Informed by transnational theory, politics of location, feminism on the border, and approaches to documentary filmmaking, the study examines three filmic texts: Brincando el charco: Portrait of a Puerto Rican (1994), The Devil Never Sleeps/El diablo nunca duerme (1994), and Carmen Miranda: Bananas Is My Business (1994). Each film is narrated by a female voice who juxtaposes her personal and transnational identity with history to tell her migration story before and after returning to her country of origin. An objective of the study is to demonstrate how the film directors vis-á-vis their female protagonists, configure a United States Latina transnational imaginary to position their female protagonists and themselves as female directors and as active social agents. Further, the dissertation explores how the filmmakers construct, utilizing the cinematographic apparatus, specific forms of resistance to confront certain oppressive forms. The theoretical framework proposes that transnational documentary filmmaking offers specific contestatory representations and makes possible the opening of parallel spaces in order to allow for a transformation from multiple perspectives. Through the utilization of specific techniques such as archival footage, the three directors focus on historical biographies. Further, they make use of experimental filmmaking and, in particular, the transnational documentary to deconstruct hegemonic discourses. Lastly, transnational cinema is valued as a field for cultural renegotiating and as a result, the documentary filmmakers in this study are able to reconfigure a transnational imaginary and propose an alternative discourse about history, sexuality, family structures, and gender relations. In sum, my dissertation contributes to Chicana/o and U.S. Latina/o, American Literature, and other Ethnic Literatures by focusing on migration, acculturation, and multicultural dialogue.
ContributorsValenzuela Pulido, Norma A (Author) / Hernández-G, Manuel De Jesús (Thesis advisor) / Foster, David W. (Committee member) / Mcelroy, Isis (Committee member) / Sanchez, Marta (Committee member) / Elenes, C. Alejandra (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2011
Description
In the first thirty years of the XX century, an old literary visual tradition was reborn in a series of new striking visual texts better known as calligrams. They were produced by some avant-garde poets such as Vicente Huidobro, José Juan Tablada, Alberto Hidalgo and Carlos Oquendo de Amat in Latin America, and Juan Larrea, Guillermo de Torre, Francisco Vighi, Luis Mosquera, and others in Spain. However, with few exceptions, the interpretation of those written drawings has caught little attention from literary critics. This research, contrasted to that of Willard Bohn's, is a contribution to the deciphering of such literary art form, designated here as the figurative visual poem. It is a proposal for its visual reading which draws from the fact that this type of text is concretely a drawing formed by written verses. As such, it can be regarded as a plastic writing, combining pictorial and verbal signs in one perceptible configuration on the page. The result of this semiotic operation is a hybrid product in which the iconic forms become symbolic and vice versa. It is in fact, an art object which should be approached as a text that can be seen as well as read. The study leads to the conclusion that Willard Bohn misreads the order in which language and image are articulated in the visual poem identified with the second order semiological system proposed by Roland Barthes, placing preeminence on language over image. This results in reading the avant-garde visual figurative poem in an ekphrastic fashion. Consequently, the role of the image in the system is left in an ambiguous realm at the time of deciphering this hybrid text. Our contribution to re-conducting this undertaking has been equally drawn from a semiotic stance taken from Louis Hjemslev that balances language and image as correlates of a semiotic function. Due to the signaling nature of both, language and figure, a visual poem becomes an iconic metaphor as well as a metaphoric icon, and moreover a self-referential sign, thus justifying its status of an autonomous art.
ContributorsSuarez, Nelson M (Author) / Acereda, Alberto (Thesis advisor) / Volek, Emil (Committee member) / Garcia-Fernandez, Carlos J (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2011
Description
This dissertation examines how contemporary ideologies of race and “colorblind” discourse are reproduced, deployed, and reimagined in Mexican American literature. It demonstrates that the selected narratives foreground inconsistencies in colorblind ideologies and problematize the instability and perennial reformulation of race definitions in the United States. This study also contributes to the discussion of racial formation in Mexican American literary studies from 1970 to 2010. Chapter One provides the critical and literary context of Mexican American literature from 1970 to 2010. Chapter Two details the process of racial formation in the United States according to Michael Omi and Howard Winant. Simultaneously, this chapter describes the theoretical framework and concepts of experience and epistemic privilege, mestizaje, and intercultural relations as offered respectively by Paula M. L. Moya, Rafael Pérez-Torres, and Marta E. Sánchez. Chapter Three offers an analysis of racial discourse and assimilation via two autobiographical texts: Oscar Acosta’s The Autobiography of a Brown Buffalo (1972) and Richard Rodriguez’s Hunger of Memory: The Education of Richard Rodriguez (1982). Chapter Four examines the colorblind racial ideology in two texts by Mexican American women authors: Erlinda Gonzales-Berry’s Paletitas de guayaba (1991) and Mona Ruiz’s Two Badges: The Lives of Mona Ruiz (1998). Chapter Five explores the rearticulation of colorblind racial discourse in the “postracial” United States. In this chapter, we examine three works of speculative fiction: The Rag Doll Plagues (1992) by Alejandro Morales, Texas 2077: A Futuristic Novel (1998) by Carlos Miralejos, and Lunar Braceros 2125-2148 (2009) by Rosaura Sánchez and Beatrice Pita. By combining theories from Chicana/o Studies, Critical Race and Gender Studies, and Cultural Studies in my textual analysis, my dissertation challenges notions of contemporary colorblind or postracial ideologies that regard present day discussions of race as counterproductive to U.S. race relations.
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ContributorsFlores, José Roberto (Author) / Rosales, Jesus (Thesis advisor) / Foster, David W (Committee member) / Gil-Osle, Juan P (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2017
Description
Mexico City has an ongoing air pollution issue that negatively affects its citizens and surroundings with current structural disconnections preventing the city from improving its overall air quality. Thematic methodological analysis reveals current obstacles and barriers, as well as variables contributing to this persistent problem. A historical background reveals current programs and policies implemented to improve Mexico’s City air quality. Mexico City’s current systems, infrastructure, and policies are inadequate and ineffective. There is a lack of appropriate regulation on other modes of transportation, and the current government system fails to identify how the class disparity in the city and lack of adequate education are contributing to this ongoing problem. Education and adequate public awareness can potentially aid the fight against air pollution in the Metropolitan City.
ContributorsGarcia, Lucero (Author) / Duarte, Marisa E. (Thesis advisor) / Arzubiaga, Angela (Committee member) / Richter, Jennifer (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2018
Description
En contexto del desarrollo urbano culturalmente acrítico, el cual con la gentrificación amenaza el bienestar del barrio y sus habitantes, esta disertación interpreta la dialéctica barrioización y barriología como atmósfera dramática en la dramaturgia chicana. Como tropo de supervivencia social y ontológica en la producción cultural chicana, la recurrencia literaria del barrio también queda reflejada en la temática y las formas de numerosas obras de teatro chicano. De tal modo, el análisis de la conciencia espacial chicana en Bernabé (1971) y Heroes and Saints (1994) revela la significancia de un sentido de lugar colectivo y sitúa esta interpretación dramática del barrio en torno al matiz ideológico de la evolución de la conciencia espacial chicana. Manifestada como una dialéctica entre muerte y vida social y ontológica, la representación y representatividad del barrio en La trampa sin salida (1973), Water and Power (2009) y A Drunkard’s Tale of Melted Wings and Memories (2016) ilustra el efecto dramático de la dialéctica entre barrioización y barriología. Mientras algunos estudios precedentes a este han explorado la espacialidad chicana y el significado sociocultural del barrio, esta disertación es la primera en demonstrar concomitantemente la función temática y semiótica del barrio en la configuración de la atmósfera dramática en el teatro chicano. Más aún, la intersección entre barrio, espacio social y teatro no solo revelan la significancia semiótica de la atmósfera dramática, si no que también sostienen la urgencia de fomentar la (re)producción socioespacial urbana históricamente informada y culturalmente crítica.
ContributorsGómez-Becerra, José Juan (Author) / Rosales, Jesus (Thesis advisor) / Foster, David W (Committee member) / Urioste-Azcorra, Carmen (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2018
Description
My dissertation topic engages in the trajectory of Roma/Gitano culture and flamenco and its implications for Chicanx culture in New Mexico. New Mexicans have the reputation amongst US Chicanx as referring to themselves as Hispanic and aligning culturally with a Spanish sensibility. Historically in the larger US Chicanx community this type of popularity for flamenco would be described as typical of New Mexico’s wavering Chicanidad that yearns to be connected to a Spanish colonial past more than to its indigenous Mexican roots. However, I believe the reality is a bit different. What makes New Mexican Chicanx different from the larger US Chicanx community is that they utilize flamenco and its Gitano roots as a cultural example of their Chicanidad. There is scant research on how Chicanidad as a historical movement has been influenced by the flamenco culture that exists in New Mexico. This dissertation will begin a conversation that places flamenco and the precarious identity of Chicanx, Gitanos and Nuevomejicanos in dialogue through the body, the art form, and the cultural stylings of flamenco rooted in the Flamenco Festival Internacional de Albuquerque (FFI).
ContributorsAcevedo-Ontiveros, Erica (Author) / Underiner, Tamara (Thesis advisor) / Bowditch, Rachel (Committee member) / Hayes, Michelle H (Committee member) / Lopez, Tiffany A (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2019
Description
If different societies encode their communication according to their socio-historical context, it makes sense to postulate that satire resides in the no-man's-land that sprawls between what an individual claims to be and the reality revealed by his actions. Thus, satirical caricature, as graphic and scenic art, results in the indictment of collective or individual vices through irony, sarcasm and farce. This study examines the Spanish-American War of 1898, and the "disaster" brought about by the defeat of Spain and the loss of its colonial empire, through the lens of the caricatures published by three satirical magazines—Don Quijote (Madrid), La Campana de Gracia (Barcelona) y El Hijo de El Ahuizote (Mexico)—between January and December, 1898. These magazines provide a many-splendored set of facets depicting a scathing and hard-hitting campaign supporting the war and the demonization, management, and suppression of the other through the use of symbols. While in the peninsular press Spain is represented as a raging bull, a lion, or a virgin maiden, Cuba as an empty container or a black and ignorant peasant and the United States as imperialist pigs and a treacherous thieves, the Mexican magazine views the Spanish as the usurpers, pirates and traitors, the United States as liberator, and the annexed populations as respectable and noble societies to be freed from the Spanish colonial yoke.
Whether motivated by internal ideological confrontations or in opposition to external threats, the use of graphic representation as a political weapon considerably enriches the meaning of symbols. Satirical caricature represents a categorical instrument for the definition of national identity. The creation and dissemination of unified stereotypes—images assumed to be identical for all recipients—generates the development of a powerful national imaginary, both abstract and highly accessible to the reader, fomenting the manufacture of "public opinion". It is precisely here where its great semiotic power lies, because caricature achieves its maximum expression when it veers toward the symbolic rather than the discursive, delivering its content in an abstract and unlimited fashion, and spreading its effects through time and all the different socio-cultural contexts it may find along the way.
Whether motivated by internal ideological confrontations or in opposition to external threats, the use of graphic representation as a political weapon considerably enriches the meaning of symbols. Satirical caricature represents a categorical instrument for the definition of national identity. The creation and dissemination of unified stereotypes—images assumed to be identical for all recipients—generates the development of a powerful national imaginary, both abstract and highly accessible to the reader, fomenting the manufacture of "public opinion". It is precisely here where its great semiotic power lies, because caricature achieves its maximum expression when it veers toward the symbolic rather than the discursive, delivering its content in an abstract and unlimited fashion, and spreading its effects through time and all the different socio-cultural contexts it may find along the way.
ContributorsGimeno Robles, Jorge (Author) / Foster, David William (Thesis advisor) / Gil-Osle, Juan Pablo (Committee member) / Hernández-G, Manuel De Jesús (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2019
Description
In the last three years, a transition from Catholicism to other religious affiliations has been observed of Hispanic Americans. According to a study by the Pew Research Center in 2013, there are now 24% Hispanics who are now ex-Catholics. This dissertation examines the religious trending away of Chicanas and Chicanos from Catholicism in particular. It contributes to the field of Chicano cultural studies by exploring religious expressions and spiritualities that are an alternative to traditional Catholicism from 1960 to 2014. Chapters One and Two are a foundation to this investigation, as they provide a brief historical contextualization of religiosity in Chicano culture, as well as explain the theoretical framework utilized throughout the dissertation. Chapter Three examines the activism of Reies López Tijerina, a Pentecostal preacher, and Ignacio García, a devout Mormon, in the 1960s and 1970s. Their autobiographies are studied, particularly focusing on how their religion became an integral part to in their awareness as they became involved in the Chicano Movement. Chapter Four explores the representation and relationships between spiritual figures of the Chicana mother in the following works: the artworks Housewife Battles Self (1994) by Max-Carlos Martínez, Tonantzin, the Aztec Earth Goddess (2001) by Dolores Guerrero, and the novels So Far from God (1993) by Ana Castillo and Esperanza’s Box of Saints (1999) by María Amparo Escandón. Finally, Chapter Five presents religious expression and spirituality in the borderlands experience. In this chapter several popular saints are studied, including the Texas curandero, don Pedrito Jaramillo, and the images of Jesús Malverde and la Santa Muerte.
ContributorsBelmonte, Laura Elena (Author) / Rosales, Jesus (Thesis advisor) / Foster, David W (Committee member) / Urioste-Azcorra, Carmen (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2016