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Publication Manifestations of the Wound: Decolonial Healing and Resistance in Latinx Literature and Visual Arts(2024-09) Bouso Gavin, AitorThis dissertation studies contemporary Latinx literature and visual arts, with a focus on Afro-Dominican, Chicanx, and U.S. Central American writers and artists. It explores the construction of identity and subjectivity under intersectional racial trauma and other forms of wounding caused by systemic oppression and exploitation. This transdisciplinary project puts forth the conceptual paradigm of the wound to study representation of harm and damage—physical, psychological, and spiritual—in prominent Latinx literary and artistic works. By centering on the overlapping violences of colonialism, racism, and (hetero)sexism, it advances a decolonial approach to underline the role of Latinx literature and visual culture as catalysts for personal, political, and social transformation and healing. “Manifestations of the Wound” contributes to broader discussions in Latinx studies, decolonial (trauma) studies, and critical ethnic studies, addressing topics such as the disruption of Western biomedical and secular notions of wellness and the legitimization of intersectional analyses of oppression. This dissertation contests philosophical and theoretical trends dictated by White supremacy, Eurocentrism, and Enlightened Humanism. It also proposes open, expansive, and dialogic methodologies for studying Latinx literature and arts, challenging Western hegemonic thinking and addressing colonial legacies such as the body/mind split. This project offers new interpretations of the works of queer Chicanx writers like Gloria Anzaldúa and Rigoberto González, as well as poet Yesika Salgado. Additionally, it examines the art of Afro-Latinx visual artists, including Dominican Americans Firelei Báez and Bony Ramirez, who highlight the wounding and erasure of Black, Afro-descendant, and Indigenous peoples from the annals of U.S. and Caribbean histories. The first chapter examines corporeal subjectivities in the life-writings of Chicano gay memoirist Rigoberto González and Salvadoran American poet Yesika Salgado. The second chapter broadens the corpus of creative works addressing the Juárez feminicide crisis by analyzing Latinx creative responses from the North, such as the plays of Marisela Treviño-Orta’s Braided Sorrow (2005) and Isaac Gómez’s La Ruta (2019) as well as the visual production of Judithe Hernández's Juárez Series (2011-). These representations of feminicide advocate for the healing of this social crisis by enacting an ethics of interconnectedness that brings attention to the repercussions of feminicide on the U.S.-Mexico border. The third chapter presents new scholarship on Gloria Anzaldúa’s archived artwork, analyzing her sketches and glifos to highlight their decolonial potential, but, most importantly, to elucidate Anzaldúa’s healing process through the use of multidimensional techniques and imagination. The fourth chapter explores decolonial imaginaries imbued with an aesthetics of fugitivity and Afro-resistance, highlighting the healing collective endeavors in the works of Firelei Báez and Bony Ramirez. It addresses the wounds of coloniality, using these imaginaries as antidotes and tactics to suture the wounds of the past, such as the Middle Passage and the enslavement of Africans and Afrodiasporic subjects. This research ultimately offers new ways of understanding Latinx literature and visual arts, emphasizing their roles in fostering intersectional, antiracist, and decolonial frameworks. Through close-readings and visual analysis, this projects concludes that the manifestation and rendering of wounds by these artists and writers is a collective endeavor and a distinctive feature of Latinx letters and visual arts. This decolonial healing process, far from perpetuating static narratives of Latinidad, serves as a mechanism of resistance with liberatory capacities. Therefore, this project seeks to showcase a diverse and growing body of Latinx works that underpin a range of ways in which literature and art can penetrate and mobilize the political and social sphere. In so doing, Latinx literature and visual arts are also framed as sources we can tap to remedy problems such as racial and transgenerational trauma, illnesses, and physical deterioration, normally the concerns of social and medical science research.Publication Linguistic Racism and Racialization on Social Media. The Case of (Mock) Kichwa(2024-09) Narváez Burbano, María DanielaThis dissertation examines the phenomenon of Mock Kichwa in memes shared on social media in Ecuador, focusing on how these memes contribute to racism and reflect enduring colonial raciolinguistic ideologies. Ecuador is a multilingual society where Spanish is the dominant language, and Kichwa is the most widely spoken Indigenous language in the Highlands. Due to centuries of contact between Spanish and Kichwa, there exists a continuum of Ecuadorian Andean Spanish (EAS) varieties, some of which are stigmatized and mocked, particularly by the white-mestizo population. This study investigates the linguistic and semiotic strategies used in these memes, exploring how both Indigenous and non-Indigenous people perceive them, while highlighting Ecuador's distinct sociopolitical dynamics and racial constructs, such as mestizaje and indigeneity, which shape these perceptions. Building on the concept of Mock Spanish (Hill, 1995) and raciolinguistic ideologies (Rosa and Flores, 2017), which link seemingly "innocent" or humorous practices to underlying beliefs about language, race, and class, this research extends these frameworks to the context of Latin America. By analyzing a corpus of 50 memes collected between 2020 and 2024, and incorporating ethnographic data from questionnaires and focus groups, this dissertation reveals that Mock Kichwa relies heavily on stigmatized linguistic features of EAS. These features include vowel neutralization, the representation of /ʃ/ as "sh" instead of "ll," the assibilation of the rhotic sounds /r/ and /ɾ/, the use of Kichwa words with negative connotations in EAS, and the hyper-use of EAS morphosyntactic features. The study employs diverse community-based and decolonial methodologies, such as multimodal semiotic analysis, Critical Discourse Analysis, and focus groups, to understand how language and race are co-constructed in these digital spaces and subsequently experienced in other contexts. Memes are analyzed as "semiotic packages" that combine linguistic and non-linguistic elements, serving as key indexes of social meaning. By utilizing the concept of "indexicality," this dissertation moves beyond a focus solely on mock languages, instead reflecting the diverse indexing practices that characterize the construction of Mock Kichwa and, more importantly, the underlying language ideologies that perpetuate social inequity. The findings highlight how Mock Kichwa in social media memes perpetuates social hierarchies and racist ideologies, continuing the marginalization of Indigenous communities. These memes are not merely playful or humorous; they serve as tools of power and control that reinforce existing social structures. This dissertation also underscores the ongoing resistance and contestation by Indigenous peoples, who continuously challenge racism and colonial legacies, leading to unique forms of resistance and language revitalization.Publication Translation as an Activist Effort in Women's Writing from the Early Twentieth Century to the Present the Literary Production of Victoria Kent, Aurora Correa, and Valeria Luiselli(2024-09) Ochoa Figueroa, PaulinaThis dissertation explores the intersection of translation, literature, and activism, focusing on the works of three influential women writers: Victoria Kent, Aurora Correa, and Valeria Luiselli. I delve into the societal impact of language and literature, drawing from Translation, Translator, and Literary Studies to analyze the activist role of translation in the writings of the authors and highlight the transformative power of language within the context of exile, immigration, and social justice. Through a comprehensive analysis of the translators' experiences, the dissertation illuminates the multifaceted relationship between language, identity, and activism, where I investigate the ways in which these women writers use translation as a tool for social and political engagement, emphasizing the agency embedded in the act of translation and interpreting. The project also underscores the pivotal role of translators in promoting cross-cultural understanding and challenging societal norms through their literary productions. Furthermore, the dissertation sheds light on the complex dynamics of language access, interpretation, and cultural representation, offering new perspectives on the activist potential of translation in literature. By examining the translation strategies employed by Kent, Correa, and Luiselli, I reveal the innovative impact of their work on literature and education. Ultimately, this dissertation contributes to the evolving field of Translation and Translator Studies by showcasing the instrumental role of women translators in amplifying marginalized voices, fostering intercultural dialogue, and advocating for social change.Publication Spanish Language Use and the Academic Experience of Bilingual Puerto Rican Youth in Western Massachusetts(2024-09) Matachana López, ClaudiaA person’s spoken language variety affects many aspects of their life, one of which is their educational experience and school trajectory. The variety a student uses may impact their academic success, especially when the variety is considered non-standard. For example, a student may fail a language test for using non-standard expressions that are generally considered incorrect despite being valid dialectal variations of the language. This dissertation focuses on the language practices and ideologies shown by Puerto Rican youth in Hampden County, MA, where we see some of the highest populations of Puerto Ricans in the mainland U.S. Furthermore, Hispanic students represent 81% of the total student population in the Holyoke Public School system, making it crucial to have a better understanding of how students’ linguistic practices may affect their educational experiences and success. Because Puerto Rican Spanish often diverges from ‘standard’ Spanish, high school students who use this variety, whether they are heritage or firstgeneration speakers, may experience discrimination or be subject to certain ideologies around their language. This dissertation has two main aims: first, to describe the language uses of youth speakers of Puerto Rican Spanish in Western Massachusetts according to salient linguistic features traditionally documented in this Spanish variety. The linguistic features under analysis are phonological –/s/ weakening, lateralization of coda /ɾ/, and velar realization of /r/–, morphosyntactic –the presence or absence of subject pronouns, uninverted wh-questions, and pre-posed infinitives–, and lexical. The second aim of this dissertation is to examine the language ideologies of these speakers, as well as the ideologies encountered in academic settings, to understand how these linguistic practices are tied to their educational experiences in relationship to Spanish. A sociolinguistic interview and two production tasks –a map task and a wh-question task– were designed and used to collect data. Nineteen participants were recorded averaging 40 minutes for each recording, resulting in a total of 8,601 tokens of /s/, 2,842 tokens of coda /ɾ/, 651 tokens of /r/, 4,044 instances of possible subject pronouns, and 190 wh-questions. For the linguistic ideologies analysis, the sociolinguistic interviews were analyzed using Critical Discourse Analysis.Publication FOCUS MARKING IN ECUADORIAN ANDEAN SPANISH IN NEW YORK CITY(2024-05) Puma Ninacuri, Christian AndresThe Ecuadorian community is considered the five largest Latino group in New York City (NYC). For the present study, I will concentrate on people who have migrated from the city of Ambato and whose variety of Spanish is known as Ecuadorian Andean Spanish (Ambateño-EAS). This study follows a diaspora sociolinguistics framework that aims to investigate whether Ambateño-EAS spoken in NYC is losing, changing, or maintaining linguistic features related to word order and focus marking by comparing it with EAS spoken in Ambato, Ecuador. In addition, it aims to determine whether linguistic and/or social factors are predictors that explain any possible language change in this variety of Spanish. First, it was shown that there is variability in the strategies employed to mark focus in EAS spoken in NYC and Ecuador. Regarding linguistic variables, it was observed that EAS-NYC speakers use more frequently in-situ, clefting, and left-movement to mark focus, and right-movement is not frequently used as a strategy in EAS spoken in NYC. The data collected show evidence that Ambateño-EAS in NYC exhibit a more rigid word order compared to their peers in Ecuador. The analysis performed showed that certain linguistic and social variables were relevant to understand the differences among groups. The type of focus (informational – contrastive) was a significant factor that influences the use of word order movement. In terms of social factors, generation, education level and age where the factors that has the most influence on the variable of word order movement. Lastly, variables such as percentage of life in the US, language use and social networks allow us to better understand the differences found in the Ecuadorian diaspora community.Publication Concept-Based Teaching and Spanish Modality in Heritage Language Learners: A Vygotskyan Approach(2013-02) Garcia Frazier, Elena GuillerminaThis study analyzed how six Heritage language learners at the university level gained conscious awareness and control of the concept of modality as revealed in student verbalizations (Vygotsky, 1998) throughout five different written communicative events. This work took place in the only course designed for Heritage language learners at a large public suburban university in the Northeast part of the United States. Grammatical simplification in bilingual speakers is due to incomplete acquisition of Spanish, attrition or loss of an underused linguistic system (Lynch, 1999; Martínez Mira, 2009a, 2009b; Mikulski, 2010b; Montrul, 2007; Ocampo, 1990; Silva-Corvalán, 1990, 1994a, 1994b, 2003; Studerus, 1995). The result of the process of simplification is reduction or loss of forms and/or meanings. In this work, I investigated in which ways Gal’perin’s (1989) systemic-theoretical organized instruction promoted awareness, control and internalization of the concept of modality in three sets of data: definition, discourse and verbalization (Negueruela, 2003). In addition, I examined how the concept of modality emerged and proceeded. By focusing students’ attention in Negueruela’s (2003) Concept of Mood in Spanish orienting chart in a top down fashion, students were able to strengthen their theoretical understanding in practical activity while still accessing empirical knowledge, and eventually generalizing its use in new contexts across nominal, adjectival and adverbial clauses. At the definition level, Gal’perin’s Systemic-theoretical instruction promoted emergence and progress of their conceptual understanding from perceptual to semantic. At the discourse level, students’ theoretically based semantic understanding had a positive impact as revealed in student’s discourse progress throughout tasks. At the verbalization level, semantic, abstract and systematic verbalizations showed students’ emergence of awareness of the interrelated categories of modality. The conceptual category of anticipation was appropriately verbalized and contextualized 68% of the time. The absence of quality verbalizations referring to a specific conceptual category in some students lead me to conclude that students did not fully understand the meaning of some conceptual categories. On the contrary, their presence in any of the tasks showed emergence of conceptual meaning(s) in appropriate contexts, further appropriate recontextualization may provide full awareness and control.Publication Towards a posthumanist reenchantment: Poetry, science and new technologies(2012-09) del Pozo Ortea, MartaThis interdisciplinary study analyzes the work of two contemporary writers in Peninsular Spanish literature, Agustín Fernández Mallo and Javier Moreno, using the the posthumanist stance that considers the epistemological and ontological continuum and inseparability of contemporary cultural practices. This thesis delves into the interrelationship of their respective work with three main aspects of the 21st century reality: the omnipresent world of images in our culture, the scientific paradigm and the use of new technologies. The study of their work has led me to propose the birth of a new literature that 1. articulates the “pictorial turn” by recognizing how the image, mostly digital, has become the protagonist of the new mode of communication; 2. implements the dialogue between the so called “two cultures” (humanities and sciences). In the sense, both our writers have a scientific background (Fernández Mallo is a physicist and Moreno a mathematician) and 3. shows the emergence of a net of global connections by establishing a dialogue with the world of Internet and new technologies. I ultimately propose that the work of Agustín Fernández Mallo and Javier Moreno is part of the Spanish speaking world literary response to the hypercomplexity and entanglement of the present Weltanshauung, one that shows traces of overcoming the paradigm of classical postmodernism by introducing the perspective of reenchantment throughout the above-mentioned vectors: the image, science and new technologies.Publication No Círculo do Uroboro: Articulações Identitárias na Narrativa de Milton Hatoum(2012-09) Rodrigues, Cecilia PaivaThis dissertation examines the four novels published to date by Milton Hatoum, a contemporary Lebanese-Brazilian author from the Amazon region. There are a great number of critical readings of his work that foreground the postmodern dissolution and fragmentation of the self, of human relationships, and also of national identity. In contrast to such approaches, I propose what I call a reading of hope. I argue that Hatoum is at the forefront of a shift in sensibility in Brazilian literature, one that simultaneously demonstrates certain aspects of postmodernism, but also breaks with other elements of it. In order to illustrate this issue, I analyze how Hatoum's characters forge personal identities, utilizing the mythological symbol of the uroboro (the snake that bites its own tail) as the organizing structure of my analysis. The uroboro has historically been used to represent circularity in the cycles of nature, communal and personal renewal, the return to origins, and self-reflection. In addition to circularity, the symbol has also been visually depicted as half black and half white, creating a duality that stresses interdependence rather than binary logic. With the above characteristics of circularity and duality in mind, the postmodern aspect that I analyze in Hatoum's work is its break with binary logic. First, I identify a variety of dualities extant in the novels, from language and silence to myth and reality, that instead of canceling each other out complement one another and emphasize identity's inherent ambiguity. Next, I analyze the rupture with postmodernism, which comes with Hatoum's characters' perpetual search for a more meaningful relationship with others, the environment, and themselves. As a consequence, the postmodern rootless and unstable characters give way to individuals that express more humane concerns (the recovery of the past as a value, self-reflection, and the search for familial bonds as well as for a connection with beauty and aesthetic pleasure through the arts). The symbol of the uroboro thus provides a graphic means of metaphorically representing not only the characters' identity as ambiguous and self-reflective, but also Hatoum's novels as simultaneously working within and breaking with postmodernism.Publication Verbalizing in the Second Language Classroom: The Development of the Grammatical Concept of Aspect(2012-09) Garcia, Prospero N.Framed within a Sociocultural Theory of Mind (SCT) in the field of Second Language Acquisition (Lantolf & Thorne, 2006), this dissertation explores the role of verbalizing in the internalization of grammatical categories through the use of Concept-based Instruction (henceforth CBI) in the second language (L2) classroom. Using Vygotsky's (1986) distinction between scientific and spontaneous or everyday concepts applied to L2 development (Negueruela, 2008), this study focuses on the teaching and potential development of the grammatical concept of aspect in the Spanish L2 classroom, and the role of verbalizing in its internalization. It is proposed that verbalizing mediates between the learners' initial understandings of the grammatical concept of aspect, the development of conscious conceptualizations, and students' written and oral production of preterite and imperfect grammatical forms. This study presents and analyzes data from one of the thirty-two adult college students enrolled in an advanced Spanish conversation course. Data is analyzed through a clinical analytic approach, which has its roots in Vygotsky's (1978) genetic method of analysis. The study was carried out over a 12-week period and collected multiple sets of developmental data, including learners' definition of the grammatical concept of aspect, written performance protocols, and verbalization data recorded during two oral interviews. The study interprets learner performance in these three complementary, and dialectically connected types of L2 conceptual data. A close analysis of this participant's data provides critical insights to understand the role of verbalizing in L2 conceptual development. Findings confirm that learners' verbalizations are key factors to ascertain L2 conceptual development, as well as a mediational tool that fosters learners' internalization of the grammatical concept of aspect. It is proposed that verbalizing notably contributes to research on L2 development. Not only does it allow the researcher to have a more comprehensive picture of L2 development, but it also helps learners develop a more sophisticated semantic understanding of the grammatical concept of aspect and fosters their ability to understand and control relevant grammatical features in L2 communication.Publication Os Grão-Capitães Como Sequência De Contos: Paratextualidade, Imagética E Os Contornos De Um Género Literário(2012-09) Igrejas, António M.A.O facto deOs Grão-Capitães: uma sequência de contosde Jorge de Sena pertencerem a um género literário ainda pouco estudado motivou-nos a investigar os elementos que fazem desta coletânea uma sequência de contos. O livro de Sena é, que saibamos, o único em língua portuguesa intitulado como "sequência de contos" pelo seu autor. Com efeito, ambicionamos discutir os pressupostos teóricos do género em questão, como também analisar a matriz estrutural e temática que faz deste volume uma coletânea integrada. O livro de Jorge de Sena utiliza vários elementos estéticos que permitem a sua conceptualização como coletânea de contos integrada. Neste âmbito, estudamos o livro de Sena como paradigma do género sequência de contos e analisamos os elementos de paratextualidade com a imagética carceral e de desolação da sociedade do Estado Novo, que integram os diferentes, contudo interligados, contos num todo orgânico. Deste modo, estudamos como os nove contos que compõem o livro exploram enredos que se complementam e dão à coletânea uma integridade narrativa que só o género "sequência de contos" permite.Publication The Role of Prompts as Focus on Form on Uptake(2011-09) Boisvert, Brian BatesStudents are human beings; they, like all of us, make mistakes. In the language classroom, these mistakes may be written, spoken, and even thought. How, if, when, under what conditions and to what degree these errors are treated is of current concern in research regarding language acquisition. In their meta-analysis of interactional feedback, Mackey and Goo (2007) report that the utilization of feedback is beneficial and find evidence that feedback within the context of a focus on form environment is also facilitative of acquisition, echoing Norris and Ortega's (2000) positive findings regarding focus on form research. Thus, the role of feedback has found a somewhat limited, very informative and equally persuasive niche in current theory building and research. There is lack of research specifically addressing the role and effects of forms of feedback, other than recasts, namely prompts, in the second language classroom where the focus in on language use as a means of communication rather than the objectification of it. This context employs focus on form, a brief pedagogical intervention that momentarily shifts the focus of the class from meaning to linguistic form (See Long, 1991). Because prompts withhold correct forms (Lyster, 2004; Lyster & Saito, 2010), encourage students to simultaneously notice and self-correct (Lyster & Ranta, 1997), and push modified, student-generated output (de Bot, 1996; Lyster & Izquierdo, 2009; Lyster & Saito, 2010; Swain & Lapkin, 1995), they may be theoretically more appropriate for a focus on form context. This study examines this role in its function and efficacy comparing an implicit prompt, the clarification request, with an explicit prompt, metalinguistic feedback on students' spoken errors in the use of a very complex target structure, the subjunctive in nominal clauses in Spanish. Efficacy of the feedback is measured through successful student uptake, that is, whether or not students are able to self-repair as a result of the intervention and then through development operationalized as mean gains in a pre-test/post-test design. Statistical significance is shown for uptake with metalinguistic feedback only, however no development is shown as a result of any feedback due to the target structure's acquisition complexity.Publication Practicas Escriturales Femeninas: Espacialidad e Identidad en Epistolas en la Colonia (Rio de la Plata, Siglos XVI-XVII)(2011-05) Silva, YamileThe importance of the letter as a means for social, personal and intellectual expression for humanists has been highlighted in various studies. For those studies, its value resides in its effectiveness in responding more directly to the presence of a new pool of readers giving rise to a new cultural type, transforming it into the emblematic genre of the humanists. I am interested in considering the influence of epistolary models in the New World, because, as these models were transferred to a new context, they acquired new forms that responded to the needs of communication, representation, symbolization and, finally, a new rhetoric. For the purposes of this dissertation, I will depart from the conception of the letter in the New World as a “polysynthetic” genre; that is to say, inasmuch as I wish to respond to the plurality of communicative needs that arose from the new contexts that were unforeseen by the humanist rhetoric, I will consider the letters from the New World as emerging from and forming part of other genres: accounts, petitions, diaries, among others. The starting point for this dissertation is the thorough reading and analysis of eleven unpublished letters, all written by women, currently located at the Archivo General de Indias in Seville and sent from the Rio de la Plata during the XVI and XVII centuries. In my investigation, I intend to demonstrate how the authors used the writing of such documents as an empowering practice. Secondly, I will prove that these first epistles, written from America, do not necessarily belong to the ars epistolandi, but to the ars dictaminis. Furthermore, this change in disctinction requires a critical review of the current state of classical letters. Finally, I maintain that these letters provide a space for the emergence of the authors‟ identity. In other words, I understand and ground the conclusions of this work on the fact that space culturally shapes gender, but that gender acts in the production of such spaces as well. The participation of female authors by means of these letters merges them with that spatiality in a process both of production and reproduction, since, as a conscience building act, the “I” is turned into text in order to discuss on/about the space.Publication Mojarra Aesthetics in Piolin Por La Ma?ana: A Time and Space for the Dislocated(2011-05) Garcia, J. Luis LoyaThis dissertation is a cultural analysis of Piolín por la Mañana, a Spanish-language radio talk show conducted by Eduardo Piolín Sotelo and broadcast from Los Angeles. The program expands the boundaries of the performing arts as well as the reach and elasticity of literary tropes and study. It connects often geographically disparate ―imagined communities‖ of working class Latino/as by revisiting traditional Mexican theater, joke delivery style, literary genre (e.g., magical realism and the picaresque), and taxonomies of everyday personalities. Central to my discussion of Piolín is listener participation, which stages community formation within the radio-text. The introduction and the first chapter present the trope of the Mojarra, a person that crossed the U.S. border as a mojado/a (an undocumented immigrant), usually swimming or forging a river. Mojarras suffer el Síndrome de la Mojarra, the condition of feeling persecuted, believing that their freedom depends on the ability to evade capture. Mojarra Aesthetics revolves around the representational needs of the persecuted vii immigrant community; this aesthetic is comprised of artistic techniques that use humor and in particular explosive laughter and mitote. The second chapter explores how Piolín is a medium that connects, as well as creates, Latino communities through radio; it maps ―nonce taxonomies‖ of recognizable immigrant personalities. What follows, explores how Piolín encourages new ways of making and analyzing art, including the use of cantinfleadas and albures as central elements of oral folklore, comprising connections to traditional Mexican joke delivery (e.g., colmos, parecidos, que le dijo, telones, and bombas). The program, via this tradition, includes cultural tropes such as the mojarra, tlacuaches, nopales, nacos, nacas, among others. At the center of this dissertation is the carnival and, relatively new on the scene, the radio carnival. The radio program produces a Mojarra Difrasismo, deconstructing entrenched binaries and creating a new reality, forcing new critical thinking about what reality is or could be in relation to the immigrant experience and the immigrant body.Publication La Arquitectura de La Memoria Narrativa: Un Anáisis de La Estructura en Cinco Novelas Contemporáneas de España(2010-05) Cummings, Jason CharlesThe current study contemplates the relationship between narrative structure and memory in five contemporary Spanish novels. Since the Spanish Transition to Democracy literary critics have been quick to discuss the resurgence of historical memory in narrative. In particular, there has been an abundance of work that seeks to vindicate those who supported the Second Republic during the Spanish Civil War, but whose voices were silenced upon the republic's fall to Franco's army in 1939. Nevertheless, despite the wide critical recognition of a movement to recuperate Spanish historical memory, critics have largely ignored the role played by narrative structure in the construction of said memory during the 1990's and the first decade of the 21st century. Contemplating what Hayden White calls "the content of the form" at the stylistic level as well as at the level of each novel's macrostructure, this study demonstrates that the narrative techniques utilized by Juan Marsé, Manual Rivas, Dulce Chacón, Javier Cercas and Bernardo Atxaga cast a particularly postmodern light onto the darker mnemonic shadows of the Spanish Civil War and Franco's dictatorship. Through a series of typically postmodern mechanisms, such as the use of multiple narrators, mediated texts and constant dialog between varying levels of fiction and metafiction, these narratives transcend mere historic reflection and nostalgia in order to contemplate the subjective nature of the very mnemonic processes through which they are ostensibly created. The narrative structures of the works discussed in this study emphasize the fact that objective truth cannot be attained by means of present, postmodern remembering, much less when said remembering is linguistically mediated through narration. Thus, rather than seeking in vain to recuperate an unascertainable historical truth, these authors create highly structured, though purely esthetic, fictional representations of history, representations whose narrative forms are a prescription for the epistemic ills of the disillusioned, fragmented and uprooted postmodern implicit reader.Publication 'Oh! La Que Su Rostro Tapa/No Debe Valer Gran Cosa': Identidad Y Critica Social En La Cultura Transatlantica Hispanica (1520 - 1860) / 'Oh! The one who covers her face / surely is not worth much': Identity and Social Criticism in Transatlantic Hispanic Culture (1520-1860)(2010-05) Therriault, IsabelleIn 1639, a law prohibiting women any head covering; veil, mantilla, manto for example, is promulgated for the fifth time in the Iberian Peninsula under the penalty of losing the garment, and subsequently incurring more severe punishments. Regardless of these edicts this social practice continued. My dissertation investigates the cultural representation of these covered women (tapadas) in Spain and the New World in a vast array of early modern literary, historical and legal documents (plays, prose, and regal laws, etc.). Overall, critics associate the use of the veil in the Spanish territories with religious tendencies and overlook the social component of women using the veil to simply explain it as a mere fashion practice. In my dissertation, I argue that it is more than just a garment; the veil was used by women to make political statements, thereby challenging the restrictive gender and identity boundaries of their epoch. A critical analysis of early modern historical and legal peninsular texts and close-readings of Golden Age literary works, together with colonial cultural productions, allow me to identify patterns in how the tapadas were represented both artistically and culturally. Accordingly, my project attempts to reassess the significance of the tapadas in Hispanic culture for 350 years and demonstrate how their resilience to stop using the veil publicly is symptomatic of the absolutist monarchy inefficiencies in imposing social control. I move away from the tendency to investigate works including tapadas exclusively, and I conclude by reconstructing more accurately their cultural impact on the social dynamics in Spain as well as the New World.Publication Assigning Grammatical Gender to Novel Nouns in L1 and L2 Spanish(2017-05) Faber, AndieGrammatical gender is an inherent lexical property of nouns that categorizes them into two or more classes. Spanish and Portuguese have a binary gender system in which all nouns are masculine or feminine; this, along with number produces morphosyntactic agreement relationships between nouns, determiners, and adjectives. Conversely, when it comes to morphosyntactic agreement, English only produces agreement for number. The feature distinctions between Spanish and Portuguese on the one hand and English on the other can be illustrated using type hierarchies in HPSG, where the gender feature in Spanish and Portuguese has the same distribution in the hierarchy; however, the gender feature in English is limited to animate referential contexts. The aim of this dissertation is to analyze how L1 and L2 Spanish speakers assign, retain, and process novel noun gender taking into account their L1 typology. L1 Spanish speakers, L1 BP speakers, and L1 English speakers participated in three experimental tasks that manipulate novel noun gender and morphophonological shape. The first task presents speakers with 18 short stories, introducing two of the same novel item, differing along a single attribute, indicated by a gender-inflected adjective. Participants respond to a question about each story, necessarily producing the nonce noun and adjective. The second task is a description task after every six stories to investigate participants' gender retention. The third task investigates processing with a Self-Paced Reading paradigm where reading times are collected for nonce nouns and an anaphoric null nominals. The results indicate that all three speaker groups assign gender differently. L1 Spanish and L1 BP speakers rely most heavily on syntactic cues to assign gender, but L1 BP speakers rely more heavily on morphophonological cues than L1 Spanish speakers. L1 English speakers rely most heavily on morphophonological cues on the nonce noun. All speakers have more difficulty assigning feminine gender compared to masculine gender. This is taken to be due to the unmarked status of the masculine gender and suggests that Spanish gender feature values are [+/- fem] rather than masculine/feminine. These results also suggest that a theory of feature reassembly may more adequately describe the SLA process, accounting for prolonged instances of non-target optionality.Publication Representation, Reflection, and Reconciliation: The Evolving Depiction of Violence in the Committed Literature of Manlio Argueta(2017-05) Vasquez, Gladys EThis dissertation focuses on the life and works of the committed Salvadoran author Manlio Argueta. It traces pertinent themes in four of his novels, El valle de las hamacas (1969), Caperucita en la zona roja (1978), Milagro de La Paz (1994), and Siglo de O(g)ro (1997). This project traces how Argueta's representation of violence markedly transitions from a mimetic representation of violence that appeals to the senses and raises awareness of the exacerbating circumstances to a subdued and psychological representation of the consequences of the violence in the face of new violence and changing panoramas. It highlights three major moments of El Salvador’s history that directly impacted the life and career of Manlio Argueta and other artists of his generation: La Matanza, the takeover of the University, and the Civil War. Argueta survived the initial periods of violence of the sixties and seventies and lived the entire Civil War period from afar. He had the time and distance needed to zoom out of the daily confrontations with violence in order to view and represent the circumstances from a different viewpoint. His exile allowed him to write with a distanced perspective of El Salvador and include different groups in his imagery of the nation. Argueta’s writing has developed with him and with the Salvadoran society.Publication First and Second Language Acquisition of Recursive Operations: Two Studies(2016-09) Nelson, Jon SLinguistic theory has increasingly revolved around the notion of recursion. Most recently, many have advocated a view wherein it forms the essence of the Language Acquisition Device (LAD) purportedly contained in the human mind, while others have argued that it remains a separate and not necessarily related component of language processing. L1 Acquisition theory has suggested that appropriate recursive input is required to activate the LAD’s recursive faculties; nonetheless, L1 recursive structures may resist instruction and cause initial confusion among children. The effect that any of this may have on L2 has only begun to be studied. This dissertation attempts to fill this gap in knowledge by describing two experiments which concentrate on the interpretation of adjacent prepositional phrases (PPs). The first experiment exploits the similarity of PPs in Spanish and English by using identical prompts in both languages and with both L1 and L2 speakers, while the second experiment studies the growth of their recursivity in L1 acquisition in English. Both experiments also study the effect that unique pairs of prepositions have on this as well as the effect created by extending the chain of adjacent PPs beyond only two. The results provide a valuable insight into the interpretation of these structures. Recursive responses suggest an L2 path to acquisition which may result in L1 levels of performance. Yet Spanish and English each display their own behavior patterns, revealing dissimilarities that suggest Spanish possesses a more productive right-recursive rule than does English. Growth in L1 child English is also clearly observed in some scenarios but not in all. The important role individual prepositions clearly play is observed in both experiments, with unique pairs having unique levels of recursion. Increasing complexity of the NP based on number of PPs also entrenches recursion in interpretation. Nonetheless, certain participants resist recursion in multiple scenarios, a fact which may support an argument for targeted recursive input.Publication Mesa para dos. La Gastronomía en la Poesía y el Cine Españoles(2016-09) Juan Moreno, DoloresThis doctoral dissertation examines the alliances between Gastronomy, Film and Poetry in Peninsular Spanish Culture between 2000 and 2015. The thesis that I defend in this project argues that poetry and cinema employ the same tools in their display of culinary elements. These techniques are rooted in a concept promoted by the Catalonian chef Ferran Adrià: the “extrañamiento” that comes from a process of culinary deconstruction. Because of their need to enhance multiple meanings in a limited space, poets and filmmakers turn to “extrañamiento” as a means to capture the attention of the public who, unexpectedly, is able to shed a new and unprecedented light on the objects of the daily routine.In the first chapter I consider the dynamics of the table which, as stated by Massimo Montanari, could be considered a metaphor of life. Around the table, one can be defined as an individual and as part (or not) of a group, and eating is, therefore, a way to communicate and a means of communication. In the second chapter I discuss how the act of eating and the ingredients in the kitchen and on the table are considered symbolic elements that represent the meanings of time, desire, gluttony and excesses, death and memory. Finally, the third chapter is devoted to the supermarket and the interactions of poets and filmmakers with consumerism in the postmodern era. It serves to demonstrate why the model of non-place established by Marc Augé needs to redesign its limits in order to meet the aesthetic demands that artists of the new millennium are proposing. The labyrinth of the supermarket is not for them a place of transit or a neutral space, but the place where lyrically and cinematically the lines that separate life from death and loneliness from companion are defined. Through the analysis of proposals published in Spain between 2000 and 2015 I analyze in this dissertation the symbolic value of gastronomy in Contemporary Spanish Poetry and Film as a vehicle to represent the idiosyncrasies of this culture and the particularities of the individuals that comprise it.Publication CALLAR Y REVELAR DOS NOVELAS EXTREMAS DE LA TRANSICIÓN CHILENA: ENTRE LA CENSURA Y LA RECONQUISTA DE LA PALABRA(2016-05) Silveri, RobertThis investigation proposes to explore relationships between politics and literature within the framework of three decades (1970-2000) that include a particularly dramatic period in Chilean society: the dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet (1973-1990) and the later transition to democracy (1988-2000). Such exploration focuses on the narrative genre, a form well suited to show the perverse effects of the censorship and the destruction of public and private life under the dictatorship, but also a form that converts itself into a symbolic space in which takes place, upon the transition back to democracy beginning in 1988, an explosion of important Works that characterize the so called “rebirth of the word.” The investigation pursues the following objectives: Describe the effects of the censorship and repression in the field of literature during the dictatorship of Pinochet and the techniques and strategies developed by writers and artists to combat the forced silence, which resulted in the rise of literary creativity during the transition period. Describe a group of recurring themes which reappear in the novels published in the decade of 1990-2000 with the objective of showing the surge in literary production as well as the predominant fictional themes, and to provide context for the ascendance of the two main authors of this study: Diamela Eltit (1949-) and Alberto Fuguet (1964-) To study the works of Diamela Eltit and Alberto Fuguet, considered two of the most important writers of the post-dictatorship, by way of a comparative analysis of their seemingly opposite narrative works that take place in the year 1980: Lumpérica (1983) by Diamela Eltit and Mala onda (1991) by Alberto Fuguet. Examine the variables that explain the return to the novel as the preferred genre during the Chilean post-dictatorship: the political liberation, the economic stability, the machinery of publication, the globalization, the purchase of books, and the new narrative voices with their powerful literary projections. In this way, arrive at some tentative conclusions extracted from the results of this investigation. CALLAR Y REVELAR: Dos novelas extremas de la transición chilena: entre la censura y la reconquista de la palabra MAY 2016 ROBERT SILVERI, B.A. ASSUMPTION COLLEGE M.A., UNIVERSITY OF MASSACHUSETTS Ph.D., UNIVERISTY OF MASSACHUSETTS Directed by: Professor Margara Russotto Esta investigación se propone explorar las relaciones entre la política y la literatura en el marco temporal de tres décadas (1970-2000) que incluyen un período particularmente dramático de la sociedad chilena: la dictadura de Augusto Pinochet (1973-1989), y la posterior y difícil transición a la democracia (1988-2000). Dicha exploración se enfoca concretamente en el género narrativo, por ser el lugar emblemático en el que se muestran los efectos perversos de la censura y la destrucción de la vida pública y privada bajo la dictadura, y también por convertirse en el lugar simbólico donde ocurre, al abrirse la transición a la democracia a partir de 1988, una explosión de obras importantes que caracterizan el llamado “renacimiento de la palabra”. La investigación persigue los siguientes objetivos: 1. Describir los efectos de la censura y la represión en el campo literario durante la dictadura de Pinochet y las técnicas y estrategias que emplearon escritores y artistas para combatir el silenciamiento, así como también los cambios surgidos después, en dicho campo, durante la transición a la democracia. 2. Describir un grupo de temas recurrentes que reaparecen insistentemente en las novelas publicadas durante la década de 1990-2000, con el fin de mostrar la atmósfera epocal vigente y las opciones ficcionales predominantes, y así contextualizar el surgimiento y significación de los dos autores centrales de esta investigación: Diamela Eltit (1949-) y Alberto Fuguet (1964-). 3. Estudiar la obra en particular de Diamela Eltit y Alberto Fuguet, considerados los escritores chilenos más importantes de la postdictadura, mediante un análisis comparativo entre dos de sus obras narrativas, que se tratan del año 1980, que constituyen el corpus central de nuestro trabajo: Lumpérica (1983) de Diamela Eltit, y Mala onda (1991) de Alberto Fuguet. 4. Examinar las variables que explican el regreso a la novela como medio preferido durante la postdictadura chilena: la apertura política, la estabilidad económica, la empresa editorial con proyectos de mediano plazo, la globalización, el consumo del libro y nuevas voces narrativas con grande proyecciones literarias, y aportar así algunas conclusiones tentativas sobre los resultados obtenidos en esta investigación.